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 Sulferblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Thomas Nugueyne, the author most recently of nothing but Blue Skies,

recently published by the Seymournes people at Houten Mifflin.

And I think it's probably Houghton Mifflin.

I'm always doing this.

He's the author, of course, as well of the sporting club,

Bushwack Piano, 92 in the Shade, Panama, Nobody's Angel, something to be desired and

keep the change to name only the novels. I thought I'd begin and talk mostly about style.

You know, when I first saw your name, it was before I think I'd read any novel, it was a tiny

piece in a fess shrift for Juna Barnes.

Do you remember that?

I do, but I haven't thought of it in years.

And I remember thinking, you know, what with that and a longish review of John Hawks's, the Blood Orange's, that your writing came from a kind of school of writing that is not the one that you're in fact conventionally grouped with, that it was part of an American interest in voice

and strangely beautiful sentences.

And no one talks to you about this, and I thought I'd begin by doing that.

Well, it's a great relief to even be asked about this.

I mean, one of the several ways that I have felt sort of misunderstood

was that my interest, my interest purely in writing has been sort of lost in this kind of

...