Michael Silverblatt
The peerless host of ‘Bookworm’ on reading at 3 a.m., L.A.’s literary scene, and the joy of living in a state of constant incomprehension.
This coming January, one of L.A.’s greatest literary treasures will turn 20. Bookworm, our city’s weekly literary supplement, broadcast Thursdays at 2:30 p.m. on KCRW 89.9 FM, has informed and enlightened a generation of Angelenos about the miracles of literary fiction and poetry, and the intelligent yet still inclusive conversations such works can engender.
Always in love with reading but not, he says, “from a literary family,” host Michael Silverblatt moved from New York in the ’80s, despairing that every time he would go for a job interview at a magazine or publishing house, “I was always being beat out by Susan Sontag’s son or Irving Howe’s nephew.” He came to L.A. to pursue screenwriting instead, but soon realized it wasn’t a practical way to make a living. Like out of a movie script, however, came a chance encounter with KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour, which quickly landed him behind a studio mic, bantering with our modern era’s greatest, and greatest emerging, literary minds.
For CityBeat’s first Books Issue, it was imperative we speak with our local King of All Bookworms, whose show’s appeal is clearly in no small part due to Silverblatt’s profoundly humanistic nature, and his expansive view of art and life. “People say to me, ‘What should I be reading?’ And I’ll begin by saying, ‘Well, who says you should be reading? Maybe there are other things that you like as much that function the way reading would, that challenge your imagination and take you outside your normal world. But if you’ll tell me some books you’ve liked, I can tell you others you might like on that basis.”
–Rebecca Epstein
CityBeat: How did Bookworm come about? Michael Silverblatt: I was working very improbably as a public relations agent, and I had taken a client to a dinner. Ruth Seymour was one of the guests, and we got to talking about Russian poetry. By the end of the dinner she said, “You know, we’ve always wanted a book show on KCRW, but when we try, people are either passionate and they don’t know anything, or they know everything and they’re dull as dust. You seem to be passionate and very knowledgeable. Would you be interested?” I felt like I was like Lana Turner being discovered at Schwab’s drugstore.
What was your original vision for Bookworm?
I knew that if I were to do this kind of thing, it had to be literary. That is to say, not about the author’s life, not intrusive. And I wanted to talk to people in whose work I had something to admire, and that it would be limited to literary fiction and poetry. And I made a commitment that I would never do an interview without reading the book; I thought that one of the things that had gone wrong with the way literature is covered is, how interesting can an interview be if the interviewer hasn’t in fact read the book? The other thing that makes interviews dull is if you have a list of questions, so no matter what the author says, you move on to the next question. I feel that interviews should be as much like conversations as possible, or at least my interviews.
How would you characterize the current state of literary culture in L.A.?
When I first came here, I used to attend regularly the poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque. And I guess I was a part of a generation of Los Angeles writers that included Dennis Cooper, Amy Gerstler, Benjamin Weissman. I would say over the last three or four years, there’s been a real renaissance, and I’ve been finding so many writers whose work I like, that is centered in L.A.: Chris Kraus, Veronica Gonzales, Steve Erickson, Michael Tolkin. We have writers!
[But] the truth of the matter is that several of these books are published by small presses, and that’s the other thing: L.A. now has more small presses of its own, publishing interesting fiction and poetry, than it had when I came here. Les Figues Press, Semiotext(e), Green Integer Press … There’s a whole sense that not only is interesting work being written here, it’s also being published here, just when the mainstream presses are saying “We’re not making money on fiction.”
How many books are you reading at any given time?
I can’t read more than one at a time. I’m not trying to read all of the thousands of novels that come out; I’m trying to find 52 of them that I like and can have, I hope, an inspired and inspiring conversation about. When I find the one that will meet my hopes, that’s the book I read. Often, I re-read it. I’m very fortunate; I have a grant from the Lannan Foundation, so what I “do” is prepare this weekly show. Now, I really do prepare: I get out-of-print things from the library. I do extensive background research. Many writers have been asked at one point or another their favorite books, so I try to read a couple of those as well. I want the show to be able to handle anything that comes up.
What’s your reading routine?
I’m not a fast reader, but I am a patient one, and I can sit still for long periods of time. So, I try and read the first 100 pages of a book in one sitting, because I find I have to – to get into the book. I do not read at bedtime; I tend, in fact, to wake up at three in the morning, when it’s really, really quiet, and read for four or five hours, and then go back to bed.
To let it all settle …
And dream about it. I have this real fear about the so-called “decline of reading.” Fewer people that I meet have the patience to read things they don’t immediately understand. In years past, when the reading skill was divided from the reading process, and they were both seen as important, grade-schoolers read Emerson and Shakespeare; easy stuff would be Mark Twain, James Fenimore Cooper. Now, did a fourth grader understand Emerson? Of course not. What the reader understood was that growing up is a process of coming to understand, and discovering that in grade six you’re understanding those scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream that you didn’t understand in grade three. My dream on the show, really, was to provide an example of the literary conversation I heard when I was in college [where I learned] how to live in a state of constant incomprehension and constant wonder and surprise as I began to discover, “Oh, I can read Kant? Really?!” [laughs]
You are known for being able to impress your guests with your critical acumen. Have you ever been stumped or totally taken off balance by one of them in return?
Somehow or other the idea that argument is impolite has come up. It’s sort of like, why fight with people whose opinion you already know? But America, to be lofty, was once a place where everything was discussed – politically correct or not – and we talked with enormous belief that the conversation could change the listener. But if we’re not used to starting with incomprehension, then passion as informed talk doesn’t take hold. People aren’t swayed.
Norman Mailer had done me the great favor of calling me the best reader in America. It was amazing. Also, his publisher had told me that Norman had given explicit instructions not to schedule two things on the same day that he would talk to me, because he really enjoyed talking to me, but it wore him out. This was because I’m not afraid anymore, and we would argue.
Do you think most people today are intimidated by literary criticism?
My parents weren’t literary at all, but they did subscribe to magazines, and they got The New York Times, and they were led to believe, correctly enough, that if they were interested, they would be able to understand most of the things the critics were discussing. [On Bookworm] I want to show that you can talk on a high level without losing the audience.
I got to college when I was 16, and I was something of an enfant terrible. A graduate student mentioned that he’d never read King Lear, and I’d say, “You haven’t read King—?!” Now I really know, you’ve read what you’ve read. What you haven’t read, you still have time to read. Everything, if it comes, comes at its right time. You know, there’s something to be said for having a sweet nature, patience, tolerance … all those things that were really not part of the tyranny of the intellectual generation that came before mine. I was close friends with
Susan Sontag, but she would meet a stranger, and would immediately erupt, “That’s a stupid question! I can’t believe that you could ask me such a Philistine question!” And I would want to say, “Susan, we need to woo, charm, cajole, amaze the next generation. This kind of putting down of everything that doesn’t conform to the stature of intellect you’re accustomed to, it’s not going to ride! We’re going to lose the possibility, the privilege of addressing others, and that’s the dearest thing we have.’”
Published: 11/15/2007
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