Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without booms?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zintuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblot, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, I have as my guest, a novelist Joan Silber. She's also written books of short stories. Some of her novels

are books of short stories, and some of her books of short stories are novels. The excitement

that comes from dismantling the usual progression of the novel seems to be at the center of what you do,

Joan Silber. How did you come to this unique way of structuring the novel?

I started it in the book that later became Ideas of Heaven, which is five books ago.

And I actually, I certainly didn't know what I wanted to do in the beginning.

I had finished another novel and I was at a summer house where I had lots of time to write and

I wanted to begin a new project. And I had an idea for a story. I hadn't done stories for a while. And when I finished that

story, I saw how the guy who's actually the villain in that piece could have his own story.

I kind of wanted to get the point of view of this ostensibly unsympathetic character.

And then when I did that one, I saw how a chain was kind of growing

where a person who was minor in one thing

could be then the center of the next thing,

could then become major.

...