Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

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 very pleased to have us my guest, Edward St. Aubin, whose new novel, Lost for Words, is hilarious.

The other novels, the Patrick Melrose novels that precede lost for words, are hilarious

also, but painful.

This novel is only painful for those who are worried about the fate of literature.

Few enough, but we are.

We are.

We are.

And so the book is about the huge upsurge in interest in literary prizes, particularly the Booker Prize and prizes like it,

that is unaccompanied by an upsurge and interest in literature.

It's an interest in who wins, what the betting odds are, who shows up, who doesn't show up for the award,

televising the award, what people are wearing, who's at whose table, who is signing on with whom,

what untold riches will be shuffled as a result of the award at the end of the evening?

And poor literature is left, what, squalling in the dust?

Absolutely.

On the one hand, these prizes are justified by the idea that they're drawing

attention to the minority sport of literary fiction. But as you say, they seem all too

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