Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, you're listening to Bookworm, and I'm Michael Silverblatt.

Today we're taping at the Museum of Television and Radio in Manhattan.

My guest is Francine Prose, her book, it's the rare nonfiction book on bookworm, The Lives of the Muses,

Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired. Now this is Francine Prose's first work of nonfiction,

and it's in what I have to confess is one of my favorite forms, the brief life. I started reading

brief lives with William Belitho, who wrote something called Twelve Against the Gods,

and then I fell in love with a book by Diane Johnson called Lesser Lives, which was also about

little-known Victorian women. This book is about

women who've served as muses to artists and writers and the often disastrous consequences, because we all know when we attempt to influence others,

especially under the Star of Love, extraordinary things may happen.

And this book extends from Mrs. Threll, who was the lively and somewhat witty muse to Samuel Johnson, who was scruffulous.

To say the list.

To say the least.

To the Alice of Alice in Wonderland.

It goes through the woman who had the signal dazzling qualities

to influence Freud, Rilke, and Nietzsche, Lou Andreas Salome. And it ends with Yoko Ono.

What brought you to a consideration of these women, and what leads you to call them muses?

...