For some Editors-in-Chief, this sort of thing dont fly.
For some Editors-in-Chief, this sort of thing don't fly. Annette Shaff / shutterstock.com

This afternoon I sat down and talked with Jim Shepard about his new novel, The Book of Aron, which he'll be reading from tonight at 7pm at the Central Library. You should go hear him read from it because (1) The book is about a family living in the ghettos of Warsaw, and it's told from the perspective of a kid, Aron, who is like the opposite of Anne Frank: a lice-infested realist who only cares about food. Not a perspective you often get to see. (2) Because of Aron's flat affect, sentences like, "Their daughter said she was nineteen and their son said he was hungry" slip through your defenses and hit you so hard that you have to put the book down every 13 minutes. Listening to him read from it will help you get through longer portions. (3) Jim Shepard is an engaging speaker with a sliiiiiight, peppy east coast accent that's easy to love.

While we were talking about all that stuff I remembered that Shepard had co-edited a book of dog poems with Amy Hempel called Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs, and so I took the opportunity to ask his take on Frizzelle's rant about the horror of dogs in grocery stores. Here's what he said:

"Dogs have big hearts. They get to come in. But all bad dogs have to be immediately taken out!"

Go see him.