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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

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

Now, I'm talking about a book you wouldn't expect to hear on Bookworm today, and there's a very distinct reason for it.

Not only is it a very good book, but that goes without saying, I wouldn't have anything but a book

I admire. The book is called The Recovering Intoxication and Its Aftermath, and in particular, it's interested in those writers,

John Barryman or Charles Jackson or, well, you name some.

Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, Jean Reese.

Who were themselves self-confessed addicts, alcoholics.

Some of them became sober.

Some of them failed to become sober.

But the book takes the pretense, the metaphor, that it's like a meeting, and that these

writers are among the people at the meeting. So not only does my guest, Leslie Jamison,

share about her experience, she has gone to many archives, many libraries,

read the unpublished and sketchy autobiography of Jean Reese, met many books that most of

us have not had the opportunity to read.

Now, tell me, other than the fact that they all drink and use or drink or use,

...