Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

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.

Well, everyone has been talking so much about my guest's new book, 10th of December.

My guest is George Saunders. But, you know, we've been

talking since his first book, and I felt obliged to point out that everyone loves the book,

but no one is really saying what it's about. And I thought we should have an extra conversation

in which we start to address the subject, which is the State of America.

The State of America seen as sort of a post-Orwellian state, 1984 Animal Farm.

We're all dealing with Homeland Security, economic crises, climate change, and what? The human condition, on top of all of those.

And that's what these stories try to do, something that the American short story has stopped doing, and they do it with a gigantic sense of humor. First of all, let's

talk about the totalitarian state because it's behind so many of the stories. Well, let me go on,

I'm against it. I'll go on record. No, I, you know, actually, I have been thinking about that,

sort of, you know how you can think and you can sort of full body think. And for me, I, you know, actually, I have been thinking about that sort of, you know how you can think and you can sort of full body think.

And for me, I've been kind of full body thinking about that since I was a little kid in this sense.

You know, they showed us the concentration camp movies in school, Catholic school.

And so whenever I would encounter a work of literature, I would kind of think, okay, does that account for that somehow?

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