Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today you are going to hear the second part of an interview with Joseph McElroy,

the author most recently of actress in the house, published by the Overlook Press.

His books are being brought back into print by that house, beginning with the first novel,

A Smuggler's Bible.

One of the critics, I think it was Walker Percy, said when that book came out that to ignore it would make the culture as guilty as they had been when they didn't recognize under the volcano and the recognitions.

That's a quote that I love.

Another person says it's like encountering an underwater cathedral, a shard.

And, you know, I can only say that over the many years around 2530 that I've been reading,

Joe McElroy, I think of this as being the unexplored, the unmind motherload

of American literature. So it's with enormous awe and respect and deference that I have him as my

guest. Now, there's something I haven't understood about the books,

which is that like certain other books,

Lulita say, there is the form of a subgenre. In Plus, it's science fiction. In lookout cartridge,

it's an international thriller. In actress in the house, at least by its cover and opening

scene as a kind of James M. Kane brutality between a man and a woman.

The shock that people felt at seeing in a certain kind of noir an actress's face pushed into a

...