Bookworm

Donald Antrim The Verificationist (Knopf) Donald Antrim-s weird sensibility instinctually concocts hierarchical societies that ritually reject and expel their zanies and oddballs: in other words, him. The supremely evasive Antrim describes the new group of writers he is not so sure he is a part of.

Mark Danielewski builds a haunted house out of the pages of his first novel. It has dark passages, ghostly echoes (of the great books of the past) and a monster at its center. 

Period (Grove)Dennis Cooper is one of the originators of the new fiction. We look at the violently sexual five-book series he recently completed with Period. We focus on its interior design, its aesthetics and, in particular, the sense of integration Cooper feels at the conclusion of his ten-year project.

Bookworm is excited to celebrate the emergence of a vibrant new generation of fiction writers by talking to the new -staggering geniuses- and some of their forebears. This series, which begins June 22nd, is named in tribute to Dave Eggers- groundbreaking best-seller A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Simon & Schuster) The publication of AHWOSG caused readers to sit up and take notice of a new generation of American writers, many of whom are published in Dave Eggers- magazine McSweeney-s. Their common concerns include sincerity (and the lack thereof), difficulty (and its challenge to readers), and extravagance (a 700-page novel in this crowd is par for the course). In this new interview, Dave Eggers on the new crew.

Jon Davis Scrimmage of Appetite (University of Akron Press) Jon Davis is a recent discovery. His poems are beginning to win recognition and awards... unusual for a wildly comic poet in a poetry culture that usually rewards somber meditative works. We discuss the dangers that come with unbridled imagination.

Evan S. Connell Deus Lo Volt! Chronicle of the Crusades (Counterpoint) Evan S. Connell, who rarely grants an interview, discusses both the savagery of Holy Wars and his elegant fictionalizing of bloody history.

Kate Wheeler When Mountains Walked (Houghton Mifflin) Prize-winning short-story writer Kate Wheeler describes the ordeal of tackling her first novel. Ordeal it was, bringing her into South American jungles and shattering her Buddhist calm.

Margot Livesey The Missing World (Knopf) With an alarming, but quiet malice and wit, Livesey dissects the dark motives underlying her sinister world view.

Eliza Minot The Tiny One (Knopf) Literary sibling rivalry: Eliza, the younger sister of Susan, offers her slant on a family we've met before in her sister's novels.

Swarm (Ecco, Harper Collins) In an unprecedented impulse to clarify, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jorie Graham offers an elaborate interpretation of her stunning new book-length poem.

City of God (Random House) Doctorow unravels the signs and omens of a new order of faith in his visionary millennial novel.

Kenward Elmslie Cyberspace (Granary Books) Kenward Elmslie, our wildest poetic genius, takes no hostages when he explodes into cyberspace in this book-length poem-extravaganza.

Richard Slotkin Abe (Holt) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn starring young Abe Lincoln? What does this exploration into our 16th president's childhood reveal about American literature and heroism?

Timothy Findley Pilgrim (Harper Collins) Timothy Findley insists on Jung's dispassionate anti-humanist attitudes in Pilgrim, his confrontation with the frontiers of madness and history. Why? There is more in heaven and earth than there is dreamt of in your philosophy, Dr. Jung.

David Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Simon & Schuster)We approach this anti-memoir about the death of both of the author's parents with an eye on this question of distinction: when does heartbroken facetiousness become heartlessness?

James Quandt, editor of Robert Bresson (University of Indiana Press) The recent death of Robert Bresson, the legendary French film director, provides the occasion for this tribute to Bresson's purity of style and the power of his literary adaptations. James Quandt, film curator and editor of an anthology of essays on Bresson, is our guest.

In America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)With In America, Susan Sontag embarks on an exploration of America through the eyes of a great Polish actress. What is an American? What is the role of a woman in the American imagination? A conversation about the invention and re-invention of a woman's identity. This is the last in our nine-part series "Women, Writing and the Imagination."

The life of Marilyn Monroe inspires Joyce Carol Oates, vast accomplishment in Blond and provides an opening for our conversation about a feminine icon. Part 8 of the nine-part series "Women, Writing and the Imagination."

Ana Castillo Peel My Love Like and Onion (Doubleday) Castillo's new novel is about an aging and crippled flamenco dancer. We talk about the powerful sensuality that keeps the dancer vital despite age, infirmity and the demands of an exacting art. Coming from a family of curanderas, Castillo focuses, as well on her experiences with "the; healing arts." Part 7 of the nine-part series "Women;, Writing and the Imagination".;

Jamaica Kincaid on "the feminine arts," from reproduction to literary creation. Part 6 of the nine-part series "Women, Writing and the Imagination."