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?

Hello and welcome to Bookworm from KCRW, Santa Monica.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Steve Martin.

Steve Martin has written a novel called Shop Girl,

a collection of pieces in the Robert Benchley mode, pure drivel.

Early on, there was cruel shoes, plays, Wasp and Other Plays, Picasso and the La Pina Gilles,

at the La Pina Gilles.

And I thought it would be interesting because the novel shows that this is someone who is learning to be a writer.

I thought it would be fascinating to talk about that process of learning to write. What struck me immediately about the book and endeared me to it is the loneliness, otherworldliness, and oddness of the heroin.

And I guess I'm attracted to loneliness in some deep and complicated way.

Well, you do work in a little cell here.

Yes, I do.

But I weirdly felt that the level of compassion for her indicated some familiarity with distance

or loneliness from the world of your own.

Is that true?

It's hard to answer for myself, because certainly, a, I have had periods of my life that have been lonely when I was traveling, doing my stand-up act, a different town every night.

And you're actually too famous to have friends because I know that sounds arrogant, but it's not too famous to have friends.

It's too, you can't go out without being besieged in a kind of overly familiar way.

...