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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

My name is Michael Sulfurblatt. Today, my guest is Paul Theroux,

the author most recently of My Other Life. It's published by Houghton Mifflin. He's published more than 30 books. The most recent others have been Milroy the magician, Chicago Loop, My Secret History,

Ozone. He is, of course, well known for St. Jack, the family arsenal, the counsel's file,

and his wonderful travel books, The Great Railway Bazaar, the Old Patagonian Express,

so many. This book seems to me to be a very methodical

exploration of separation from the past, from oneself, from one's wife, from one's characters,

and examining separation in every register,

the naturalistic, the supernatural, the domestic.

And I wondered what brings you,

because it almost seems like a meditation

on the relationship between fiction

and the self?

Well, that's actually fairly, that's an astute analysis of it, being about separation

and certainly, when you say meditation, though, I know that readers are thinking not a lot

of laughs in there.

And I like to think of it as a book that has a lot of wit and in which each piece has a beginning, a middle, and an end, though maybe not in that order.

But I think that the nature of separation is the nature of being a writer.

...