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 Silverblatt, and today my guest is Paul West.

He's traveling around the country talking about his book,

A Stroke of Genius, Illness, and Self-Discovery,

but listeners will know that what we talk mostly about on this show is writing, in particular fiction and poetry.

And Paul West, as listeners will also know, is a polymath.

He's the author of Love's Mansion, which was his most recent novel, The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper,

Lord Byron's Doctor, his epic The Place in Flowers Where Pollen Rests,

probably his most popular book, The Ratman of Paris.

He's published several books of literary criticism, an extraordinary memoir, words for a deaf

daughter about raising a child with a handicap and poetry as well. And so when we talk to Paul

West, it's not a circumscribed subject that we'll be handling. I thought I'd begin by pointing out that this book,

a stroke of genius, talks about problems of illness to a man whose creativity seems to be

unimpeded. I don't know about unimpeded. I think it was galvanized. I was thinking back about this. How active have you been since you had a minor stroke? And if you look at the record, very active indeed. Fiction, nonfiction and all kinds of other things too. So in a sense, the stroke of genius is a touch from nature saying

get on with the job, don't slack, write your best. Don't write about things you think you should

write about, write about things that really bother you. And I suspect that's what I've been doing,

which means, of course, that a lot of things bother me. And I've that's what I've been doing, which means, of course, that a lot of

things bother me, and I've been trying to address them. Well, as someone who's privileged, in fact,

...