Thanks for listening to Bookworm.

I'll bet you'll want to listen to DNA, KCRW's podcast with Francis Anderton.

She's really one of the best informed people about architecture and the face the world is putting on today.

Find DNA on KCRW's iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tos into the bird. It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

I had an experience recently.

A writer, critic, memoirist, theorist named Hilton Al's,

has written a book called White Girls.

It just took the roof off the top of my head. It was so exciting to read

because Hilton is dealing with the terrifyingly delicate issues that we live in. That is to say, gender, race, sexuality, and does it as if it

weren't hard to do, does it with great cunning and elan? Where did you earn or find the freedom to express yourself with this level of intensity and immediacy?

Oh, Michael, your introduction does me a great disservice because now I don't know what to say about my own writing.

But thank you.

I think that what you're describing in terms of freedom is a naturalness of expression for me. One of the points, it seems to me, about making any kind of

art is to present a self-portraiture in a variety of ways. I think that the freedom you're talking about has to do with love.

The book really is about missing people, some absent by choice and some dead, not by choice.

And I think that one of the things that was very important to me was to recall them

...