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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Today, as my guest, an old friend, Richard Powers, author most recently of Orfeo.

It's published by his new publisher, Norton, and I haven't seen him in over 10 years.

That's right.

Welcome back, Richard.

Oh, thank you for having me, Michael.

It's a pleasure.

This book, Orfeo, to say what it's about is not the same as saying what it is.

It is about music in the 20th century. It is about gene spicing or the creation of codes within a germ cell. What it is is a character study of a man

in his 70s who's lived through as a conductor, as a composer, as a person deeply involved with

music, as a teacher, he with music as a teacher.

He's lived through the process that takes music from melody to noise.

Yeah, in one way this is a very traditional kunzler-Roman, an artist's biography, the long and winding road of an individual person who has to make aesthetic choices early on and chooses to follow them at great cost, great personal cost.

And we watch his development, we watch his mistakes and near triumphs.

And I think it is the first time that I have created a book that is so completely dominated by a single protagonist.

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