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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to turn.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblot, and this is Bookworm.

Today, I have perhaps the most unusual show of the year.

I'm going to ask you to get out your writing implement, whatever it might be,

mechanical, lead, ink, what have you.

There are some things you'll want to note down,

because the book I am talking about today is the book you will want to give your literary friend for Christmas. It's a wonderful book. It's called

Questioning Minds, and it is composed of the letters of the late Guy Davenport and the late Hugh Kenner.

It's edited by one of my guests, Edward M. Burns.

If today, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett,

if these names are known to you from a college curriculum, it's to cause these two men, Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner,

were co-conspirators in making these, as they were called, modernist writers, available in schools. Believe me, there was a time when they were not to be taught.

Hugh Kenner was a brilliant teacher. Beyond the letters, Guy Davenport went on to become a brilliant writer of short stories and diorama-like scenarios.

I have the great fortune to have Jim Gower with us, who had the great fortune of studying with Hugh Kenner and with it took the opportunity

to read virtually all of Guy Davenport too. From Counterpoint Press, who are to be noted

for publishing the Davenport fiction and essays,

...