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 read from KCRW Santa Monica I'm Michael

Silverblatt and this is bookworm today we're broadcasting from the library at the

Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe there are several members of the foundation and

friends listening so we have something of an audience here.

And what I have today is my guest and my friend Gilbert Sorrentino, whose new book Lunar Follies,

is being published by Coffee House Press. Because there is nothing like a new book by Sorrentino,

I thought it would be good to begin with the first sequence in this book.

This is a list of galleries and their shows.

They're in alphabetical order, and this is the first such gallery in the book, Alphonsus.

George Alphonsis, famed as the supreme master of magic, is said to have had a hand in creating the illusion that has quite successfully and

convincingly asserted itself as art for our time. The question asked most frequently has been

what of the millennium, or on occasion what of the exciting millennium? George creates the

convincing illusion, which most agree silences the seasoned and cynical journalists,

who are, of course, the framers of such questions as have to do with art for our time.

For instance, is baseball too slow for our ultra-busy speeded up on the go age?

Will the loathsome cockroach lead the way to a cure for breast cancer?

Was John Kennedy Jr. a closet queen? Do we have to die? How can we be happy in a bad job?

And is birth control science the way to the rapture?

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