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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

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

One of the joys on the path of a reader is seeing a name that you see for years and years.

Who is this person? As we know today, this person who we hear of and don't know,

is likely to be a woman who's been neglected. This woman, Sylvina Ocampo, was considered to be one of the great unknowns of

South American literature. She worked with Orche Luis Borges when he was putting together his collection of fantastic literature.

Working on that anthology as well was her husband, Bioi Casares, who wrote a book that

Borges praised very highly, the invention of Morrell.

I'd read Borges and Casares as a young man,

but until recently, I had never read much to my discredit,

Sylvina Ocampo.

Now, I can say in my defense, the two of her books, a novel and a book of stories, have just been translated and published by City Lights Press.

Many people know City Lights bookstore. Do you also know that Frulingetti has a press

attached to that bookstore? Yes, there is a press, and they have published Sylvina Ocampo's

forgotten journey, which is a book of short stories, but if I am not giving away too much,

the forgotten journey is the journey out of the womb into the world.

...