Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without booms?

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.

This is Bookworm, and here we are to talk about, I'd say, the most interesting and hip book I've read this summer, which is Lydia Millett's book, Fight No More.

It's said that it's a book of stories.

It's said that it's a book of connected stories.

The book flap says it best.

It's a web of stories, and stories in it connect in the most unpredictable

ways, and sometimes they don't. It's set in Los Angeles between an older generation of

Angelenos who are living in their very expensive houses with their chandeliers and a younger generation

who are driving around in expensive cars bought by their parents who have no idea of how to live,

who are living a kind of wildlife who've gotten used to almost everything, and that getting used to,

I think, is signaled in the title, which is Fight No More. Everyone has given up the battle,

and they're all living an improvised life as catch as can,

just as the connection of these stories, seems improvised as well. Now, tell me, when did you know

that this book wasn't a novel, or that it was interconnected? What kind of

writing process was this? Because this is surely the most original collection of short

...