George Saunders Has a New Mantra

Anyone who loves George Saunders’s writing can tell you about his wicked imagination: luminous, dark, wholly original, and quite frequently supernatural. Saunders is, after all, the man who gave us Lincoln in the Bardo, about a grieving president and the chorus of ghosts he meets in the graveyard; “Escape From Spiderhead,” a Huxley-esque vision of criminal justice and personal responsibility; and “Fox 8,” about a fox who begins to understand human language by eavesdropping on people’s bedtime stories. 

The twin currents that run through these and all of his works, including his newest novel, Vigil, about a spirit tending to a dying oil executive, is large-heartedness paired with unsparing wit. Saunders is funny. Hilarious even. (See also: his short story “The Moron Factory,” published in this magazine last year.) I recently spoke with him about how his ideas come to him, karma, and fiction as a source of truth. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Adrienne LaFrance: Set the scene for me: Where are you doing your writing? What tools are around you? What do you see on your desk as you write?

George Saunders: Honestly, it doesn’t matter that much to me. I have a really low threshold for vibe. Just whatever. There’s something that happens, I think neurologically, where I’m just like, Okay, this is serious now. I can be on a bus or on a plane, and it’s just like some walls go up where I’m like, Okay, we’re not going outside of this sacred space. I do think of it as sacred. But you could probably say a little more honestly that it’s just where it has to happen, this space where I made my bread and butter. 

So it doesn’t really matter. But I do have these little ritual objects. Like I have a quote from Ed Ruscha: Every artist wants to make a picture that will open the gates to heaven. And then there’s a picture that our daughter took of a restaurant in New York that had—I think the restaurant was called America—and it had an inverted American flag [where the stars and stripes have switched spots]. That excites me a little bit, like, Oh yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do. 

LaFrance: You’ve said before that sometimes a line of prose will come to you almost in a dream. Do you actually wake up with a sentence or character that has come to you fully formed, or does it flow to you in pieces as you’re walking around?

Saunders: This is a really good writer-talking-to-another-writer question. It’s the interview I would conduct, too! The truth is, it comes so many different ways. And I think the skill that I’ve developed over the years is that, no matter how it comes, I can vet it pretty quickly. Like, I can feel something in the quality of the idea—if it’s a bullshit idea, or one of the ideas that you think about writing but probably should never touch. And then there’s another feeling like, Yeah, maybe. Come back tomorrow. And if it comes back a few times, then I start to take it seriously. Sometimes a little fragment will appear within the wrong story and I’ll move it out. But for me, there is something about the low-intention feeling, where I’m not looking for a story, I’m not hoping to find a way to embed a theme or something. I’m just pretty much an idiot walking through the woods and something goes, Hey, I am delightful! 

[Read: ‘The Moron Factory,’ a short story by George Saunders]

LaFrance: For Vigil, did you start with a character or an idea? 

Saunders: It was the idea that there was a generation of people—mostly men—who had spent the best years of their lives refuting climate change when they had pretty good reason to know that it was true. I was doing some reading. And I realized that those men were getting old now. And it was also during a period—one of those almost comical periods—where the weather was going completely haywire. You know, a different disaster every week. And I thought, I wonder if a person like that, if they’re watching the weather, do they go, Oooh, shit? And then that seemed to resonate with other works of literature—of course A Christmas Carol and a lot of Tolstoy—but also it was something that I’m going through as an older person. Just like: How did you do? And how would you decide how you did? Could a person ever arrive at a place where certain truths that seemed undeniable in their youth had been overturned? I mean, I look at my own taste in music.

LaFrance: Wait, what music specifically? 

Saunders: I won’t name bands, but I was so much into that real baroque art rock. Or with reading. I was a big Ayn Rand fan when I was in college. Seemed great to me! It’s lovely that your experience with your life can undermine those earlier ideas, and change them. For most of us, I would imagine those changes are kind of fun and maybe not so bad. But I was thinking, what about for people who started a war? Or delayed action on climate change for 20 or 30 years? Does that truth ever settle on them? Obviously, some people look back and just go, Nope. That’s not a good book. But could someone dislodge them? That is the question. 

LaFrance: Dwelling in that mental space—How did I do?, as you put it—how did that affect how you think about your own life?

Saunders: It did something I didn’t expect. It made me resolve to, as regrets come up, just face them. Admit it. That has become a new inner mantra: Admit it. And on so many levels. If you’re reading your work and it’s not quite working, admit it.

We’ve found this with our daughters. They’re such wonderful people. And as they got older, we would have talks with them where we’d say, You know, we kind of messed that up. Sorry. And it’s amazing how that kind of just takes the wind out of any negative sails, to just admit it. 

So that’s what this guy in the book can’t do at all. And it’s tragic. It was kind of fun to be him, you know, like, I’m not listening to you. But it was also sad because you keep thinking, Oh, come on, you could give a little bit here. And he’s like, If I give a little bit, I have to give all the way. It also started to make me think a little about various political positions that are very built around denial—the denial of other people’s experience, the denial of the other 50 percent of the population. Ultimately, that’s a terrible, hellish fix to get in, where part of your mind knows that you messed up and would love to repent, and the other part is too frightened. And, of course, the problem is that that combination makes people quite aggressive.

LaFrance: I think what you’re describing—both in your book and in reality—is also this culture of extreme certainty and of doubling down no matter what. 

Saunders: Yes. 

LaFrance: And that takes a toll on everyone, including the people perpetuating it. 

Saunders: Yes, 100 percent. I would say it’s karmic in the sense of cause and effect. If you are denying something and you know that it’s true, that’s costing you something every minute in terms of your attention to the rest of the world and your ability to respond to it.

LaFrance: You alluded to getting at the truth in your writing. I’ve talked to a lot of journalists who sometimes find themselves wondering, is the work we’re doing enough? Is it enough to just keep telling the truth? Of course I believe the answer is yes. But I also find myself turning to the arts for truth in a world where reality seems ever shakier. Do you think of the work you’re doing as truth-seeking at its core, or is it all just creative expression?

Saunders: I think they’re the same, actually. As a writer of fiction, you’re seeking truth, but that sounds a little lofty. For me—I’m trying to compel you to come in closer as a reader. How do I do that? Truth is a pretty good way. For example, let’s say I was writing a character, your age, and I got it just right about what high school was like—the smell and the feel of the high-school hallway. You’re leaning in. That’s a technique that writers have always used, but it’s also a form of intimacy, or honesty, to say I know you. We have the same basic brain structure. So if I talk to you about fresh-cut grass on a summer day, I’m going, You know that? And you go, Yeah. And even in times like this, if I try to become the most alert version of myself in that, and I hand it to you, and it lights up your brain, then we’ve just reassured ourselves that that’s a real thing. To reach across time and space and say, You’re not alone. And I don’t mean that in a mushy greeting-card way. You’re not alone. I’m just you on a different day. 

I don’t know if you feel this, but I have felt sometimes, reading different magazines and newspapers, that in a certain way, we’re like a very polite older gentleman who’s used to talking in a certain way. And then some thug comes along and knocks him over. And he’s like, I say! It’s like our modes of fairness are getting outlapped by this ridiculousness. But in my work, what I think I’m doing is imagining all these readers who are as frustrated—and maybe even as agitated and scared—as I am, and saying, Okay, let’s resist, but let us not lose ourselves. And one way we can continue to be ourselves is to reassure ourselves that truth and love are still operative. Of course they’re still operative! Cause and effect, still operative. Sometimes I feel like I’m painting the baseboards in a house in which the roof is collapsing. But then maybe somebody would go, Oh, it’s raining in here, but nice baseboards!

LaFrance: But then the sunlight’s coming in where the roof used to be—and did you see those baseboards with all that beautiful sunlight on them? 

Saunders: Right, right!

[Read: The one book everyone should read]

LaFrance: I’m curious what you’re reading now.

Saunders: I’m reading The Power Broker. It’s really humbling. Just the detail. And then the other thing I read before that, I read Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, which I also hadn’t read. And then I read—I found, in Santa Monica, they had these boxes where people put out their old books, and I found a 1960 combined edition of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And it was mind-blowing! It was so funny. And deeply political without being political at all—I loved that. 

LaFrance: Which books have you reread most over the years?

Saunders: I reread Chekhov. And I read Dead Souls [by Nikolai Gogol] often. 

LaFrance: I just reread Dead Souls!  

Saunders: Isn’t it weird?

LaFrance: It’s very funny. It’s also Mel Brooks’s favorite book, and I always want to read and watch everything he ever loved. 

Saunders: I love that fact. That’s amazing. And, yeah, of course. It makes sense.

LaFrance: This is funny to me because there’s a quality that I ascribe to his work that I also see in yours—this insistent lightness, or even playfulness, in spite of everything else. People don’t necessarily think of Chekhov or Gogol as funny—but they really were. And your books and stories explore the darkest themes while also retaining that light. 

Saunders: I do think that’s a comic view of the world. In those moments when we lose control of our lives—which thankfully don’t happen that often, but they do happen. It’s kind of like there’s this action—and this is total Gogol—that produces a reaction, but it’s off. It’s off, and then somebody reacts to the reaction and that’s off. Like life is a pool table but the billiard balls are all weighted in a funny way. That for me is the root of comedy, or at least one root of comedy. 

The other one is for somebody to kind of vault over the conventional way of approaching something because those conventional truths sometimes protect power. If you vault over that, say the true thing, and the person laughs? Boom, you’ve made a connection. But maybe the simpler answer here is: I’ve always been a person who jokes.

LaFrance: This does not surprise me. 

Saunders: My first girlfriend broke up with me in front of the locker room at the high school and she said, You just make too many jokes. You’re always joking.

LaFrance: Her loss.

Saunders: Yeah! And then I made a joke! And she walked off.

LaFrance: Do you remember what the joke was?

Saunders: I don’t. I know I said something funny, but I don’t remember what it could possibly have been. I think for me it’s a reflex. And sometimes it’s kind of a place to hide, you know?  

LaFrance: Of course. Humor as deflection. 

Saunders: But in the exact same flavor, it is when I’m feeling things the most deeply that some form of humor comes out. With Lincoln in the Bardo, I realized that humor is actually a subcategory of the thing we just might call wit. And wit is basically the alertness of the writer—being aware of where the reader might be, and then responding to that. So we’re in a really close dance. Sometimes it’s funny, but other times it can be a whole bunch of other different nuanced things where I see where you are, I move you slightly left, you know.

[Read: George Saunders on Chekhov’s different visions of happiness]

LaFrance: As you’re writing, how are you assessing what’s working or not? How much are you thinking about this dance with the reader in the moment of writing?

Saunders: You know, this is the funny thing. I’m never thinking about it, actually. What it reminds me of most is when I was in high school, I could sometimes be a good class clown. And I had one teacher who really didn’t particularly like you interrupting in class. With her, if you got it right, her face would do this thing where she just would look at you like, All right. 

LaFrance: Begrudging respect. 

Saunders: So I think about that still. It’s all about when you pull the switch. As a joke comes into your head, if it stays there just a second too long and then you say it, it doesn’t land. There’s an optimal launching point. When I’m typing something fresh, I’m in that mindset. And it’s the same when I’m revising. 

LaFrance: The timing, the rhythm, all of it. Though comedians develop their sense over time by experiencing the audience react. With other forms of writing, it’s so solitary, but you still develop this instinct without any feedback from the audience. 

Saunders: That’s right. Junot Díaz, I heard him say once that a writer is just somebody who realized rather early that language is power. That’s true of a lot of stand-up or even just comedic riffing—where if you could do it well, you could stay with the grown-ups.

LaFrance: I’ve been thinking so much about the power of language lately, with regard to artificial intelligence—just the degree to which it will change us, having machines that people assume can converse like humans, even though anybody can discern pretty quickly that these models are sycophantic fabulists. But what does it mean to have machines mimicking us in this way?

Saunders: It’s fun, on some level. It’s a fascinating thing. And I think it’s one of those moments where it’s actually as simple as it appears, at least in terms of writing: You should do it yourself. It’s honorable to do it yourself. And when you do it yourself, you put things in there that a machine doesn’t know about you or anything else, things that you learned, you know? So of course you can have a pretty good simulation, but why? What’s the value? I hear people say, Oh, but I really struggle with personal writing. And I’m like, then struggle. 

When I pick up a book by anybody, I want that person’s life filtered through that particular art form to come and land on me with my particular experience of both life and the form. So I don’t see what all the fuss is. The only reason I’m afraid is—you know, if you put somebody in a world where they only heard Muzak, their aesthetics would change. Their discernment would change. And then if they listened to Mozart, it would just bother them; they wouldn’t get it. So I do worry about that. And anybody who’s been moved by a novel knows that that’s a big sacrifice. To give up your ability to be moved by a work of prose is a big loss for you.

[Read: The elite college students who can’t read books] 

LaFrance: I’m an optimistic person generally, but I really do believe that despite what you hear about people not wanting to read anymore and not knowing how to read anymore—the power of the written word is undisputed. Maybe it’s not for everyone. But for the people it is for? A few weekends ago, I went to this marathon reading of Moby-Dick at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. It takes place over the course of 30 hours. I loved it so much. One of the most beautiful aspects was that as the hours went on, more and more people started showing up in the hallways, just sitting there reading Moby-Dick silently together. I left thinking, As long as people continue to gather around literature this way, humans are going to be fine. We’re going to be great.

Saunders: That’s true. You know, I do this Substack Story Club. If anyone wants to be encouraged, just look at the comments. Because people are so humane and so smart and so generous with each other. I’ve been thinking about this, that maybe the way we judge how we’re doing is wrong. Because if there’s a core of dedicated readers like there was in the hallways at the museum, they have a disproportionate influence in the world. One, because they themselves are powerful, but also because the way that the light comes to them—through a work of prose—is so much more exquisite. But I do have to say, I feel that part of our political mess has to do with cognitive degradation. The things that people say, the way they say them, the way we accept it. 

LaFrance: The informational environment is a mess. 

Saunders: It’s a big mess. I was thinking recently about the story about the poison well. How there’s a kingdom, and it has only one well, and if you drink from it, it makes you insane. And then the king, who has his own well, has a decision to make: Should he drink from the poison well and rule his people? Now here’s where the metaphor gets a little messy, because what I think we have to do is protect the clean well. Even if it’s just a little bit of flame in your hand, don’t let the flame go out. In the ’60s, they would talk about the silent majority. Now I think there is a silent majority—or maybe a silent semi-majority—of literary, literate people. So I take some encouragement in that. 

LaFrance: Did you ever read that Carl Sagan book from the 1990s, The Demon-Haunted World?

Saunders: No, no.

LaFrance: You should take a look at it. He was extraordinarily prescient and always humane and sort of romantic in the way that some of your work is. He was very worried then about a lot of what actually has come to pass. Hearing you talk about the poison well makes me think of him—and how that little flame in our hands is not just about believing in literature but believing in empiricism and the Enlightenment, beauty and truth.

Saunders: Essentially, we’re set up to be selfish. And all those things that you just listed—beauty, truth, empiricism—if a person abides in hardship long enough, they’ll see that all those things you just mentioned are quantifiable goods. The way that they can escape from misery is to be alert to truth. I mean, if you’re in the jungle, you’d better be alert to truth, because otherwise you’ll die. And so if we see literature as just a rarefied version of truth, any sensible person would eventually gravitate toward it because it is life-enhancing, sometimes lifesaving. So it’s not like we’re trying to sell them a lofty, lacy-filigree thing. It’s like, do you want to be in touch with reality or not? Do you want it to be in touch with reality in the deepest way, or do you want to be an amateur?

LaFrance: Water, sunlight, truth, beauty. That’s all we need.

Saunders: And cheeseburgers.