Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt

by Michael Silverblatt

A Landmark Collection of Michael Silverblatt's Interviews from KCRW's Bookworm. Michael Silverblatt, host of KCRW's Bookworm, the nation's premier literary radio program, has been bringing writers and readers together in close company for more than three decades. Audiences around the world tune in each week to discover new ways of thinking about books through Silverblatt's compassionate and enthusiastic conversations with contemporary writers, compelled by the surprising range of ideas and feelings that only his legendary close readings can evoke. Conversations with Michael Silverblatt gathers interviews with some of the most influential luminaries of our John Ashbery, John Berger, Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Carlos Fuentes, William H. Gass, Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, W.G. Sebald, Stephen Sondheim, Susan Sontag, and David Foster Wallace (who notably said to Silverblatt in their first of several conversations, "I feel like I wanna ask you to adopt me."). Gathered together for the first time in print, these conversations span years, revealing not only the quality and character of the writers, but also the special relationship that Silverblatt developed with them during their lifetimes. This collection reveals why so many consider Silverblatt to be our greatest reader, as he allows us to see these writers at their most animated and understood. "Michael Silverblatt is a better reader than any writer deserves. He brings such intensity, such respect, to any book, not for its level of achievement in every case, or the richness and generosity of imagination reflected in it, though he is greatly moved by these things, but simply for the fact of it as a book, an utterance in the language above language that speaks of the fact of humanity, and the miracle of our mutual intelligibility at the highest levels of subtlety and beauty, wit and candor. He teaches his listeners something writers often forget, that books enter human lives and change them, if not for the better in any usual sense then for the broader, for the opportunity any book presents to be encountered, welcomed or rejected, as an articulated vision, something that can be pondered at length, satisfyingly. A book recruits the sensibility of the reader. It is much more than casual encounter with another mind that our own minds are made for. Michael is one of those luxuries civilization from time to time affords itself, a voice who can say that its strange works are wonderful."--Marilynne Robinson "Each interview ranged far from the precipitating occasion as Silverblatt brought his considerable curiosity to questions of style, tone, language, structure, aspirations, and inspiration. Widely read, knowledgeable, and thoughtful, he elicited candid, detailed responses from his guests....A warm celebration of creativity and the writing life."--Kirkus Reviews Literary Nonfiction. Poetics.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

432 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2023

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Drawn from NPR's legendary "Bookworm" radio program, this first-rate selection of interviews reads as well as the show listens. Susan Sontag famously called host Michael Silverblatt "the best reader in America" and that's no hyperbole. His perception, generosity, preparation, and ability to articulate complex observations about literature shine throughout.

You can feel the connection between Silverblatt and his guests -- who include John Ashbery, John Berger, Octavia Butler, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, WG Sebald, and DFW. Every conversation was illuminating.

As much as I love The Paris Review’s "Writers at Work" interview series, this feels even more essential. It's a real gift during a difficult time for literature. I hope more volumes will be coming.

[Bill Hsu]

Of the writers covered here, DFW is the only one whose work I've spent significant time with. I've read the odd book or two from a handful of the others. I was mostly cherrypicking through this, skipping conversations that I didn't have enough context for. But most of what I read (probably half?) was very thoughtful and engaging.

In the Grace Paley conversation, she said:

I believe that most novels are far too long.

Obviously, I need to read some Paley ASAP.

[Max Urai · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is just lovely. Great summer reading. I didn't know who Silverblatt was before I got into this, but I fell for him hard. He's a bit of a fuddy-duddy about science-fiction, and the Octavia Butler interviews is markedly less intimate and deep than the rest, but I'll give him this: for somebody with very High Culture-taste, he is obviously trying.

[Julien L · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been listening to Bookworm regularly since I got into David Foster Wallace and heard those interviews: two geniuses talking with each other, expanding each other's horizons, and the listener's horizons.

Those interviews and more are collected in this first print collection of Silverblatt's interviews with various authors, this first version themed around interviews with the dead. This book is haunted by the spirits of the brilliant. The interviews with Joan Didion, Susan Sontag, William Gass, Carlos Fuentes, Toni Morrison, and DFW are bright spots, ones where one can read those interviews and gain new perspectives on how stories and life works.

But, to read these books is really to read Michael Silverblatt. Chuck Klosterman once said something about how reading an interview of a celebrity is really like reading a personal essay of the author, because you can tell a lot about them by the questions they ask and their response to the answers. Silverblatt is nothing short of a genius reader in his own right; you come to these interviews for his unorthodox perspectives on great literature, to see how someone really took Kenneth Burke's idea of literature as equipment for living and turned it into a kind of code, one who in his own admittance claimed to learn most about life from the study of literature. You can tell from how in-depth and complex his questions and his reads of texts are, just how unique his perspective is, a real "literary life" if there ever was one.

One also gets a sense from him of how to develop a taste for things. The man cares about fiction that is unorthodox but is also deeply concerned with what it means to be a human being. He weaves, across all these interviews, a diverse array of writers who all share something in common: deeply human fiction that also plays with form and structure. His work also gets you thinking about your own tastes as a reader, and why you return to the things that you do.

If future collections do come out, I'd love to get print copies of the Danielewski and Saunders interviews.

[justin, the geezer]

Nabokov, when writing about Melville, said that “One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.” I feel very similarly toward Michael Silverblatt. Such a kind, generous, erudite soul.

[Chris Via]

Video on Leaf by Leaf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_jH-...

Written review on LARB
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/t...

"Waiting for new episodes of Bookworm must be, I imagine, similar to what the eager readers of serialized Dickens and Tolstoy novels felt in the 19th century. Yet I resist listening to a new show right away. These offerings are not to be seized upon like a crazed pie-eating contestant, though they do invite the temptation. No, to me each episode is a special gift that requires dedicated and undistracted time. Each talk contains the promise of a conversation that is disobedient to clichés, devoid of banter and filler, where thoughts about art are exchanged with vibrancy and depth. Even when the guest is a writer I’ve never heard of, I’m convinced by the end of the show that theirs is the most important new book in the world, and to go another day without reading it is to embrace willful ignorance. Most importantly, perhaps, Bookworm reminds me that reading centers my life, and Michael’s words remind me that great books (and great conversations) are never finished when one turns the final page."

Anyone with any interest in literature, from any perspective, will want this in their personal library.