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.

I'm very happy to have as my guest today, Martin Amos, who, in his new novel Lionel Aspo has written a novel that moves so extraordinarily

fast that you don't have time to gasp at its outrageousness, it's steamrolling so fast in its

plot. How do you make a novel move quickly?

Well, that's been the, I think that's been the defining challenge of this last generation

of fiction. There's been the suspicion on the part of everyone and writers are no exception, that the speed of history

has accelerated in recent years. And what that means for the novel is that it has had to become

more streamlined, more aerodynamic. This book came very fast, and I wrote it in a year, and then thought it would only take a

month or two to polish, and then I had to revise it for a year, because what happens,

if it comes fast, then you tend to be perfunctory, and you think, well, I'll deal with that

later.

So you enjoy the speed, I'll deal with that later. So, um, you enjoy the speed, uh, and you're

enjoying the, the plot and, and it's, uh, it's sharp arrow. But then it's all got to come up

to a certain standard. And one thing that does slow it down is, is styles. So. And I'm not prepared to compromise on that.

Well, what felt so wonderful, actually, is that the style seems to...

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