Peter Orner: Am I Alone Here?

Bookworm

KCRW

Arts

4.5 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 1 December 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When novelist Peter Orner's father died, he found himself unable to write. At the same time, his marriage fell apart. He consoled himself by reading and started to write responses to the literature that gave him comfort.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A jail stint can really disrupt someone's life.
0:04.0	You can lose a job, a relationship, or thousands of dollars on fees, fines and bail.
0:09.0	Have I ever gone to jail?
0:10.0	Yeah, I just got out, actually.
0:11.0	If he doesn't show up the court, we've got to pay the $50,000.
0:14.0	No ring exchange, no kiss the bride.
0:17.0	There's no glamour in a jailhouse wedding.
0:20.0	Off the block.
0:24.6	All six episodes tracing the path from city block to jail block and back are now available on KCRW's iTunes page.
0:31.3	Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.
0:34.8	Boots.
0:40.3	Where we think we did? part by Lannin Foundation. Boots. Where would we be without booz?
0:44.3	Where would we be without Gutenberg?
0:47.3	It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books? From KCRW and krw.com I'm Michael silverblatt and this is bookworm. Today my guest is Peter
1:05.1	Orner. He's written an extraordinary book, an unforgettable, an important book.
1:12.0	It's called Am I Alone Here?
1:14.5	And it's a book, at first, if you look at it, you might be bewildered by what it is.
1:22.2	It looks like a book of essays about books he likes.
1:28.6	But it's not that.
1:30.9	It's a book about reading and what it does to the spirit, to the soul, especially at times
1:42.3	when we don't know how to answer the questions that our lives are presenting us with.
1:48.0	So we look to books to offer ideas about how other people,
	...

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