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 Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I'm thrilled to be talking to Diane Williams, who's a writer that I've wanted to talk to on Bookworm for a very long time.

And the only reason really I haven't spoken to her before is that all of my interviews

have been done face to face.

And I'm now in New York where Diane Williams lives.

But this is the best occasion because, magically, the collected stories of Diane Williams has been published by the Soho Press.

It's just under 800 pages of short fictions.

Most of them are only a page or too long, and they've been a page or too long for as long as I can remember.

Were there ever longer fictions?

Well, yes, yes, there's some novellas that I'm very proud of in this book. And I've been trying to creep further ahead with four pages, five pages, six pages, seven pages. In the deep dark past, maybe they didn't exist.

Diane Williams writes stories whose language is so original and so indescribable.

It's like as you read, you're bumping your nose against some sort of

showroom window to another world. This big, fabulous collection is built up out of how many collections?

I think it's eight.

And if you read it the way I do, I sat down and read, whether I'd read the stories before

...