Thanks for listening to Bookworm. I'll bet you'll want to listen to DNA, KCRW's podcast with Francis Anderton.

She's really one of the best informed people about architecture and the face the world is putting on today.

Find DNA on KCRW's iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

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 must be one of the happiest days of the year for me

because my guest is Marilyn Robinson. I love talking to her. I love her books. Her books

induce in me a special kind of, well, simultaneous seriousness and euphoria.

And that's because they raise the subject of God.

And I find this subject very important and very moving.

So the first question I would like to ask you about your new book, Lila, which is published by Farah Strauss and

Giroux, is, do you regard God as a collaborator?

I would feel very, I hope so, you know what I mean?

I do hope that the things that I write would be acceptable in his sight, as the Bible says.

I don't, in that way, certainly.

I mean, parameters are set for me because I think that people are sacred to undervalue them is seriously wrong.

And that, you know, my aesthetic is very much formed by the fact that these things are present in my mind.

That's true.

...