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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

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

Today, well, it's a great pleasure because I'm going to be talking about something extraordinary.

I'm talking with Edward St. Aubin about his Patrick Melrose novels.

The first four volumes have been published altogether in a paperback original by Piccador,

and the final volume is in hardcover from Faris Strauss and Giroux. And let me say it's a real pleasure to read a book

that's been written over, what does it say, 20 years. Exactly. And it's following a character

virtually from his earliest childhood to the days after, well, the very day of the funeral of his mother.

His father has died in the second volume. His mother dies in this one, and his life, in a sense,

at least by his own lights, is about to begin. Patrick Melrose,

is he an autobiographical character? Do you acknowledge this? Yes, Patrick Melrose is an alter ego.

But alter ego are never identical with the author. There's always a gap,

and Patrick Malrose was created in order to carry a particular story. But he has a lot of my

faults, and I wish I had some of his virtues,

but as I usually write what he says about 50 times before it gets published,

he's actually rather more articulate than I am.

...