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You are a human animal. You are a very special breed, for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Timothy Findlay.

He is the author most recently of Pilgrim, which is published by Harper Collins,

but I've been reading him for years.

His first novel was The last of the crazy people.

It was followed by the butterfly plague.

The Wars was the book that brought him to major attention in his country of birth, Canada,

and in America as well.

It was very well regarded and followed by famous last words,

not wanted on the voyage, Head Hunter, the Pianneman's Daughter, and now, as I say, Pilgrim.

He's the author as well of memoirs, novellas, books on writing that have been published primarily in Canada, not here,

and it's in part to make his work more familiar because I love it,

that this conversation was arranged.

Now, from the very beginning in The Last of the Crazy People,

the books have had as a dominant setting,

madhouses, insane asylums, and the definition of madness.

Why is that?

I grew up with it, and when I was a child, my mother's sister was schizophrenic, her older sister, and she had given birth to four children,

so I had four cousins who were a little older than me, who were her children, and she was around a lot.

...