Terry Gross

It's like a fairy tale.

Yeah.

And the old blind man is kind of a very fairy tale benevolent character.

There are spirits in the woods.

Yeah.

And the blind old hermit thinks that because he can't see, he doesn't see the monster that other people see.

And in fact, he thinks the creature is the spirit of the woods.

Are you trying to interpret Frankenstein?

People always call the monster Frankenstein.

So are you trying to compare the creature in Frankenstein to Jesus?

Yeah, in your version of Pinocchio, and I don't know if this is in other stories or in the original fairy tale, Geppetto, who creates the puppet Pinocchio, also has built or carved, I should say, a huge depiction of Jesus being crucified for the church.

It's very comforting the way you put it.

When we talked a few years ago, you mentioned that your grandmother, who was very Catholic, exercised you.

Not exercised, but as in an exorcism.

She exercised you twice.

Did you feel like people saw you as unholy and a sacrilege in the same way that people see the creature in Frankenstein?

Yeah, in some ways.

And even Pinocchio, when Pinocchio was kind of rowdy in church because he's never been there before, he doesn't understand what church is.

The people in the church call him unholy and a sacrilege.

You could say in some ways that the creature in Frankenstein is like artificial intelligence because he's created by man but then lives on its own and can destroy man without even understanding quite what he's doing.