Here Be Monsters is a show that invites you to explore fear and the unknown.

I saw her face change. I saw her see where I'd pulled my hair out.

Psychological warfare was always considered kind of an oddity. Something done by freaks.

On the count of three, we're literally going to step out of our body. Step out.

You can find Here Be Monsters Now at KCRW.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots! Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir,

but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt. This is Bookworm, and today I'm happy to have as my guest, Jonathan Safferan 4. His new book is called Here I Am. It's published by Ferris and Giroux, and I don't mind beginning

by saying that it's the most powerful book I've read this year. I think it's an extraordinary book

and very beautiful, spiritual, and painful. I wondered what it was like to write it. Did you have doubts about

this level of soul exposure?

Well, you know, doubt has, I guess, presided over everything I've ever written.

And it's as much of a reason to write as it is a side effect of writing.

And I would say that I did feel more of it with this book than with any of my other books,

not because it was any more autobiographical or cathartic or therapeutic.

I wasn't working through anything personally,

but I felt a personal closeness to this book,

to the kind of, you know,

...