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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm, and this is a joyous day for me.

Every once in a while, I get the opportunity to talk to someone who is thrilling and heroic to me beyond words.

Van Dyke Parks, my guest, has been one of my adored creators for, all, since I was in high school,

when I first heard his solo album, Song Cycle,

and now, so many years later, I'm not going to say how many, he has an album called Songs Cycled,

and that progression, or lack thereof, is very much a part of what makes Van Dyke Parks, Van Dyke Parks.

His talk and his lyrics fall, for me, somewhere between Finnegan's Wake and the Gettysburg Address.

That is to say, he is both an avant-gardist and a social

activist. He speaks to our history, and he knows that our history is also a history of modernity.

He excels at being modern. He preserves the old. He's capable

of doing these things simultaneously. It's the nature of art, of poetry, to do many things

at the same time. He does it in music, and I'm thrilled to be talking to him.

And I'm grateful to be on your show because I love it. I like to get beyond the fly leaf,

and you do that hard work for me. Thank you.

Well, to begin with, I notice I've been reading your diaries, and you mentioned that on your

...