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 Mike Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm on KCRW today.

I wanted to begin by thanking the listeners for the extraordinary response to Mitchell Siskind.

We are hoping to have books available for all of you who are interested through Mitchell. And I'm delighted to hear

that the listening audience is as enthusiastic as I am about Mitchell's comic ear voice,

both ear and voice. But today we're happy to have with us another American comic writer, William Cotswinkle,

whose most recent book, The Midnight Examiner,

has just come out from Seymour Lawrence's imprint at Houten Mithlin.

Midnight Examiner is only the most recent of the airborne novels. Mr. Cotswinkle has written the first,

which caused people around America to have entire conversations consisting solely of the word dorky.

Dorky, Dorky, Dorky was the fan man, the first to reach, I guess, popular

notice.

There have been approximately 15 books since, including Fadamorgana, Dr. Rat, the famous novelization

of E.T. and E.T. the book of the Green Planet. And we're happy to have

William Cotswinkle here with us. The new book is about what? The new book is about my so-called

life many years ago working on tabloid newspapers such as the Midnight Examiner.

With an experience like that behind you, one day you're bound to write about it.

And this is about the people at the Midnight Examiner who are busily trying to extricate Miss Mitzi Mouse,

a model from the clutches of Tony Belloni, the mafia chieftain.

...