George Saunders on Writing with Fierceness and Compassion

Novelist Tess Callahan sits down with George Saunders to discuss his new novel Vigil. Saunders reflects on writing morally complex characters, the balance between empathy and fierceness, and the challenges of inhabiting the consciousness of a character who is in his words "a real stinker." He discusses how revision, attention, and trust in the reader shape his work. 

George Saunders is the author of thirteen books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and five collections of stories, including Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and the recent collection Liberation Day. Saunders hosts the popular Story Club on Substack, which grew out of his book on the Russian short story, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People by Time. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

Author photo by Pat Martin.

Tess Callahan is the author of the novels APRIL & OLIVER and DAWNLAND. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and is a certified Mindfulness Meditation teacher taught by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. She offers author interviews on her Substack: https://tesscallahan.substack.com/publish/home, and guided meditations on her sister podcast Heart Haven Meditations, available on Apple, Spotify and elsewhere.

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Host: Tess Callahan
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Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Announcer,

Tess Callahan: 0:06

Welcome to Writers at the Well, a podcast that offers intimate conversations with authors about how they draw words and images up from the depths of their inner well, how do they move into a flow state. Do they meditate? Walk in nature? Do they do cartwheels? Let's find out. I'm your host. Tess Callahan, author of the novels April and Oliver and dawnland. I hope you enjoy this deep dive into the inner workings of the creative process. Today, my guest is George Saunders. Saunders is the author of 13 books, including the novel Lincoln and the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and five collections of stories, including 10th of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the recent collection Liberation Day selected by former President Obama as one of his 10 favorite books of 2022 three of Saunders books, pastoralia, 10th of December and Lincoln in the Bardo were chosen for the New York Times list of The 100 best books of the 21st Century. Saunders hosts the popular story club on substack, of which I am a happy member, which grew out of his book on the Russian short story a swim in a pond in the rain in 2013 he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by time, he teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. Welcome George

George Saunders: 1:44

Tess, I'm so happy to be here. You're such a wonderful interviewer. I've been looking forward to this for weeks now. So thank you for having me.

Tess Callahan: 1:50

Oh, thank you. The honor is mine. So to begin with, I wonder if you would just like to describe Vigil a little bit for our listeners, and then perhaps a read from the opening.

George Saunders: 2:02

Sure, yeah, it's kind of, it's just a sort of a deathbed narrative. But the twist is that the it's being narrated by a woman who died in 1976 named Jill Blaine. Her nickname is doll Jill, doll Blaine, and so she, since then, for reasons we don't quite know, has been going around to the bedsides of dying people, kind of like she's sort of a death doula, except she's already dead herself, and so the book just has her dropping in, literally into a house of this guy that we come to see isn't a great guy, and he's, he's sort of a former Oil Company exec who was involved in A lot of the climate change nefariousness in the 90s and 2000s so the whole story is kind of just a few hours at his bedside, and she arrives there, and then, you know, hilarity ensues. I hope

Tess Callahan: 2:52

Yes for sure. So would you like to read the opening pages for us? Sure? Yeah, I will.

George Saunders: 3:00

What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward acquiring as I fell arms, hands, legs, feet, all of which, as usual, became more substantial with each passing second below a fountain. At the center of the fountain, a gold plated statue of a dog. Someone must have really loved that dog. In the mouth of the Golden dog, a golden duck. The duck's beak was hanging open in death, and a pocked area in its flank seemed meant to represent the entry field of the shot cluster. I observed all of this as I plummeted past, and then my head and torso pierced the asphalt crust of a semi circular drive and lodged in the dirt below my rear was in the air my fresh new legs bicycling energetically, I found myself alternately clothed and unclothed, that is to say, one instant naked and the next clothed, or to be more precise, partly clothed, over time, that is, the elements of my outfit grew more reliably visible. My beige skirt soon became a near consonant. Meanwhile, here was a burrowing worm to consider and a brown bottle shard and the rich smell of the loam now completely encasing my inverted upper half once in Tennessee, having landed in the more conventional upright posture, I spent six hours in a paddock, my head protruding above the surface of the Earth, being trotted through again and again by three black horses and one Rowan, who never during those hours ceased being panicked by my presence. And yet I had a fine success on that occasion, my charge being greatly comforted tonight, blessedly. The thought proceeded quickly, and I found myself able, by sheer force of will to bolt up out of the ground gymnastically And stand upright, both fully and consistently clothed, beige skirt, pale pink blouse, black palm. Tess, the golden dog, shone in the glare of an ornate carriage lamp I made for the front door and not yet walking competently, collapsed to the earth like a just unstrung puppet, then leapt to my feet and moved on relentlessly to my work. The door immense, heavy, dead bolted. Presented no meaningful impediment. Passing through, I emerged into a magnificent entryway, then ascended a spacious stairwell lined with image after image of my charge, leaning confidently against a podium, speaking to a tremendous crowd, squatting with a kafiah Waring fellow before the Great Pyramid of Giza, knee deep in the shallows of some high mountain lake beside a young woman I took to be his daughter, driving, pretending to drive a piece of heavy machinery, wearing a hard hat and a three piece suit, posing before an oil rig and another and another, standing with his wife on the Great Wall of China, Both beaming, as if this represented a singular moment in their union, arm in arm with her in what looked to be the Rose Garden of the White House, with her again before what I understood to be a second home in Colorado and a third in Hawaii, a fourth in Key West, often on His face the same look, more grimaced and smile, albeit shot through with a measure of forced good will. Reaching the second floor, I moved along a hallway hung with numerous paintings in gilt frames, each marked by a plaque mentioning some experience our charge and his wife associated with this acquisition, lovely cliffside dinner, Positano catacomb tour Paris, Mr. Pavarotti sang beautifully for us after dinner guest of Senator jeps and Maria in their fabulous desert home. At the end of the hall hung a double door of sturdy oak, a familiar tan purse now appearing over my shoulder. I patted it once twice as I would in the bygone days when about to embark on a challenging task, then pass through knowing that my charge must be found on the other side, and here he was, a tiny, crimped fellow in an immense mahogany bed. It was not too late, neither was I too early. Thank you, George, thank you.

Tess Callahan: 7:23

You know, reading this book, I just had the sense that you had enormous fun writing it.

George Saunders: 7:30

Is that. So I did, I really, I mean, it was sort of that complicated writerly fun where you're kind of tearing out your hair, but, but I think at this point in my writing life, I kind of like, Oh, I'm at the tearing out my hair face, that's fun. But no, it was really a lot of fun. And yeah, again, just in that way of feeling that there was something there, but it wasn't giving itself up to me so easily. So that was kind of a nice later life challenge. Interesting.

Tess Callahan: 7:59

So I've heard you say how each book you've written has been an entirely new creation that has its own requirements in the writing. And you like, have not been able to reach into your old bag of tricks for any new creation. And this one feels entirely different to me, and at the same time, it feels like signature George Saunders, like I could pick out a sentence and say, That's George Saunders. And yet the whole, the whole of it, feels quite new. So I was wondering if you could speak to that, or what your conversation was like with this book.

George Saunders: 8:37

Well, that makes me really happy to hear that, because that's what it felt like. You think I want to do something new, I don't want to use the old tricks, I don't want to phone it in. And that's very healthy. And at the same time, you can't get, I mean, even if you wanted to, you couldn't get too far from your fundamental nature. Especially, I think if you're working hard, you know, the more hard I work, the more of me gets into the book. So you're kind of hoping that someone will go, oh yeah, that's him. And not Oh yeah, that's him, you know. So that's and I think it was the former. Well, good, good, good, yeah, no. And it's really funny, because, you know, I'll start to, I'll start out a book to say this is going to be entirely different, and in revision, it just starts sort of sidling over to something that's more like me. But this one, I think one of the I mean, just because I'm talking to a wonderful writer, I can confess this, it was interesting to find that, because of the way I Tess and book up, I had to do a lot of internal writing. From this guy's point of view, she has the ability to inhabit him and then suddenly start speaking his voice, or, you know, conveying his thoughts. And that sent me back to my early, early pre publication, dismal writing years where I was trying to be a modernist. And so it was interesting to say, I have to go do the thing that years ago I forbid Myself to do. And then, of course, the answer, as in so many writings, is, well, just do it better. Or, you know, don't, don't do it poorly like you did when you were in your 30s. So that was fun to kind of be led almost full circle back to something that I thought I'd kind of decisively moved away from, oh,

Tess Callahan: 10:10

that's fascinating, because Jill's voice in here, Doll and Boone's voice that comes through her and she inhabits his mind is highly distinct. And I think perhaps because you gave yourself over to him completely in that way, the counter argument is very fierce. I felt quite uncomfortable about the logic he was, you know, making at certain points

George Saunders: 10:39

join the club. Yeah. I mean, I found an interesting thing that if you narrate somebody from inside, you have a hard time crucifying them, and so you sort of have to, I thought of it as crucifying by reflection like I think if a reader reads his his narrative, you'll feel some sympathy for him. He's a dying man, and he has memories of his childhood. But if you kind of look over the fence that he's putting up, that his his mind and his habits are putting up, you see a pretty nasty life, you know, someone who really has done some bad things. So it was an interesting, technical thing, and to realize halfway through, oh, I don't actually have a valid conduit through which to convey to you my George's political beliefs, or my view on this guy, I have set it up so that that voice is not allowed, so everybody who's looking at him has only part of the story. So that was interesting, you know, it really, it took a little bit of faith, because I didn't, you know, I didn't want anyone to think. I thought this guy was terrific, but at the same time, he thinks he's terrific, and we're seeing the world through his lens. So it was, again, a new kind of a new challenge. I hope it worked. .

Tess Callahan: 11:47

Absolutely. It caused a lot of inner dissonance in me, which is really the sweet spot.

George Saunders: 11:53

I love that phrase, inner dissonance. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah. Because, you know, sometimes I think maybe, especially as a book, veers towards the political it can be just a kind of a political ad. In a certain way. It can just be all good people having the same capital G, good beliefs. And I think life teaches us otherwise. I mean, there are seeds of good and the bad and vice versa and so but that's, I mean to me, that's the beauty of point of view, is you, you say, Okay, I'm going to be him. The quest is to ponder the question, all right, what does it really feel like to be somebody else, you know, especially if it's someone you disagree with? How do you how do you get there? And the temptation is always to sort of assassinate slyly, you know, you can, you can put in a nasty thing about him, but dwelling with this guy for all this time, like, Well, I mean, it's certainly possible for someone to be to himself, very likable, justifiable person, and to do some really bad shit, which, I think that's the nature of evil, actually, mostly, you know, there's not too much of the Cruella De Ville variety, you know, where someone says, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to be bad today. So it was, it was great. I loved it. I mean, as a, you know, as a Buddhist and as a former Catholic, it would, it's kind of the thing I've been thinking about since I was a little kid, is how, you know, when Jesus confronted that woman at the well, and was able to sort of, it seemed to me, sort of absorb her phenomenon and and treat her so compassionately. How did he do that? And even as a kid, I thought I sort of got the message that he was a novelist in that way. You know, he was had a nice, quiet mind, and he was able to meet her where she was. And I always thought that was a beautiful, a beautiful thing

Tess Callahan: 13:34

that is the work of the novelist, right? Is that, and that's the opportunity of fiction, is that we can be so intimate inside another being's consciousness in a way that no other art form really offers us,

George Saunders: 13:49

yes, and in a way that we can't do in daily life because we're rushing past that idiot, you know, like but the other thing that I This book made me think about, and of course, I'll carry it into the next one, is I had to say to myself, now be careful, because I'm claiming that Jill, and I think I'm claiming that I am inhabiting his consciousness, but he's invented by me. And so there's a certain kind of distortion field that can happen when I imagine someone, or you imagine someone, you can't get clear of your own phenomenon. So what I thought was interesting is, I wonder if there what it would be really like to inhabit, say, the mind of a sociopath. Are there just things that we, not being sociopathic, can't imagine? So I'm a little, I'm a little cautious about that. You know, I think fiction makes a lot of hay about the illusion of inhabiting someone else's mind. But I wonder, you know, I wonder, if I went into the mind of the real life, you know, KJ, Boone, whoever that might be, would there be tones there that I that really surprised me, because I couldn't imagine them, you know?

Tess Callahan: 14:58

Yeah, it's interesting question. Yeah, but the endeavor, I think, is a holy endeavor.

George Saunders: 15:03

I think you're just right, yeah, because I mean for the writer, for sure, and hopefully for the reader, there's some that dissonance you talked about. I think that's very productive, you know, to see where you know, because life is full of so many blind spots. And one of the things the mind seems to do is, even if you're very neurotic, like I am, but the mind is constantly assuring you that you're okay, you're right, you're doing it good, you're all there, you know, you're you're the hero of the story. And sometimes that dissonance when we read fiction is a way of saying it's where your habitual way of thinking runs up against the facts in a certain way, and that's sparks go off. And you know, if that happens once a day, it's pretty good.

Tess Callahan: 15:45

So you mentioned your Buddhist practice, and I was wondering if you could speak to well, you've also, I mean, I know you're practicing Buddhist, and in the swim, in a pond, in the rain, you speak of writing as its own form of meditation, or kind of material meditation. So I was wondering if you could speak to the interface for you between meditation and writing.

George Saunders: 16:13

Yeah, I mean, I should say I'm not doing much meditation these days, so I'm kind of like I'm a fellow traveler more than an earnest practitioner. But I think that for me, the common point is to talk about in writing terms, you wrote something yesterday and you had feelings about it good, then you come in today. So what, what kind of mind are you bringing to the revision process? And for me, ideally, all that affection or revulsion you had for it yesterday should go away. You should have a pretty quiet mind. And then the whole job really is react to what's actually there, not to what you think is there, what you carried over in your aspirations from yesterday, but what's actually there, meaning, how would I react to it if I wasn't already indoctrinated to it or used to it. That's the for me, that's almost like 100% of the revision process is trying to get that mindset going. And of course, it's really hard. I mean, it's hard on so many levels, and it's really hard to sustain it. But that seems to me analogous to a way that we might approach a moment in life as well. You know, you show up to a party, you're nervous, you have all these projections about the host, or you're afraid you'll put your foot in your mouth. Okay, if all that can go quiet. And you walk into the party, you really see the party, and then you're responding to the party that is, as opposed to the party that you imagine. So that seems to me similar. And then maybe there's a second level, where, when I'm when I'm working in the morning, one of the first things I do is kind of just just spontaneously, is say, Okay, I just read the first page of my book. How do I feel about it? But also, how do I feel about the mood My mind is in? So am I reading too harshly? Am I reading too generously? Am I Am I reading badly? Sometimes, you know, your mind just skims over those lines and you're like, Okay, I don't think that counts, you know. So, so there's kind of that second way in which the mind is watching the mind, and I think that can be useful in real life as well, you know, like, I'm, I wake up and I'm in a very sort of elated mood, okay, well, just note that and factor it into the rest of the day that you're, you know, you're maybe not seeing things clearly because you're elated or you're irritated or whatever. So, I mean, most of this, I started to learn it as a writer way back when, and then when I did finally start meditating, I noticed the the kind of crossover. And then the final thing might just be the idea that when you know, when I'm working on a book like this for several years, it starts taking shapes that I couldn't ever have imagined, and it starts doing fun things that I didn't plan, and so on. So that just makes me think that, I mean, it's kind of a truism, but there's a part of the mind that we don't use every day that is as real as the part that we do use. And art is one way that you can kind of just nudge that and or maybe nudge yourself and go, oh yeah, this, this person that I am every day with my habit, energy and my, my sort of disposition, in quotes, is only part of the whole package. And there's a, I mean, I'd have to it's a wisdom kind of mind that you have that's not not your daily mind. And so I'm sure meditation is a way to remind yourself of that prayer. And I think art as well also dancing, dancing would be a way.

Tess Callahan: 19:28

Yes, that's beautiful. Yeah, yeah, dancing is very freeing. So with regard to Buddhism, you know, Buddhism has this very colorful iconography, and they have the benevolent deities and the wrathful deities, which actually, Bob Thurman, translator of Tibetan Buddhism, says wrathful is a mistranslation, that it's actually fierce. They're fierce deities. Oh, that's interesting. I love that. And so when I was reading this. Yes, I was thinking of doll and that there's another psychopomp who pops in a Frenchman, kind of rivals at the deathbed of Boone. And it struck me that they are kind of wrathful and benevolent deities who are both opposed to each other and then and working together in a certain unwitting way. Yeah. So do

George Saunders: 20:25

you see that exactly right 100% and also that they're not exactly what they claim to be. I that was that was came in a little bit later in the book. And I thought that was interesting, because if you know, you read about some of these, like The Tibetan Book of the Dead and so on. The idea is that you could be after death, assailed by hallucin hallucinatory images that, of course, your mind is producing, but they they're often very troubling and terrifying. So I thought that was kind of an interesting thing that happened in the revision process, was that I started out, I mean, I put them in the book because I thought I knew what they were there to do, but they started misbehaving a little bit. And so then it's an interesting revision job, because what you're then trying to do is not correct them, but you're trying to refine their misbehavior so that they're doing what they want to do, not what you want them to do. And then, and then the book can open up into sort of shades of meaning that you didn't anticipate. And in fact, now, you know, I'm just now, some of the are just starting to land on me. Oh, did I mean to do that? Well, yeah, only because I worked on it so hard and I didn't give it up until I felt like I'd, you know, squeeze every bit of clarity out of it. So, yeah, there I think. And I, you know, I always love that idea of, you know, some some of these, some of these things that he sees are in the books world are external to him. Like Jill is not he's not creating her. She's there. But others, like his father, they are coming from, or no, not the father, the the mother and his teacher, for example, are coming from inside him. So it was interesting to see the different levels of manifestations that he could experience in that in that moment.

Tess Callahan: 22:00

Yes, yeah, yeah. And I loved how Jill came in and clarified, you know, no, that's you. That's not you. That was very satisfying.

George Saunders: 22:09

That was me kind of talking to the reader, like, okay, let's just take stock here. Who are these things, you know? Yeah, but it's, but it's so cool, you know? And I'm sure you felt this in your work, like you come to something every day and you mess around with it by your taste. And then pretty soon it starts meaning in these like the fact that there are several different tiers of visitors that is was interesting to find out. And then you're beholden to start using that. So you have to go, Okay, well, no, this is not, this is his mind. So therefore an image coming from our mind is going to be all colored with our phenomenon and with our fears and so on, whereas somebody coming from outside has their own agenda. So it's kind of so cool the way that a book, if you wait long enough, a book, will tell you how to write it, but you have to be pretty alert to the fact that it's not the book that you thought you were going to write and collaborate with it, instead of, you know, overpowering or direct it.

Tess Callahan: 23:02

Yes, I love the way Jill surprises me as she and I don't know if that was your experience writing her as well that, I mean, she kind of announces herself as someone who's there to comfort. And what is a doll but a comfort, right? But she many other facets of her are unleashed from her, really, because of what she goes through with Boone. And it was fascinating for me to go through that ride with her. She is actually much more complex than she kind of announces herself to be. I just loved her. She's one of my favorite characters of yours, George, from all of your work,

George Saunders: 23:40

I love, love her too. And, you know, I just got to hear a little sample of Judy Greer, the actress, reading. And I love Jill even more, because she does it so perfectly, you know, yeah, I mean that that was really fun for me to sort of see who she was, you know, to see. And one of the things you mentioned, you said that she surprised you. And one of the things I noticed in the process of this book is I had to sort sometimes wait for her to surprise me. Like there would be draft after draft where she was behaving the way I meant her to, you know, and I get to certain points and just go, like, yeah, okay, yeah. Like, I kind of expect more from you, you know, and, and, but, but I found that I couldn't force it. I had to just keep coming back to it again and again, and then suddenly, on one occasion, I could see a way that she could be different than I'd imagined her, you know, a little more. She could push back, or she could say something kind of rude, or she could let a secret drop that I didn't know before. So I was reminded of how much patience plays a part in this, you know, it's a sort of a patience combined with a self generosity, where I had the experience of reading through a page and going, Yeah, that's not quite it yet. Not that's not quite it. I'm screwing up, but that's not quite it. Okay, just put a pin in there, and hopefully in, you know, several drafts. From now the thing will get tired of being dull and will show you a way to, you know, to sort of give it CPR. So that was interesting to just, and it's not a very long book, and so I think I had a real opportunity to dwell in every single passage, maybe over dwell. So, I mean, I think it would a little bit like, you know, if you if you have a friend who's very, very withholding and quiet, and you just sit across from them and go, and eventually they get uncomfortable. Something out.

Tess Callahan: 25:32

Yeah, Jill has that feeling,

Unknown: 25:34

yeah, I wonder if they're kind of a deep well she is.

Tess Callahan: 25:37

And do you feel like she comes from a certain part of you? Like, do you have a sense of where her voice came from?

George Saunders: 25:43

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm starting to notice in my work, I love to go from a low addiction to a high addiction. I do it in a lot of different stories. I mean, not to be too corny, but it's kind of autobiographical. Because I was as a young kid in Chicago on the south side, I had a lot of energy, and I was, I think, fairly articulate, but I also was kind of a hot mess in terms of the ideas that I had and the inputs and how erratically I read. And so there's a video my dad. This is kind of a sidebar, but my dad, one of the things he did was he worked for a garbage truck company. He was worked in the oil oil delivery. And then he his company, kind of got this garbage company in Chicago, and so one of the things my dad did was set up this, it was called the garbage truck art show. And they, they took a gleaming, brand new white garbage truck and gave them to all these different neighborhoods in Chicago with the mission of paint these however you want, you know, and then we're going to have a big show. So these kids just roasted. The occasion, beautiful murals on 15 or 16 different trucks. Then the event was at the I don't know where it is, but there's a Picasso sculpture downtown Chicago, and he somehow got that, and all these garbage trucks were pulled up in there for this big garbage really spectacular, you know, anyway, all this to say there was some old movie footage of that day, and I'm there very excited. On my dad's behalf. I feel like I'm the ambassador, you know, and there's some poor older gentleman, and in this short clip, I'm talking to him the way I talk 90 miles an hour, I'm jetting like crazy, and this poor guy is literally just backing up like whoa. So that was me as a young person. So then once I started reading and writing more and went to Syracuse and met those great teachers, I noticed the simple thing that if I read and edited, especially if I read, my inner language would change, and it would become more precise, and I would have a little better time communicating to people, because there was a precision. It wasn't just all overflow so that, so that I find enacted in my work again and again, that the Contra, the contrast between a wild working class language and then something that's a little more that she says elevated, you know.

Tess Callahan: 27:59

So, yeah, yes, as soon as you say that, I can see it in so many of your stories where the character either through some external force or their own, like escape from spider head and Liberation Day, where these characters have the opportunity to become suddenly more articulate, and the power of that?

George Saunders: 28:21

Yeah, in some ways it's just showboating. I just like to, I like to just do it. You know, makes a nice energy. But I know in thinking back, I remember when our when our kids were little, I mentioned this recently in public, but I was all my editing was taking place on a city bus for a period because I was writing at work and we got too busy, so I just would take a page or two, and then usually it's end up editing two or three paragraphs for like a 40 minute ride home, and there was nothing else to do. And it was very, very deep kind of editing. And then after that, I had a real incredible period of just feeling like I could express any image. I so precise. And in that period, I got, I got a speeding ticket and and actually it was unfair. I was, I was driving to church, and I to play, and I was late anyway, so the cop was kind of nasty with me, and I in my elevated mode, I wrote a very, I guess, charming letter to the judge, and he let me off. So at that time, I'm at the height of my powers, you know, I'm altering the legal system with my language. But I think that, you know, for me, that's at heart, that's really what I love about fiction, is that it writing, it is it? I mean, it sounds kind of corny, and I say it too much, but it does have the possibility to transform one's consciousness briefly, read and writing, and then you bring that slightly modified consciousness to bear on the world, and it's a different world, and even though it's very short lived, and it doesn't solve world hunger, but it is real. And so that is sort of hopeful to me, that our since the way we experience the world is so tied into the way we think about it and talk about it, if we could change the way we think and talk about it the external world literally. Is a different man, maybe more workable world that's, you know,

Tess Callahan: 30:04

yes, oh, this, this ties into something else I wanted to ask you about, which, you know, in Buddhism, there's this idea that we're 95% unconscious impulses, or 98% even. And neuroscience backs it up, that we're just, you know, we live out of our conditioning. We come into the world pre baked, and then life reinforces certain things. And so it's what you do with that 2% or that 5% available to you. And maybe if you're in like an enlightened monk, it's 7% and so this book, a lot of your work, actually, in this book in particular, seems to circle around that question of, well, is free will even possible? Yeah, how pre baked are we? How pre baked are we? And I know you in story club, you like to quote Chekhov when he says, a work of art doesn't have to solve a problem, it just has to formulate it correctly. And it seems to me like, over the course of your many books, you're Honing and sharpening this question about free will, do you think that's so

George Saunders: 31:11

100% Yeah, well, but also I think I, what I think I'm honing, I hope, is that move where You say A is true, A is false, and then make the case for both of those, and let them just fight back and forth a little bit. So in this so in this book, you know, Jill has a certain view on free will, although she wouldn't call it that, but, but her case is just that. And I actually believe this, and I've had this feeling since I was a little kid. Okay, so how, let's say a person is a great basketball player. Okay, we know that in the womb, He didn't check the box saying, Make me a great basketball player, but he was born with certain, you know, he's strong, he's fast, he's a good athlete. And I would even add to that, he also was born with some pre coded tendency to be interested in something, parentheses, basketball, to be willing to work hard at something, to take correction, all the things that make a person accomplished, whereas the sort of like shadow twin, let's say, of him who has maybe all of the physical qualities, but doesn't have the motivation or the interest or in you can go down the list. But to me, as a young kid, I was in school, and I was always a real kiss up first of all, so that went over well with the nuns, and I was a pretty good reader, so I was getting, always get a lot of praise. And I love school, because I would go in there and be praised. Well, there was a kid I'd known for a while, and he was in the class, and he just was not a good reader. And I there was one day where that fact was somehow called out, and he was crying in the classroom because he wasn't a good reader, just almost kind of turned away by himself, just so ashamed. And I thought this struck me like that's weird, because I didn't, there's nothing that I did to make myself a good reader, and there's nothing he did to make himself a bad reader. So why is it that I'm being praised? That praise seems very hollow. So, so that's kind of Jill's idea, and she has it, of course, radically underscored by an experience she has at the time of her own death. So that's her argument. The counter argument is, if the bear is chasing you, the bear is just being a bear. It's beautiful, so organic and so completely understandable, but he's chasing you. And so depending on where you put the point of view, he's a monster. That's the Frenchman's view, I think, especially of kJ Boone. And when I make that opposition and ask myself, which is correct, I'm like, I think they're both correct. And what the answer depends on where you put your your point of view, essentially, yeah. So then, in that argument, the book is just meant to formulate that question correctly, and then hopefully make something for all of us to just kind of feel or engage with, and feel that dissonance that you talked about earlier, you know, yeah. Because that dissonance, you know, in a way, it's like proof that we're not being simplistic, you know, that's really what it is. And so I think sometimes, not always, but I think sometimes that's what fiction can do. Chekhov, I think, in his best stuff, that's what he does. And then the result is, you know, like the part of our mind that every day is so happy to judge, you know, and feels that our identity is tied in with making a decisive judgment gets befuddled a little bit, you know, we wait. I can't. Oh, I'm noticing that over these 20 pages of a check off story, my judgment is changing with every page. I don't know who to side with. And by the end the story seems to say, yeah, right, exactly, you know. Can you side with everybody? You know what's, what's the cost of siding with everybody, or if at some point you have to, not you have to oppose somebody. Isn't it better to do that after a long period of introspection and uncertainty than to post on X right away?

Tess Callahan: 34:59

Yes, I'd. Love how the book does not hand us a I mean, the book respects us and trusts us enough to not hand us, you know, packaged answer and so, yeah, would you care to read? There's a little section that has to do with this question about what our predisposed trajectories are. It's around page 76

George Saunders: 35:25

Yeah, I think I see it, and I haven't read this before. So he had left. This is about this guy, Paul Bowman, who we find out is, well, we spoiler alert, he find out that he's the person who who killed Jill, actually. So she goes to inhabit his body, and she finds out this, he had left his mother's womb with a particular predisposed mind and started living. And immediately that predisposed mind had run up against various events and been altered in exactly the way such a mind buffeted by those exact events would be altered. And all the while he Bowman trapped inside, Bowman had believed he was making choices, but what looked to him like choices had been so severely delimited in advance by the mind, body and disposition thrust upon him that the whole game amounted to a sort of lavish jailing his feelings. Oh, yeah, that's probably good enough. Yeah.

Tess Callahan: 36:19

No, you can go on. It's just just so struck by that phrasing, the lavish gelling, yeah,

George Saunders: 36:26

his feelings of rage, of shame, of being worthless, of needing to lash out preemptively at even the slightest threat, were all real, and he must suffer them every day. And why? Because he had been born him, but he had not chosen to be born him that had just happened to him, and then life had happened to that him exerting upon a certain deleterious effects, including, but not limited to the desire to blow up Lloyd, whom he perceived correctly, by the way, in the relative sense, to be his enemy. At what precise moment could Paul Bowman have become other than Paul Bowman,

Tess Callahan: 37:04

yeah, I just love this book so much, George, because this is really the sweet spot of my own. Like, this is dolls. Doll is very similar to me. Part of my dissonance with the book, but I do see that world the way she does, in many ways, and then, and then you have the bear chasing you down.

George Saunders: 37:30

So there's that, and it's so true these days. I mean, you know, I I love this idea of empathy and compassion and sympathy, and then you look up and people are being so harmed, you know, right? So then I think it leads to a question that is also kind of behind the book, which is, all right, is there a way to be really forceful, and what was the word, not wrathful, but fierce, fierce, fierce. Is it, in fact, that there's no opposition between being empathetic and being fierce? And I think that's true, you know, if you like, I had a Buddhist Lama one time saying, you know, if, if a baby was crawling towards an open light socket, the way I understood it was that the the compassion is just making sure that the baby doesn't put her finger in the light socket. If you are, you don't have to say, Oh, honey, do you understand about electrons? I mean, you, you know. So I think that's something I I've been thinking about a lot. But of course, that takes a lot of alertness. It really does. And I think sometimes people can take that shortcut to that Fierce Deity mind idea and just be mean all the time, or just, or just do what they want to do with force, and think that they're, they're doing something. So I think it's, it's all, you know, so many things are about alertness to the moment you're actually in. That's why I like writing, because at least in that world, I can slow things down enough to be alert, you know, like I it's almost like the matrix where the going through the text a million times and making that two minute segment happen over three pages, lets you really look at each moment and go, Oh, okay, this is where we are. And it's pleasurable to me, because I feel like I'm in a better connection with truth than I am when I'm rushing through them all, having my monkey mind. You know, yeah,

Tess Callahan: 39:14

that quality of kind of studied fierceness, I think, is it's present here. It's also when you write about death in some of your other work. In 10th of December, you know Don Ebers experience, especially towards the end there, there's a kind of ferocity about his experience of what's coming. And in Lincoln, in the Bardo, you know, I'm thinking particularly of the character of the Reverend when he goes, you know, the first time he goes to meet his judgment day, and he sees what he sees as a little panic attack. So there's these are quite. Qualities of fierceness and judge, actually judgment that are seem like they're contradictory to Jill's point of view. But I don't think so, actually. And also reminds me of, well, this story, in general, vigil seems to have a deep conversation with Dickens Christmas Carol, and also maybe Tolstoy's master. And, man,

George Saunders: 40:22

for sure, yeah, yeah. I think originally I just wanted to have her have those views and be vindicated. That was my because I think they're true. It's true, hard to live with, but it's true. But then in the book, I would say she has a sort of lack of that fierceness that we're talking about, because she doesn't, you know, for a lot of the book, she says she's trying to comfort him, but she's not doing much like that. And I think what the Frenchman is saying is be fiercer like if you really want to alter his circumstances, you're going to have to have a different playbook. And but she's got a bit of an attachment to this idea that we just read about. So So again, I don't I this was not planned, and I'm not sure at this point. I'm not exactly sure what the book says, but I know that I was a little at times fed up with her, like, come on, cut to the chase. Go in there and nail him. You know, this guy is a tough guy in that bed, and if you're going to change his mind, people have been trying to change his mind his whole life, you're going to have to do better. But she kind of, I think, takes a little comfort in her, that revelation that she had all those years ago. So so I don't know, there's lots of moving parts, and they're still kind of, you know, I'm still kind of understanding the book a little

Tess Callahan: 41:33

bit, and she has a transformation that comes from remembering who she is, which also has, like an echo of some of your other work with Elliot Spencer and other characters whose memories of themselves have been wiped, you know, Jeremy and Liberation Day and, yeah, so that's a powerful experience for her, and she's changed by that, right?

George Saunders: 41:55

She's got, she's got one foot in the eternal and one foot in the mall, because she, you know, she, I mean, and that's maybe one of the other oppositions in the book that I, I stumbled on, was that, you know, I know that that the suffering that we have in this world often has to do with over alliance with self. And so okay, we should not have the self, but on the other hand, it's so dear, you know, and it's so much fun to have a self. So I think she gets into that, that game where she, on one hand, realizes what her aspiration is, but then the real life that she had, and she was in love when she was young, and she died too early, that that all is pulling her back and forth throughout the book. And there's this wedding next door that is kind of like the the cause of that, you know, she can't seem to it's like catnip. She can't quite stay away from it. Yeah.

Tess Callahan: 42:48

So I don't want to take too much of your time, but let me just ask one more question before we wrap up. So in this and in all of your writing, you You seem to write like with your arm around the reader, like we're in the sidecar with you. You know, we feel very held, and at the same time, nothing is solved for us. We're trusted to connect the dots and and also feels like, I mean, speaking of ferocity, it feels to me, particularly in this book, like you're really going for the big game, like you're going for very strenuous questions here. I don't mean in a linear way. I mean circling around the big questions. That seems it's like a kind of ruthless, very personal inquiry, and at the same time you're accommodating the reader. Like is that a how do you do that? How do you hold both of those? It seems like a paradox to me.

George Saunders: 43:48

Yeah, that's a great it's a good question. I think, I think it's kind of a trust you know, that if I am investigating something for myself with a lot of energy and having a lot of fun, and I include the reader in it. And there's a bunch of different ways you can do that. I mean, the best one is, is to imagine a skeptical reader, someone who isn't quite on your team yet, and then you go, Okay, well, let me help. Let me help. Let me help. And the way you help is, it turns out, is by all the kind of usual fictive things, like remembering to be specific, make it fun, put some some jokes, you know, but I do. I've had a sense my whole life of being kind of affectionate for other people. Now, it's not, it's a little bit like Linus, you know, I love mankind. It's people I can't stand. There's a little bit of that in there. Were on an individual basis. I, of course, I feel impatient, or, you know, not drawn in, but when I think in general, of some people and readers out there, I feel warm, a warmth, and also in person, I often find myself kind of trying to placate or trying to soothe or make things nice. So I think part of it for me was at some point realizing that that personal strategy, if purified, can be used artistically as well. Well. And I talked to my students about this, that whatever your basic role in life is the way that you deal with life might not be totally disconnected from the way you deal with it artistically. So I'm guessing, for example, that Flanner O'Connor could be pretty saucy, you know, she didn't take that out, she she rare. She purified it and use it, you know. So I think it's something like that, but I'm glad you feel that way. And I that way. And I, when I really think about my ambition, what I would love is for the books to be around after I'm gone and still giving off a little bit of of that comforting, you know, that kind of inclusion, or like, yeah, life's life's hard, isn't it? Yeah, it is, but kind of fun too, yeah, that would be, make me really happy if it still gave off that slight, a glow of that feeling. That would be a good thing.

Tess Callahan: 45:47

I think, yes, well, in that way, I think that the fierce and benevolent deities exist in all your work, and that in the sense of the humor, the humor softens us up and opens our hearts, and then it's the one two punch. The truth can come in because her undefended.

George Saunders: 46:05

I read somewhere that some some treatments for cancer involve glucose or sugar, because cancer cells love sugar, and they open up, and then the chemo comes. I wouldn't put that on a book jacket, but no, but no, but I think that's, I think that's it. And, you know, the fierceness and the benevolence, sometimes they're codependent. I mean, in order to be benevolent, you might have to be a little fierce. Or, you know, I think a lot of it is stepping out of the habitual. You know, we heard everything about, you know, we should be compassionate. We could be loving. And I think that argument has a better chance of penetrating as you raise the level of the argument. So I should be benevolent, right? Okay, let me put in a story the hardest situation in which to be benevolent. Oh, yeah, that's different. And if that breaks through, then we've just redefined benevolence at a higher register, you know, something like that. Yeah, but it has to be fun. It has to be fun, you know, that's I have a real I have, easily, a kind of a theoretical or lecturing streak. And what I when I sit down, I'm like, Okay, this has to be fun for me and for the reader. Otherwise, it's just all yapping, you know?

Tess Callahan: 47:17

Well, you have achieved that certainly, George, this is a really fun book, and a very profound and moving and disturbing all the right ways, gorgeous celebration of a story. Reading it so generously, I really appreciate it. And is there anything we haven't touched upon that you'd like to say about it?

George Saunders: 47:37

Or Not really. I mean, I'm just kind of, yeah, I'm still kind of trying to figure out what it is myself. You know, I it was a really intense composition process and reviving process, and I feel like I'm I know that I've tuned everything up, but I don't know what it's saying yet. So it's kind of fun to think about it. I've helped me do that very much,

Tess Callahan: 47:59

but that, in itself, is just like your openness to your own work as its own thing, speaking to you is so inspiring,

George Saunders: 48:06

really, yeah, it's, I always think it's not me, it's just something I did, and that's, you know, it gives you, you know, a little more freedom to look askance at it, or to like it, if that, if that turns out To be the thing.

Tess Callahan: 48:20

And where can listeners find you, your work, your tour.

George Saunders: 48:25

I'm trying to keep the tour updated on my substack, the story club with George Saunders that you mentioned earlier, kindly. So that's one place, and then I think the Random House webpage will have, it's a bunch of it's almost all the February. So it'll be a lot of, lot of dates, and I'm looking forward to it a

Tess Callahan: 48:42

lot great. And I highly recommend story club, your substack, to any listener. It's, it's such a joy. I think there must be three of you, George, for all of the you know, the output, I mean, what you offer there, the incredible generosity. It's, I'm just amazed that you, you know, I've written a

George Saunders: 49:01

novel at all. Thank you for being it's so much fun. I was so gratified. You know, that the people who show up there are just incredible and no snark. It seemed like any topic we get on to, somebody has an amazing life experience that speaks to that. So it's a great I think I started off thinking I had to be really smart and sort of give lecture after lecture, but now I just feel like I'm hosting this party with all these really gifted people, you know, what do you think about this? And you get this beautiful flood of intelligent responses. So it's encouraging, you know, it's not, I mean, sort of get into my usual, you know, Dread after watching the news, and then you go in there and you're like, Okay, that's complicated, because these are a lot of good people, and they're earnest, and they're trying hard, and they're you know, so it's been a real, a real joy.

Tess Callahan: 49:47

Yeah, yeah, for me too, I'm glad you're there. Thank you for your time, George, enjoy your tour, and thanks for another beautiful creation that you've offered to.

George Saunders: 50:00

World Well, thank you so much for the last the last conversation, it's wonderful. I hope I see you out on the road somewhere.

Tess Callahan: 50:05

I hope so too. Okay, that's it for today. If you enjoyed this episode, please help spread the word. Follow us. Review us. Give us five stars on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to our writers at the well substack, where we offer short written interviews with authors on similar topics. Huge thanks to Christopher Lloyd Clark for the intro and outro music, and to Eric Fisher for his ever patient and often miraculous audio engineering and thank you for listening. See you next time you.