OUT AND ABOUT : At the Bookworm

Friday, August 5 is a busy day in the basement studios of KCRW at Santa Monica College, where Michael Silverblatt produces and hosts the Bookworm show.

First in the recording studio is best-selling author Erica Jong, on tour to promote her memoir, “Fear of Fifty” (HarperCollins, 1994). Jong, poised and urbane, is delighted to have a conversation and not the usual 3 1/2 minute talk-show segment. Silverblatt, famously erudite, speaks slowly, with great deliberation. Their exchange is a fluent academic jousting, each offering insights into Jong’s work while staying atop a torrent of allusions to Lessing, Nabakov, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Whitman, Burgess. “This is fun,” Jong exclaims. “You’re so well read!”

As Jong leaves, she meets the Bookworm’s next guest, Benjamin Weissman, in the hall. “Look,” whispers someone in the control room. “The Zipless F--- meets Kafka.”

Nervous and alert, Weissman, a Los Angeles native, has recently published his first book, a highly praised book of short fiction, “Dear Dead Person” (High Risk/Serpents Tail). The atmosphere in the recording booth becomes intense, almost hypnotic: In speech as in his writing, Weissman puts a lot of pressure on his language. Silverblatt and Weissman, old acquaintances, quickly find their own literary meeting ground: writers Thomas Bernhard (“His meanness is so profound and funny,” says Weissman) and Robert Walser (“A melancholy and teeny writer,” says Silverblatt).

“See?” Silverblatt says afterward. “You can be as esoteric as you want on this show. There is a literary culture.”

Both shows will air in October, when the Bookworm starts national syndication. “I’m being encouraged to go on with stars,” says Silverblatt, “but I’m not going to give up my underground, wild newcomers.”

Thursday, August 25 at Occidental College, Maxine Hong Kingston, author of “Woman Warrior” speaks at Orientation. As if to model the kind of clear thinking and social conscience a good liberal arts education can foster, she talks about her personal concerns with peace, community and the creative process.

She reads from a work-in-progress, “The 5th Book of Peace.” The first chapter is a harrowing account of the Berkeley fire in which she lost both her home and the first draft of the book--”The Fourth Book of Peace.”(There were 3 previous “Books of Peace” in China, all burned in cultural revolutions.)

She interrupts her reading to discuss possible revisions. In one paragraph, she wonders if she should say the killing in the Persian Gulf war was evil or wrong . And, if she has written that the fire was sent to show her something, she must be able to say who sent it. If she says God sent the fire, does she really believe that? “All of this I have to get straight with before I write the second draft.”

After the fire, Hong Kingston decided she would no longer write in solitude and isolation, but “in peace and community.” She formed a workshop with war veterans. “We work together, write, read, and meditate.” When she first heard the veterans’ stories, she came away in physical distress and a kind of “spiritual agony.” “But I know, just by listening, I alleviate their pain.” What inspires her to keep listening and to make art from what she hears is an ancient image of pain transformed: the Hindu god Shiva, who drinks in the poison of the world, turns blue and dances and does not die.