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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Today we have a special show because there's been a new press that's established independence that comes from

Los Angeles. It's called Zero Graham Press. It's a press I'm very fond of and their first

original book called Panthers and the Museum of Fire.

Great title, huh?

It's by an Australian writer named Jen Craig,

which means after I talk to the editor of the press itself,

Zero Graham Press, whose name is Jim Gower.

You may recognize it from his freebieus appearance on Bookworm with his book novel explosives,

one of the most extraordinary first novels to have appeared in recent years.

He has brought independence to his zero-gram press. And tell me, Jim Gower, what are you looking for with your press?

Well, I suppose I should start with a bit of a mission statement.

It's not really a manifesto, but it's something that was posited by Walter Benjamin back in the 1930s.

So the Walter Benjamin of famously known for art in the age of mechanical reproduction.

And what Benjamin said is in each generation, the attempt must be made to rest the tradition

...