Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Sulfurblatt.

This is Bookworm.

It's that time again when I have the privilege of talking to one of my favorite writers.

I'm talking with Chris Ware about his new book, Rusty Brown, published by Pantheon.

Although what he does is called a graphic novel,

I believe that these three major works of his are the equivalent

to the chronological destinies in a Faulkner novel. These are about people in time and space

and locating their spaces and their times.

And they've got a writer who notices when three people are sleeping next to one another in a rocket ship,

illustrating a science fiction story that their eye masks make a symmetry

that makes the reader peer closer. Oh, look at that. Look at how beautifully designed.

These masks are. Isn't this funny? It's a brilliant item in a story

within a story. Nothing escapes attention here. There's no, I just did it because I had to fill

the space. The space is always thrillingly, complexly, meaningfully filled.

Now, I wonder, how do you do that?

...