In 1998 Wally Lamb was on book tour to publicize his blockbuster novel "I Know This Much Is True." The novel had been catapulted to literary glory when it was selected as the featured book by Oprah Winfrey for her Book Club. Lamb is that rare lucky author who then went on to have his next book chosen by Oprah as well. He came out to Yellow Springs to do an interview with me.
This story about two identical twins and how they dealt with the fact that when one of them was a teenager he developed paranoid schizophrenia and the other one, our narrator, had to take care of him, was snapped up by Hollywood at the time for development into a movie. But there was a problem with that. The book was a sprawling 900+ pages and nobody was ever able to figure out how to turn this massive endeavor into a two hour long film. It was never made into a movie.
Eventually the rights to adapt the novel into a film or TV program reverted back to Wally Lamb and after 22 years this story has finally been turned into a visual production in the form of a limited series for Home Box Office. In honor of that fact the book was recently reissued again in paperback and I was offered another opportunity to talk to Wally about his wonderful book. That doesn't happen very often. But here it is; my second interview for "I Know This Much Is True" recorded 22 years after the first one.
This was my fourth interview with the author and it might be my favorite. Wally talked about the HBO series and that was an amazing thing to learn about. If you have not read this book yet then what are you waiting for?
The Book Nook on WYSO is presented by the Greene County Public Library with additional support from Washington-Centerville Public Library, Clark County Public Library, Dayton Metro Library, and Wright Memorial Public Library.
