You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

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

Hi, I'm Mike Silverblatt,

and this is Bookworm.

We're here this week with Marion Wiggins,

whose novel John Dollar has recently been issued in paperback.

It's my intention here, really, to speak to her about her writing,

so I thought I would get the inevitable political and news items out of the way quickly. What brings you here? Well, the paperback publication of John

Dollar. I'm a year and several months late, but I'm going exactly everywhere that I was intended to go for the hardcover publication of John Dollar, from which I was detained.

And I must say, I love the open.

I just heard that snatch of song for the first time in my life, and we're also the only human, we are the only

animals who blush. So watch out, Michael. No, it's an odd thing because it made me think when

I heard it. It was a childhood song of Charles Olson. You heard, I missed it, and we seem to be

of the same age. So now I escaped that experience.

It was a little yellow record, and it made me think of Charles Olsons.

It is a human universe, which seemed to me to be very moving.

But then again, in the light of John Dollar, a savage novel, it seems to be a good line too. You are a human animal. What brought you to

the materials of John Dollar? I think that there's a great fascination for any novelist or storyteller

in the Desert Island idea, as our planet is more and more becoming an island in the universe,

I feel that this old mythic idea of writing the Desert Island book

...