Hearby Monsters is a podcast about facing the unknown. I, uh, I start to float, float away from the earth. Have you ever smoked crack before? We're all kind of frantically searching for meaning. They have the neurotransmitters. I think we're all jugglers in some way. Yo, we're not broken. Crazy delinquents. We're in our last day, young man. Listen to Hear Be Monsters.

The podcast about the unknown.

On the KCRW iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Well, we'd be there without books. Foundation. Boots. Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timber.

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 I'm happy to have as my guest, Jonathan Franzen, to talk about the book that everyone is talking about.

From the bookworm's point of view, the moment I started reading it, I didn't stop

till I was done with it, and then I started reading it again. It's an extraordinary book.

Now, let me begin by talking about it from the end. This book imagines the possibility of a happy ending, at least for some of its characters.

Did you know that that would be the case?

I had the feeling you wrestled your way to that possibility.

I think that's very astute. I, you know, it's a bruising book.

I was aware of that the whole time, and honestly, I had taken money from publishers, and I thought,

and yet what I have to say is it's emotionally bruising and raw in many places.

So there were two senses of responsibility I had.

I perhaps shouldn't admit this.

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