Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to the bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

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

You know, from time to time, I receive a book that I've never heard of.

I have to say it comes out of thin air, a subject that

is repeatedly investigated in this book, things coming from thin air. This book is published by

Zero Gram Press. It's called novel explosives.

It's by Jim Gower, and it's over 700 pages long.

It is in a category that would include Pinchons novels or David Foster Wallace's novels,

I would say Joseph McElroy's novels, but it's a tradition.

It goes to Ulysses, it goes to O'Rabelle, Gargantuan Pantagruel.

It goes to an experimental book with holes in it like Tristram Shandy.

But it is a special kind of book, and it presents a special kind of difficulty.

Are you in love with difficulty?

Why difficulty?

Yeah, I suppose, you know, my background as a mathematician may have predispose me to that.

I love solving problems, and the linguistic problems are particularly interesting to me. I often would write myself into a

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