Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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 be without books?

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

Today, I'm talking to Luis Alberto Urea.

It's the second show.

A remarkable thing, it seems to me, is under discussion here.

The Hummingbird's Daughter has already been discovered by book groups, by readers, Latinas,

people interested in the new age and in the life of Coranderas, I want to escort it

over the bridge into literary consideration, because I think these are books.

When you read them through across the approximately 900 pages of the two volumes, these

are books that aspire to be on the shelf next to novels by Thomas Mann, particularly Dr.

Faustus, near Malcolm Lowry's book under the volcano, there is a level of aspiration here.

Yes, it is wonderful that literature be discovered first by a popular audience, but the things

that make it permanent to live in a culture beyond our own time is the discovery by the literary

audience.

Were you thinking of that audience?

Were you working toward permanence in writing these books?

Shall I confess?

...