Mark Z. Danielewski: The Fifty Year Sword
Bookworm
KCRW
4.5 • 606 Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2012
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A ghost story about the weave of storytelling itself, written in sparse fragments of dialogue punctuated by faint embroidery, grim illustrations, and blank spaces.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. |
| 0:03.5 | Boots! |
| 0:09.0 | Where would we be without boos? |
| 0:12.0 | Where would we be without good-nosed in bird? |
| 0:16.0 | It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books? |
| 0:23.3 | From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. |
| 0:29.6 | Today, I'm very happy to have as my guest, Mark Z. Danielowski, the author most recently of the 50-year sword. |
| 0:40.0 | He has |
| 0:41.3 | written, well, House |
| 0:43.4 | of Leaves was his first novel, |
| 0:45.5 | only revolutions, his |
| 0:47.4 | second. But I'm |
| 0:49.1 | wondering, is |
| 0:51.7 | author the right word? |
| 0:57.7 | It wondering, is author the right word? It is a beautiful question and probably because it is always my question. |
| 1:04.6 | How much do we author our books? |
| 1:07.7 | How much do we author ourselves? |
| 1:09.8 | At what point can we claim this is our own |
| 1:12.6 | and at what point can we, you know, admit that we are the paper |
| 1:17.6 | and text of a far greater author that surrounds us? |
| 1:24.6 | And what have you decided? What do you think? |
| 1:28.3 | I think that's the reason I write. |
... |
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