Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I'm particularly excited today.

Probably in the 14 years I've done this show, I've wanted to talk to Robert Cooper,

who is my guest today.

Along with John Barth, William Gas, John Hawks,

Robert Cooper was one of the central writers to my love of literature at a time where it seemed

as if America was indeed beginning to have a literature instead of a sociological rendering

of its familial habits. And, you know, this was a brief and beautiful period, a flowering.

Nabokov lived in America. Borges was being translated in America.

Writers were under the influence of the later works of Samuel Beckett. It was, to my mind,

a true flowering of American letters. And at last, Robert Koover is here.

McSweeney's has designed perhaps his best-looking book.

It's a book of stories called A Child Again, and it is, well, you know, it has not only a beautiful cover, but one of its stories is written on a pack of shuffleable cards that can be rendered in almost any order to tell different versions of a story.

And everything that can be done for the book has been done for McSweeney's in a rather beautiful way.

His previous works include the Faulkner Award, winning the Origin of the Brunus,

a really seminal book of short stories, pricksongs and Descants,

a collection of stories that vilify the movies a night at the movies.

...