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 Sutherblad, and welcome to Bookworm. Today, my guest is

Fran Lieberwitz on the occasion of the publication of the Fran Lieberwitz reader from vintage

books. It's also the time of the publication of her children's book, Mr. Chaz and Lisa Sue meet the

pandas.

Well, I thought I'd begin by asking you, in addition to being very funny, there've been some very artistic stances in the course of your career, and your desertion of the humorous

essay seems Rambo-like.

What prompted it?

I was just tired of it.

I wanted to write this novel, which is not yet written, not finished.

I really think what happened was that my first book Metropolitan Life was successful

at a level that I didn't have any expectation of it being.

This prompted quite a bit of media attention.

What then happened was that all the things that I thought about that I would write about,

I started saying on television. And

frankly, I just got sick of the sound of that voice, which was very directly my voice.

I think that if that hadn't happened, I probably would have continued to do those essays

for a much longer period of time. I just, I couldn't take myself anymore, I think is what it was.

And so that that's why I stopped doing it.

...