Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special dream.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm. This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Marina

Warner, who has written a new book about the dark side of fairy tales. I wish it were the case

that I could say, of course you know, her first book

was from the Beast to the Blonde on fairy tales and their tellers, and that this continues

a examination, analysis, recounting, enumeration, chamber of wonders Torture Chamber, this time of fairy tales, Dark Side.

But since I can't assume that, I would tell you that if you are the kind of person like me

who remains haunted by these things, these are the books to go to.

They're quite amazing, both in their detail and in their analysis.

Now, you begin, the first strains we hear in the book are those of the Earl King who is going to steal a child.

This is the first appearance of the Boogieyman in Nogo the boogeyman.

And I wanted to ask you about those traditions that give rise to the poem of the sensitized macabre.

I was very struck when I began answering some questions. of the sensitized macabre?

I was very struck when I began answering some questions that people had asked me after I'd written about women in fairy tales

and they kept saying, well, what about the men?

You know, what about the villains and the beasts and the ogres?

And I had thought, because of the late 20th century imagination that we inhabit,

that they would be predominantly bluebeards, that they would be a kind of sexualized rapist,

...