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?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today I'm happy because my guest is Deborah Eisenberg.

She's the author, most recently, of a book of stories called Under the 82nd Airborne, published by Farras Strauss and Giroux.

And before that, a book called Transactions and a Foreign Currency,

stories that I think are currently available from vintage

and a play called Pasteurau.

Well, these are such amazing stories,

and it seems to me that you have the best idea about confusion.

You know, what drives these stories are, you know, the ongoing question, almost always to the final page, who are these people and why are we with them and what are they doing together?

And it's a very thrilling thing to have existence, in other words, become the suspense of a short story.

Oh, wonderful. Oh, that makes me so happy that you say that. I mean, I love the idea that it kind of goes on the page uncooked before it's cooked.

Do you put it on uncooked?

Well, no, not at all, in fact.

I slave and slave and slave, and everything takes me forever.

So there's a process of sort of eternal refining that goes on, but I don't like it to show.

Well, of course, but nevertheless one can tell.

In short stories where so many things stay so thrillingly unknown for so long,

one knows that there has been a constant working up to

...