Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without Gutenberg?

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.

Today, my guest is Joshua Kohn.

His book is a miscellany of pieces, essays, fragments.

It's called attention.

And the cover asks us to pay attention, attention, attention in the colors of caution signs.

When I talk to writers, whether it's Joyce Carolotes or Cynthia Ozek, Colm Toibin, Jonathan Latham,

and you ask, who's the young writer of his generation? Who's Josh Cohen? Oh, he's brilliant,

they say. He's brilliant. It's well known. He is. And he is

perhaps the writer of his generation who is most devoted himself to asking what has the effect

been of the internet and technology on writing, on the human mind, on the inhuman mind,

beginning with a small essay on distraction to a long essay on attention of what has been caused.

Let's start with distraction.

That's a good place to start.

Yes.

We can barely talk to one another without looking at our cell phone.

If we're multitasking without the person at the other end of the phone line

...