Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, into the 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.

We have an exciting and fun show today.

Today our guest is Linda Rosencrantz.

Her book is called Talk. It's published by New York Review

Books. What's exciting and fun is that this was a book that was written by tape recorder

in 1965. It was published in 1968. It was out in the Hamptons at the beach, summer. People went there, probably still do, for the summer vacation. Art people, literary people, wealthy people, people looking for husbands, for wives, for tricks, for John's.

Everyone is on the lookout for whatever it is they need.

And because this book is taped in the summer of 65, what we're hearing is the sound of what it felt like at the beginning of all the liberations.

Women's liberation, gay liberation, every kind.

People are talking for the first time out loud about masturbation.

It meets up with talk about art, talk about books.

It was a cultured time, but it was a time when the culture was learning to mix with

low culture at the same time. And it's a new sound in a way in American writing this mixture.

It's found, say, in the first chapters of Philip Roth's Portnoy's complaint,

a great sound of the educated American middle class.

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