You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

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

Today my guest is Henry Bermel.

His new novel, Little America, has just been published

by Knopf, and he also saw a first written and directed film come out by him this year, Panic.

And this follows by, oh, good, what is it, nine years since your previous novel?

Oh, at least.

Yeah.

He is the author as well of two books of short stories, the slightest distance.

I know your heart, Marco Polo, as well as a novel, the follower, now Little America from Knopf.

Now, it's interesting to me.

When I first met Henry many, many years ago, it was by accident.

It was at a party.

And we got to talking as is inevitable with me about favorite books.

And he told me that his favorite writer was V.S. Nypol.

And I think that finally, in a sense, you've written a V.S.

Nypal novel.

I should be so lucky. That's interesting. That's what I was, that's what I love. I still, he would still be way up at the top of the list. And I wondered, but what brought you back to fiction writing after a career in film and television? It's, you know, it's quite a return and it's an impressive return.

Thank you. I, in my inner mind, the inner recesses never left. In other words, I continue all those years and now to spend most of my time reading books.

It's just that I had found it for several complicated reasons.

I kind of didn't want to write prose for a while.

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