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.

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

Today I'm honored to have as my guest, Walter Obish.

He's a writer I've wanted to be speaking to really since this show began,

and this is the first time he is my guest.

The occasion is a self-portrait called Double Vision.

It's published by Knopf.

His most recent novel was Eclipse Fever.

There's a fantastical collage book called 99 the new meaning that was published by Burning

Deck.

Before that, his most famous book, How German is it?

A previous novel, Alphabetical Africa, and two books of short stories in the future

perfect and minds meet, and then a book

that I confess I've never seen called Dulcite, a book of poems.

Now, double vision fascinates me, as does this writer, because his books are full of secrets and withholdings,

and yet they are not ostensibly the kinds of clue-strewn books that we associate, say, with Nabokov.

Rather, they represent this withholding

sensibility as a consequence of certain things both in art and in culture.

...