Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

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.

Today, I'm very excited to have us my guest, Chris Krause, and her new novel, Summer of Hate,

which is published by Semiotext.

Now, Chris is an art writer, a social theorist, and a novelist.

But what's more, her novels, her theory, her art writing is free of the arcane theoretical

language that allows our understanding of culture, ourselves, our times,

to disappear in a puff of smoke. Rather, it's to liberate the eye and present the world

as it seems right now, including the possibility of error, overstatement.

It's more important to be in the present tense to account for the world as it is in her novels

than to be overly careful and miss the immediacy of living.

How do you achieve this?

Is that a question?

It is a question of sorts.

Well, Summer of Hate has to do with some very recent history.

It's kind of a weird thing.

I mean, it's in the past. It's half a decade. It's kind of a weird thing. I mean, it's in the past.

...