Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zintuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

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

Today, my guest is Gary Steingart.

His newest book is Little Failure.

It's a memoir.

I've been waiting to see him again since super sad,

true love story was published. He seems to do a book every four years, so it seems to require

a four-year waiting period. But at that, when you're doing that, do you know immediately what you're jumping next to?

Usually, yes, yes.

I try to do a book every four years, as you said, and I try to time it so that it's not in time for the general election.

So just the midterms is when I do it.

Yes, so far with each book, I've already plotted the next one as I progressed the book tour.

I already know what I'm going to do next.

And to write a memoir, was that a sustained goal?

Was that something you wanted to do?

It first began as an idea of publishing the many essays I've written for the New Yorker

and Granta and Three Penny Review and all those other publications.

...