Summary
Tell Me (Counterpoint); Why Did I Ever (Counterpoint)
Mary Robison returns to her student days of writing stories for John Barth's workshop, and the days of being edited by Roger Angell, for The New Yorker, and by Gordon Lish, for book publication at Knopf. These teachers and editors both shaped and thwarted her enigmatic, instinctually accurate style...
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. |
| 0:08.6 | You are a human animal. |
| 0:13.0 | You are a very special breed. |
| 0:16.8 | Or you are the only animal. |
| 0:20.3 | Who can think, who can reason, who can read. |
| 0:24.2 | From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. |
| 0:29.8 | Today, I'm thrilled to have as my guest, Mary Robeson. |
| 0:33.7 | It's because Counterpoint Press has recently published two books. |
| 0:38.8 | Now they're both in paperback. |
| 0:40.7 | One is Tell Me. |
| 0:41.7 | It's a collection of 30 stories from Mary Robeson's three previous collections |
| 0:47.3 | and the paperback edition of her recent novel, Why Did I Ever? |
| 0:51.7 | I have been wanting to meet and talk to Mary Robeson probably for the last 25 years. |
| 0:58.4 | And so for me, this is an exciting thing because the first book of short stories, days, was a really signal event in fiction. |
| 1:09.2 | It was followed by a novel called O, |
| 1:11.8 | a book of stories called An Amateur's Guide to the Night, |
| 1:15.2 | another book of stories called Believe Them, |
| 1:17.8 | a novel called Subtraction. |
| 1:21.2 | Now we have a new novel, Why Did I Ever, |
| 1:24.7 | and a collected stories called Tell Me from Counterpoint Press. |
| 1:29.2 | Now, when you started out, Mary, were the stories as new and surprising to you as they were to |
| 1:37.1 | others? |
... |
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