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 Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Frank Conroy, the author most recently of Body and Soul, recently published

by Houton Mifflin.

It's a Seymour Lawrence book.

His earlier books include the now classic memoir, Stop Time, and the book of short stories

called Midair. Body and Soul is a book

about the development of body and soul of a young musician, and I thought I'd begin by asking

a question about that old-fashioned word vastation.

I noticed in this book that almost all of the characters experience some kind of blank space.

The hero's mother goes into a depression and has concealed her past,

his girlfriend experiences white outs, her mother becomes hysterically blind,

and he himself has a kind of trance state he enters before he goes on stage to play.

And I began to think that for you a certain kind of vacuum or blankness might be a precondition

to creativity.

Oh, oh.

It may well be true.

I haven't thought of it that way.

And it's an interesting question, and I will get back to you.

But I'll also tell you what happens to me right now off the top of my head.

I've noticed that before I start working on something that turns out to be good to me.

It's different than when I start writing something that turns out to be bad for me that I have to get rid of or that I don't, or that I finish and throw away.

...