Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No to the bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is a very interesting writer.

His name is Matthew McIntosh. He's written a novel called The Mystery.

Doc. It's published by Grove Press. It's in a way part of the grand history of Grove Press

to publish singular books. Grove Press, once upon a time, first published

Jeanne in America. They published our own Los Angeles's Cubby Selby, Hubert Selby Jr.'s last exit to Brooklyn.

They published Dennis Cooper.

And now they've published The Mystery. Dot Doc.

What's singular about the book is immediate, the first thing you notice, it's 1600 pages long.

And when people refer to a book as a doorstop or a brick, they're usually not

right. In this case, they are right. Like Tristram Shandy, the book has blank pages, the book has

pages filled by a single letter. the book is asking us to reconsider what a book is.

But really, it's asking the impossible question.

How can a book be like life?

Life is so various. life is so incoherent. Life has so many aspects that don't fit together,

...