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 in Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have as my guest, George Saunders, whose newest book, a novella,

a fable, the brief and frightening reign of Phil has just been published by

Riverhead Books. I wanted to begin, of course, by telling you the other books he's written.

The first was a collection of stories called Civil Warland in Bad Decline. Then came pastoralia. There's an earlier book-length fable called

the very persistent gappers of Fripp that was published with illustrations by Lane Smith.

This new one, The Brief and Frightening Rain of Phil, has illustrations by Ben Gibson. Now, let's begin with fables,

because I think there was a confusion about the earlier book,

the very persistent Gappers of Fripp,

that it was a children's book or a children's fable.

But it was a fable.

And, you know, fables require, I think, to begin with a childlike

simplification of terms, hence the confusion. What is the attractiveness of the fable form for you?

Well, I think it's that I'm a simpleton and I have a very kind of simple,

simple, moralistic view of things.

And so somehow with a fable, I can indulge that inclination a little more.

In short stories, in adult fiction, it's a little bit more of an uphill struggle for me.

...