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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.

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

You know, today I have as my guest, Jim Crusoe, and it's a pleasure to have him here.

He has been my friend for nearly 25 years.

I knew him when he was a poet.

Now he has published his fourth book of fiction.

The first was a book of stories called Blood Lake,

then came a novel called Iceland,

a novel called Girl Factory, and now erased from Tin House.

The books, Blood Lake, and Erased, are considered to be the first two books of a trilogy of sorts.

They're not connected in any way, but this is to be thought of as the light motif or qualifying

characteristic of a Jim Crusoe narrative.

Books are connected because they have no connection, and the narrative is a narrative because, in a way, it says it is.

Now, in truth, there's something of a connection in that both books deal with a state that's somewhere between life and death.

In Girl Factory, listeners will remember the girls were suspended,

suspended in animation in big vats of yogurt.

This book brings the narrator's mother into the world of the dead or undead.

And I know that you wrote the book after your own mother's death.

...