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.

Good afternoon and welcome to Bookworm. I'm Michael Silverblatt.

I'm in an unusual situation this afternoon.

This is the first time that I've taped this show outside of the studio.

I'm in Santa Barbara talking to John Sanford.

John Sanford is a new discovery for me, but he is 89 years old and has written more than 20 books,

and I'm embarrassed to come upon his work so late. Many times when you meet people who tell you

that they know of the work of a great neglected writer, you often find

that the neglect was justified. The affection may be real. But in this particular case, I read

John Samford with increasing astonishment and enthusiasm because he seems to be a writer

who has both invented an absolutely astonishing style, who has a style that means something. It's not an

empty style or a merely elegant style.

And his work is, in many ways,

a travelogue or pageant of the history of America

through which he has lived and through which he has thought. The statement, the personal,

is the political, might have been invented for John Sanford, whose five-volume autobiography from

Black Sparrow is punctuated by episodes from American history that he wrote about originally

in four volumes, a more goodly country view from the wilderness to feed their hopes and the winters

of that country. Now, John, those titles all come from William Bradford. Could you give

us that quotation to begin with? The quotations from which the four titles were taken is this.

They all come from one page and from one paragraph. The season, it was winter,

and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent,

...