Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

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

Today I'm very happy to have on the show, Clancy Martin,

whose new novel, How to Sell, has just been published by Faris Strauss and Giroux.

Now, the novel has been published in a way as if it were a bit of sleeves.

But, in fact, it is simultaneously decorated with quotes from some very good young writers,

Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, Benjamin Conkel, Gary Steingart,

and the young writer Clancy Martin is a professor of philosophy

who has apparently lived through some of the nefarious and scandalous events,

but in the process, he's gone from some version of the events in this book to being a

specialist in questions of ethics, of deception, of lying,

in other words, the true modern subjects of literature and philosophy.

Now, you have to be reading the book through a certain lens

to see its examination of the way language works to deceive.

But it's worth reading the book in that way, and for that reason I invited Clancy Martin onto the show.

Now, tell me, when you were writing, it seems important for the book to conceal

its philosophical nature while playing on its outlaw nature. What's that like to do?

Well, I wanted the book. You're right. For example,

...