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.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm. Today my guest is Russell Banks.

His most recent book is Rule of the Bone published by Harper Collins publisher.

It's his 12th book of fiction and his career spans many kinds of books which have certain basic elements in common but are very different

from one another. The last novel was the sweet hair after before that came affliction. There was a

book of stories called Success Stories all the way back to a book, I think, from the fiction

collective called Searching for Survivors.

Nowadays, he's with Harper Collins, and this book is narrated by a 14-year-old boy named Chapman,

who in the course of the book is tattooed and takes his name from his tattoo a set of crossed bones.

Tell me, where did the voice for Chapman come from?

I have a pretty good memory for my own adolescence,

and it wasn't too much work for me to put myself into the emotional state of a 14-year-old, the kind of turbulent but nonetheless foggy, defended, scared but determined state of mind that a kid, that age that I had at 14 or 15.

And so far as the addiction itself and the terminology itself, that's in the air around us.

I mean, all you've got to do is start listening and paying attention.

I have four daughters who are now in their 20s but weren't very long ago in their teens,

and I tried real hard to listen to them

when they would speak to me and and then I did some work in a prison. I did a little volunteer

workshop in upstate New York and working with mostly 18 to 22 year old kids who were drug

dealers for the most part, nonviolent

...