Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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

Today I'm happy to have us my guest, Jonathan Leatham, whose newest book, Chronic City, has recently

been published by Doubleday.

He's the author as well of, among other things,

Oh, The Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn,

You Don't Know Me Yet, Girl in Landscape as she climbed across the table,

a raft of novels, essays, and he has edited, I think, the three volumes in the

Library, America collections of Philip K. Dick and done an introduction recently for the

New Directions edition of Miss Lonely Hearts. A recent essay about his father recently appeared in Granta, and a book by

L.J. Davis was given an introduction by him in the New York Review of Books series.

Now, this book seems to be a collision between the kinds of books you've written recently and the books you started out with.

Where did it begin?

I like that description.

I think it is a collision and a recapitulation of, in some ways, everything I feel I can do.

Well, one source you mentioned was I re-encountered Philip K. Dick reading the books to edit them for the Library of America.

I had been relying on, you know, 25 and 30-year-old memories of his books,

and it didn't ever keep me from speaking of them with great confidence

...