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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Zintuberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir,

but where would we need without books?

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

Today I'm very happy to have Richard Bausch as my guest.

He's a novelist and a short storywriter. And his newest book is a book of short

stories called Living in the Weather of the World. Now, in one of these stories, a character

holding an umbrella, nevertheless, arrives at his destination, drenched, and we know, therefore, what all of the stories tell us,

that there's no adequate protection from the weather of the world.

Do you feel this lack of protection?

Well, there's that business about the Doom Brothers Club is actually a real thing that Thomas

Mallon and Alan Shapiro and I and my brother Bobby joined and sort of set up just unofficial, but we'd talk about it.

We were members of the Doom Brothers Club, because that's always, you know, the first thing

we think about is Doom.

Doom has become our climate, don't you think? And that is, with a title like living in the weather of the world,

it's like adequating oneself to the terror of our constant terror of our new surroundings. Do you think?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think what's going on right now is, in fact, a pitch battle against evil.

I mean, I think we are really in a battle against evil, and we're going to have to be, you know, stand to the tackle as best we can, you know.

...