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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to turn to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt. This is Bookworm, and today my guest is one of my favorites.

Nicole Krause, whose new book, Forest Dark, has just appeared.

There's a note that explains that Forest Dark is the way Longfellow translated the opening of Dante's Inferno.

Most of the translations say dark wood.

I came to myself in the middle of my life awakened in a dark wood.

And I wondered, what made you choose the Longfellow translation?

Well, I think that when you keep the order of the Italian, the Salvascura, there's something

more evocative there. Dark wood is fine, but forest dark somehow opens to what was

important to me in writing this book, which is the forest as a place of mystery, of the unknown, outside the realm of human

order, outside of rational knowledge, a place to get lost in.

One of the two major protagonists of this book, Jules Epstein, he realizes that he hadn't realized that a forest is for rest.

And he needs rest.

He's lived a preposterously busy life, and he has decided to give away what he owns.

Art pieces, he has his own personal, Matisse money, he'll give it to organizations.

He doesn't want to be what he was anymore. Not the two-fisted man capable of speaking at a

...