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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello, and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Richard Slotkin.

He's published a fictional biography of the childhood of Abraham Lincoln called Abe.

It's a novel from Henry Holt and Company,

and he comes to this book from a long history

of distinguished scholarship in what you call American Studies.

Most famously, the first book he wrote

was a book called Regeneration Through

Violence. It was the beginning of a trilogy that included the fatal environment and gunfighter

nation, most recently the myth of the frontier in 20th century America. Richard Slokkin with Abe,

published by Henry Holt. Now, I wanted to begin

by asking what exactly a fictional biography might be, particularly because there have been quite a few

recently. That is to say, the most recent Joyce Carol Oates book is a fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe called Blonde.

Susan Sontag has written a fictionalized life of the Polish actress, Helena Majeska.

And when Morris wrote his biography of Ronald Reagan,

it became controversial and even despised, repudiated to some extent, because it contained

fictional sections of projection by the author. So what is this for?

...