Friends of Michael

September 20, 2023·56 min·4 clips

Susan Sontag tells Michael Silverblatt she tries not to think about whether serious literature still has an audience — because it's too demoralizing.

The retrospective opens in gratitude. Funds, studios, archives, and theme music get their due before the show settles back into Bookworm's familiar room. Sparks arrive as honored guests. Michael receives their new theme with open delight, and Ron and Russell Mayle explain how personal the commission felt, especially after roughly 250 songs. Then the archive shifts. Ann Beattie becomes the center of a quieter conversation about characters with hidden lives that may surprise even them. Certainty is the problem. Michael brings up the gap between Beattie's reputation for quick drafts and this book's long, difficult making. Beattie answers plainly. The draft had become overworked and didactic, too eager to explain its people and almost too ready to write them off. She needed ambiguity back in the room. The book had to suggest consequences without locking readers into a stage so fixed that curiosity had nowhere to go. Anxiety is part of the work. Beattie describes novel writing as tense enough that a contract can help, and a baroque plan can feel like cover. Trust comes late. She says she sent the first draft to about eight people before facing Michael's judgment, because his approval mattered and scared her. The ending returns to thanks: Lannan Foundation, KCRW, colleagues, family, and Michael's old closing question, what are you reading?

As heard by us

A warm Bookworm retrospective where Sparks, Ann Beattie, and Michael's exacting readerly presence meet.

Bookworm's retrospective has the loose warmth of a room full of people measuring what Michael meant to them. It begins with Ron and Russell Mayle of Sparks discussing the show's new 30-second theme, a commission that runs against their recent taste for longer forms but fits the…

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Why you'd press play

A reflective Bookworm retrospective where Sparks unveils a new 30-second theme and Ann Beattie talks rewriting.

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