Authors have always made damn good late-night talk show guests. Think Jack Kerouac reading On the Road accompanied by Steve Allen on piano. Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal nearly trading blows on The Dick Cavett Show, which also featured the verbal dueling of Truman Capote and Groucho Marx. (Marx: "You're pretty shifty, aren't you?" Capote: "Elusive.") There's Hunter S. Thompson and Carly Simon sharing a couch on Late Night with David Letterman, or Thompson lighting up a stuffed animal with a machine gun on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. And my personal vote for greatest anecdote in talk show history, late-night or otherwise — involving plasma-selling, blackout drinking and a 300-pound naked woman — goes to James Ellroy.

But over the past couple decades, authors have gone largely missing from late night. I'm not talking The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, or Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley, where you'll often see authors as guests. (Seriously, Jon? Doris Kearns Goodwin again?) No, I'm talking strictly the Big Three networks. Sure, every once in a while Letterman will have on David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell or Anthony Bourdain. Yet they are as much radio and TV personalities as writers. Conan will occasionally have on a writer whose work has crossed over into film and TV, like George R.R. Martin. But when's the last time Dave or Conan — or Fallon or Kimmel or Meyers, for that matter — had on a true-blue novelist, short-story writer, essayist, or memoirist?

Craig Ferguson is different. He's an author himself — having published a novel and a memoir, both best-sellers — and in nearly a decade of leading The Late Late Show, he's regularly had on fellow scribes. He might joke about the perceived obsolescence of books in the digital age, as when introducing one of Sloane Crosley's four appearances on the show: "My next guest is an author. What's an author, Craig? It's like a bloggy person without a computer." But in truth, few modern media personalities short of Oprah have done more to promote reading and literature. Not to mention boost book sales. "A writer could go onto Craig's show and reach people who maybe aren't necessarily big readers but are smart viewers," says literary publicist Kimberly Burns, who's helped book many authors on The Late Late Show, including Salman Rushdie, Jon Ronson, and Darin Strauss. "People might tune in to see a movie star and are still watching when, say, Salman Rushdie comes on — and Salman is charming and surprisingly hilarious, and someone seeing him, who might not usually read a lot, might find themselves buying his new book."

When Ferguson signs off for the last time this December, it will be a significant loss for both the publishing industry and book-lovers as a whole. It could also mean the end of authors on late-night network TV for good. (It's hard to imagine Colbert being joined in the Ed Sullivan Theater by George Saunders to discuss his latest collection of short stories.)

Here, several of Ferguson's author-guests share their memories and appreciation.

Salman Rushdie

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I always had a great time on Craig Ferguson's show. He was always welcoming to me, telling me I should come on whenever I was in L.A., and was immensely generous towards my work. Most of all, however, he was very, very funny. I'm genuinely sorry to see him go and I hope he and the gay robot skeleton and the pantomime horse all get another great gig somewhere very soon.

John Irving

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It's truly depressing to lose a late-night TV host who liked authors and invited authors on his show. I remember talking to Mr. Ferguson about my first visit to 19 Berggasse in Vienna — Freud's former consulting rooms and apartment. We talked about Freud's collection of penis artifacts. Well, how many TV hosts could handle that conversation?

Neil Gaiman

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I didn't realize how unusual it was for a writer to be on late-night TV until I got onto Craig Ferguson, which seemed to happen as much through chance and Twitter as it did anything else. I'd admired his show. I watched Paris Hilton awkwardly plugging a perfume line, then went onstage and had pure fun. He's smart and generous and literate.

And then he had me back, again partly from Twitter (he asked me to smuggle a vegetarian haggis into the USA for him)‎ and I was interviewed again and then dragooned into a tiny supergroup (Amanda Palmer, Moby, Stephin Merritt, and me as a joke going plink plink plink on a toy piano).

I thought he brought honesty and genuine wit to late-night TV. I'm not surprised he stopped when he was done.

Anne Rice

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I'm so sad that Craig is leaving the scene. Not only is he hilarious and hilariously original and creative, he's a generous and caring guy. Being on his show is terrifying and wonderful fun. You never have any idea what Craig is going to do or say, yet at the same time you know he's going to take care of you and take care of everything out there, and you can relax and enjoy the whole thing. Craig's not only a reader of books and an appreciator of authors and literature, he's a writer himself and a good one. I am so going to miss him, miss his zany and spontaneous and always generous humor. The key word with Craig is generous. He's living proof that hysterically funny routines don't have to be mean-spirited or at the expense of anyone else. Such a brilliant guy.

One thing: I hope Craig will make more movies. He was terrific in Saving Grace. I'd love to see him resume his movie career in England or here in America.

Darin Strauss

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I was nervous, and the stagehands didn't help. "You're about to go before 2.1 million people," one guy said. (His union job was to refill Craig's water. That was his whole job.) "Be funny," he added.

I met Craig for the first time when I walked to his desk with the cameras rolling and the audience clapping. (That may explain my overeager, overlong hug.) I made a terrible joke, laughed nervously, and then it was over, and after the commercial break I never saw Craig again. It was a dream come true.

Dennis Lehane

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Craig is the Scottish brother the Marx Brothers never knew they had. Fergo, let's say. He's that madcap and comically deranged and verbally whip-smart. I've never adored anyone else who made me feel that unhinged in an interview, but I adored that batshit lunatic. Plus, he, like, READS. He will be missed.

Laura Lippman

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I did the show three times. I loved it. I suspect everyone who does the show has a crush on Craig, and I'm including the men. The thing is — he looks into your eyes! He listens. He's interested. And he loves books.

I should claim to be more nervous than I was. But it was like dancing with a superb partner. All I had to do was listen and follow. One time, we ended up talking about our experiences with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. At the end of that visit, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, "Never get therapy." I cherished those words.

My husband cherished the time he said I looked like a sexy librarian.

I was a shameless suck-up. Read his memoir. (Terrific.) Read his novel, which is wonderful and weird and inspired me to send him a copy of David Thomson's Suspects.

And my hands-down favorite moment? Waiting in the wings for my appearance in December 2012 when the two young women who had done my make-up suddenly fell to their knees like an Indy pit crew and bronzed my legs.

Michael Connelly

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You know, it took a real bit of courage to do what Craig did in bringing novel writers onto his show. Never mind how difficult an interview might be with someone who spends most of their time in a room by themselves. But to interview a novelist you have to read the book. With nonfiction you can get the details and at least look prepared. There's nothing worse than an interviewer asking a novelist what his 400-page book is about. Craig wasn't like that. He read the books and he had salient questions about the story and characters and the writing life. You see this nowhere else on TV and it's really going to be missed, if you ask me.

I was on three or four times. He'd always come backstage and welcome me back. He always made me feel like I was part of an inside joke, that he had to do the celebrity interviews in order to do the interviews he really wanted to do. I'm sure every guest on his show felt they were part of that insider conspiracy but it helped give you confidence to go out there in front of the cameras.

They have these footprints painted on the floor offstage. You stand there until it's your time to come out. He would come back during the break while I was standing there and implore me to help him bail out the show with some highbrow intellectual interaction. I was like, Man, just bring the horse out and let's dance. He really knows how to make it easy.

One last thing: You never knew what would happen. There would be a pre-show interview and those sort of became the blueprints for what he would not ask about. He would just wing it and that made it fun.

Sloane Crosley

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Craig is an author himself, one who backed into the late-night game like a dump truck of Glaswegian charm. It would be self-hating if he ignored the little/literate people. That said, the man is on national television. So the fact that he and his producers go out of their way to book writers is wonderful. My first reaction to his "conscious uncoupling" with CBS was sadness — I feel how Apple must feel. But really I'm just grateful to have been a guest in the house of one of my favorite people.

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