Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenton to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

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

Today I'm talking to Joyce Carol Oates.

She's one of the people that I've been talking to since I was 18 years old,

and it's a pleasure to see her again.

I can't pretend to impartiality.

I read The Accursed in a single weekend.

It's a magnificent, funny, terrifying, scary, intelligent, social commentary, Gothic, and it's extraordinary.

I want to begin by asking if you remember what the first scary book you ever read was.

Well, that's a good question. Probably it was Alice in Wonderland and Alice in the looking glass,

which I've probably talked about with you in the past.

That was my first real book.

And, of course, it's vivid and nightmarish.

It does have humor in it, but some of the humor shades into the dark.

And most of the episodes in both Alice books are nightmares.

Each ends with a nightmare scene.

But Alice wakes up.

...