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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is David Bowman, the author of Let the Dog

Drive recently, brought out in paperback by Penguin.

Around two years ago, I started getting letters from David Bowman, manuscripts from David Bowman, copies of information

about David Bowman from David Bowman.

And he is, perhaps to my mind, the only author I didn't know who's contacted me on a regular

basis in ways that I found charming.

These envelopes would be filled with pictures of dogs driving, little amusing rubber stamps,

and kinds of self-promotion so surrealist that it didn't seem self-serving. And so here is David Bowman,

at last, with a book that began as a book from New York University Press to one that's been

reviewed in The New Yorker and the New York Times and published in paperback by Penguin.

Now, you've told me that you thought when young

that you had invented surrealism.

Can you explain that?

I grew up in San Juan Capistrano.

And actually, before that, it was outside of San Diego.

And I took oil painting lessons from a woman who wore rubber gloves because the arsenic and paint or something irritated her flesh and learned how to paint still lifes.

So I was painting plates and coffee cups and things.

...