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?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt, and I'm here on Bookworm today with Jay Gumberman, the author of a first book of short stories published this month by Alfred A Knopf, called We Find Ourselves in Moontown.

Jay is a graduate of the University of California at Irvine's writing program,

and his writing teacher was Oakley Hall, who will be joining us during the second session of today's show.

Jay, this book, we find ourselves in Moontown

leads one to ask the question,

what is Moontown?

Obviously, it's not a physical place.

It's an emotional place.

What kind of twilight zone is it?

I guess I see it as the place where all the stimuli of modern society is finally put to rest, at least temporarily.

And the only thing feeding back anymore is the person's own thoughts or state of being,

which normally when a person enters Moontown

is not in the best of condition or needs altering.

That's interesting because it did seem to me the place

where a person experiences his own anxiety without interface.

Right, right. Yeah, the denial is theoretically stopping.

You know, I've often wondered many of these books, many of these stories, like Flannery O'Connor's,

stories and other peoples, are reflective of a level of, you know,

...