Michael Silverblatt, who hosted KCRW\u2019s \u201cBookworm\u201d program for 33 years, has died after struggling with various health challenges in recent years, the station announced. He was 73.<\/p>\n
Silverblatt died Saturday at his Los Angeles home.<\/p>\n
\u201cBookworm,\u201d which aired from 1989 to 2022, featured weekly 30 minute interviews with authors, poets and other literary figures including the likes of Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and Toni Morrison<\/a> for what were described as \u201cintellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n He came to each session with knowledge of the guest\u2019s entire body of work, not just the latest book they were promoting, a habit that prompted writer Joyce Carol Oates to dub him \u201cthe reader writers dream about.\u201d<\/p>\n Others called him the \u201creaders\u2019 reader.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHis impact on authors and readers was profound,\u201d KCRW noted on its website.<\/p>\n Fans on social media were remembering Silverblatt as someone who got them interested in reading and wanting to know more about the people who wrote their favorite books<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I remember most about his show was how often he would make a careful point about an author\u2019s work, resulting in silence from the writer for a moment, inevitably followed by something like, \u2018you know that never occurred to me before, but you\u2019re absolutely right,\u2019 Susan Hegarty wrote on Facebook. \u201cI heard this played out over and over. Bless him. What a mind.\u201d<\/p>\n The literary groups on Reddit also shared their memories.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was an incredible reader and intellect,\u201d one longtime listener wrote. \u201d Nobody does it like him in this day and age, and likely no one will again.\u201d<\/p>\n The Brooklyn native, born Aug. 6, 1952, often credited author Lewis Carroll\u2019s \u201cAlice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland\u201d with sparking his love of literature.<\/p>\n He aspired to a writing career of his own, but a chance meeting with the late Ruth Seymour, KCRW\u2019s founder and longtime general manager, led to the creation of \u201cBookworm.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are all sorts of other things that you get on radio<\/a> and television<\/a>, but I wanted listeners of \u2018Bookworm\u2019 to hear words, ideas, but particularly emotions that don\u2019t get discussed in public, if at all, elsewhere,\u201d Silverblatt told Oprah.com. \u201cThat is to say, for one reason or another, the show is a crusade that\u2019s much larger than the subject of books.\u201d<\/p>\n Silverblatt\u2019s survivors include his sister, Joan Silverblatt Bykofsky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Silverblatt, who hosted KCRW\u2019s \u201cBookworm\u201d program for 33 years, has died after struggling with various health challenges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[647,48,52,51,47,50,49,100,8567,4201,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-182719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","14":"tag-los-angeles-news","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-news-obituaries","17":"tag-radio","18":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}