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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblah, and this is Bookworm.

Today, my honored guest is Steve Erickson.

His new book is called Shadow Bon. It's a novel. And I thought it was so absorbing

and so intense that I've read it three times. I was in equal parts in a state of adoration

and also shattered by the book. Tell me, do you believe a novel

should be a intense experience? Well, first of all, Michael, thank you for having me on the show.

I really appreciate it. I write my

novels hoping that they read as if they were written in one stretch and as if they were going

to be read in one stretch, which I realize they're not going to be. But nonetheless, I think that makes for a certain intensity.

My hope, especially with a novel like this one is to sweep the reader along over whatever speed bumps of comprehension the novel may present and to have the reader

caught up in the world that the novel is trying to create.

On the back cover of the book Jonathan Letham uses the words lucid dreaming.

And I do feel like that, that the book has me wide awake while dreaming.

It's an extraordinary experience.

That dream really begins with an image, which is the premise on which the book rests.

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