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, California, I'm Michael Silverblad, and this is Bookworm. Today, I'm happy to have,

as my guest, a first novelist, Jonathan Saffron, 4, who's written a novel called Everything

is Illuminated, and it's published by Houghton Mifflin.

I am eager to talk to him because although the book has been celebrated by its reviewers who are very enthusiastic about it,

the book I read is not the book they were writing about and I don't think that I read the wrong book. But they seem to have fastened on a particular character in the book they were writing about, and I don't think that I read the wrong book.

But they seem to have fastened on a particular character in the book who they find so

endearing linguistically that they focused on him almost to the exception of the book,

its structure, its meanings, its values.

And it's those that I'd like to talk about,

that I'd like people to hear about. But first of all, I don't want to be presumptuous.

Do you agree with me that the reviews have in some ways, as enthusiastic as they've

been, missed the heart of what the book does? I don't know if they've missed the heart, but they've been, missed the heart of what the book does.

I don't know if they've missed the heart, but they've given uneven attention to one story, storyline in the book.

Or rather, I think they've separated something out and called it one storyline,

what I don't think of the book as being any sort of braid,

but of being really one organic piece

that's comprised of different parts.

...