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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today I'm happy to have, as my guest, Joy Williams, the author

of honored guest.

It's a book of short stories.

Joy Williams is one of my very favorite living writers, or living up as far as we know.

And the book is her third book of short stories, along with taking care and escapes.

She's the author as well of the novel's State of Grace, The Changeling, Breaking and Entering, and the Quick and the Dead.

There is also a recent volume of essays called Ill Nature.

I thought because we've been with joy on the show several times, and it's very hard to speak without a specific

example in front of us.

I thought it would be a very interesting show if we heard one of the short stories in

honored guests.

This one is called Maribu by my guest, Joy Williams.

The funeral of Anne's son, Harry, had not gone smoothly. Other burials were taking place at the same

hour, including that of a popular singer several hundred yards away, whose mourner fans carried on

loudly under a lurid-striped

tent. Still more fans pressed against the cemetery's wrought iron gates, screaming and eating potato

...