From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

You can also hear the show at KCRW.com.

Now, let me throw a few names at you that represent style in my hometown.

Iggy Pop, Eminem, Barry Gordy. Let me add to that list of stylists and inventors. My guest

today, James Lipton. In 1994, he began inside the actor's studio. At a point where many people

consider retiring, he opened another chapter in his life. His

newest book is a look at both that show and a look back to his own life. The book is

inside, inside. Jim, thanks so much for being here. Oh, this is no place I'd rather be.

That's so sweet if you say thank you. Before we go anywhere, I've got to ask you how big an influence

remembers the things past was on you, because the book reminds me so much in when you move back and forth, and there are touchdowns. I got that.

The book is written in concentric circles. It's not linear. There are themes that appear and then reappear. This is not a conscious mimicry of the remembrance of things past, but what it is, I think,

for better or for worse, and I make no claims for its value or its quality, is a system

of moving through the story and through the narrative, my own life and the other lives, because

they all intersect in the end.

It is just a way of recollection of one memory triggering another memory, of one event triggering

thoughts about another event, one person triggering thoughts about another person. And the book moves

in that way in these continually revolving concentric circles. For better or for worse, that's what I tried to do.

Because I really felt that it's that series of touchstones and triggers and reflections

that bring to me so much that kind of moving of currents and cross currents that I think of when I think of Proust.

Well, that's the nicest compliment I could have, of course.

I'm not in his league, but this was a voyage of discovery.

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