Michael Silverblatt, the longtime host of the KCRW radio show Bookworm, which was "known for interviews of authors so in depth that they sometimes left his subjects astounded at his breadth of knowledge of their work," died February 14, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was 73.
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Although his 30-minute show, which ran from 1989 to 2022 and was nationally syndicated, included interviews with celebrated authors, "the real star of the show was the host himself, the nasal-voiced radio personality who more than once in life was told he did not have a voice for his medium," the Times noted, adding that Bookworm "represents one of the most significant archives of conversations with major literary powerhouses from the late 20th and early 21st centuries."
Acknowledging that he was as much a character as his interviewees, Silverblatt once said, "I'm as fantastical a creature as anything in Oz or in Wonderland. I like it if people can say, 'I never met anyone like him,' and by that they should mean that it wasn't an unpleasant experience."
A New York City native, he left home at 16 to attend the State University of New York in Buffalo. After graduating in the mid-1970s, he moved to Los Angeles and worked in Hollywood in public relations and script development.
He eventually met Ruth Seymour, the longtime head of KCRW. She "had just returned to the United States from Russia and was at a dinner party where everyone was discussing Hollywood. There, she and Silverblatt became immersed in a one-on-one discussion of Russian poetry," the Times noted.
"He's a great raconteur and so the rest of the world just vanished," Seymour told Times columnist Lynell George in 1997. "Afterward I just turned and asked him: 'Have you ever thought about doing radio?' " That's what he did for the next 33 years.
"Michael was a genius. He could be mesmerizing and always, always, always brilliant," said Alan Howard, who edited Bookworm for 31 years. "It's an extraordinary archive that exists, and I don't think anyone else has ever created such an archive of intelligent, interesting people being asked about their work. Michael was very proud of the show. He devoted his life to the show."
"He was such a singular person," noted Jennifer Ferro, now the president of KCRW. "He had a voice you would never expect would be on radio."
In the 1997 Times column, Silverblatt said: "In general I try to read the author's complete work.... That's not always true, and I never say it if it isn't true. But more often than not, I have, at least, read the majority of the work. And sometimes it's a superhuman challenge."