Hi, I'm Michael Silverblatt. Thanks for tuning in to Bookworm. Some of our most exciting storytellers

share their work orally, and that's the kind of work you can hear on KCRW's Unfictional.

Intimate stories, cleverly made documentaries produced all around the world by some of the most talented radio producers we have.

Check out on Fictional. You can find it on KCRW's iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. Boots.

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, into bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Of all the many times I say that this is a special show, this is a special show.

My guest is Charles Baxter.

He writes some of the most beautiful short stories being

written in America, maybe anywhere. The author of five collections of short stories and five novels,

two books of the best literary analysis, writing about writing. It's not criticism.

It's much more passionate. And the newest book is a book of short stories called There's

Something I Want You to Do. Now, is it just my ear or isolated like this?

Is this a very threatening sentence?

I wish it were not.

The truth is that this sentence is one that I heard all throughout my childhood and early adolescence. It was one of my mother's

favorite phrases, and it echoed through my life, so much so that when I told my brother

...