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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tiberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

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

Today I'm thrilled to have, as my guest, Rachel Kosk, whose new book is called Second Place,

a novel that recasts essentially a book that the patron of the arts, Mabel Dodge-Guwen, wrote about a visit from D.H. Lawrence in Taos.

Mabel Dodge-Luhin wanted to see her vicinity in Taos, as Lawrence would present it through his eyes.

She wanted to see the place she lived through his eyes. And now, in Rachel Cusk's new novel,

Second Place, this is not the desert, this is a marsh. And she has invited an artist whose initial L reminds us of Lawrence, and he is expected in her hopes to paint

the marsh so she can see it through his eyes. Now, Rachel, this is a very unusual way of proceeding. Do you think it is

possible to see something through another's eyes? I think what drew me or attracted me in

Mabel's voice from 1932, which is when her book was written, that it seemed to

say something or represent something essential about femininity and the female voice that

I didn't feel I had actually sort of met or encountered that thing

before, which was an essential powerlessness or passivity or a condemnation to be the viewer

or the consumer or the recipient of art and of male cultural privilege, as it were.

And, you know, I know a lot about D.H. Lawrence, I actually didn't know that much about this

part of his life. And I've always viewed him a little bit as a kind of honorary woman

because he suffered so much and his

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