Thanks for listening to Bookworm. I'm host Michael Silverblatt. If there's another podcast that comes from us at KCRW that I really like is the treatment with Elvis Mitchell. I've said it for a long time. Elvis's style of interviewing is like jazz. He orchestrates so many interesting moments and gets people to say such

surprising and interesting things about film, about popular culture. He really knows his subject

and he's one of the very best in the country. Listen to the treatment.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without booms?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tender.

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

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today I am happy to have Richard Ford as my guest. His new book is a book of four

story version on novellas called Let Me Be Frank with You. It's a fourth of the books that feature Frank

Baskin. And he has in this book invented a default self.

And so when he says, let me be frank with you, he's performing Frank.

Let me be frank with you.

And it's a very interesting performance, and it's funnier than any of the other

recent Bascom because we know what he's thinking while he performs his default self. Yeah,

that's pretty good. Nobody's ever said that before, and it's true. So what were you doing?

You were having a good time with him.

Oh, Christ, yes.

That's such a good time, partly because I wasn't hauling around 200,000 words.

That makes everything a lot happier.

And then to write four stories that are 16,000 words apiece, that's pretty nice.

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