George Saunders

Summary

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Episode: George Saunders
Date: February 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this illuminating and profoundly honest conversation, Rick Rubin sits down with celebrated writer George Saunders to dive into the art and psyche of storytelling. The episode traverses Saunders’ evolution as a writer, his approach to creativity and teaching, struggles with anxiety and perfectionism, spirituality, and the roots and rhythms of his process. Expect deep craft insights, vulnerability, and plenty of laughter, as Saunders shares how meaning, authenticity, and presence emerge line by line, revision by revision.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Changing Creative Intake & Substack

• On Intake and Selectivity:

  • Saunders describes becoming more protective of his attention as he’s gotten older, reading less widely and valuing quiet—largely because of the demands of his Substack, where he analyzes one story every two weeks.

    “The last few years I’m like, eh, maybe you don’t...can kind of be a little quieter.” (00:17)

• Genesis of Substack and Teaching:

  • Inspired by his teaching, especially from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Saunders saw Substack as an extension of sharing his accumulated teaching and craft notes.

    “I had this notebook that was like an accumulation of all the notes...If I kick it right now, all that goes away...So anyway, I wrote that Russian book and then really missed it when I was done and somebody said, would you like to do a Substack?” (01:11)

The Nature of Creative Process & Revision

• Stories Emerge From Reaction, Not Plans:

  • Saunders emphasizes that the best writing comes from micro-choices and reaction, not from executing a preset worldview.

    “If I had to boil down creativity, I’d say it’s reaction.” (05:09)
    “The great idea is the one that allows you to grow it, you know, and it becomes a different idea.” (22:21)

  • He likens creation to a “seed crystal”: small lines or images that spontaneously accrete into a story.

    “You put the seed crystal down and it kind of just spontaneously accretes outward. That’s the best case.” (07:40)

• Anxiety & Permission in Art:

  • Saunders openly discusses his chronic anxiety, particularly around artistic identity and permission to follow his instincts rather than literary models.

    “When I was younger I had that terrible lockup of like, which artist am I going to be?... Now I can kind of say, well, all that deciding is in the realm of conceptual thought, which can be helpful, but it can also kill you.” (06:14)

• Editing as Part of Creation:

  • He blurs the line between editor and writer; for him, writing is one long series of reactions and tweaks, not two separate parts.

    “At this point, I don’t really make much separation...Creativity actually happens...when I react to it with a pencil in my hand.” (05:09)

• On Roadblocks and Avoidance Moments:

  • Blocks in a draft are clues, not failures. He now looks at story “roadblocks” as the subconscious guiding him to deeper problems rather than just errors to fix.

    “If you fix one, it throws light on the other two...the subconscious is giving me a higher place to go on the mountain.” (27:28)

Teaching Creative Writing

• Specificity and Trust:

  • Both Rubin and Saunders stress the value of precise, non-prescriptive feedback.

    Rick Rubin: "The solutions turn out to be much better when I'm not suggesting them." (10:47)

  • Saunders on editing:

    “A lot of the editing is...let’s pretend that my reader is actually 12% smarter than me, make cuts on that basis.” (11:17)

• Wisdom Through Listening:

  • For Saunders, wisdom as a teacher comes from listening and guiding, not dictating, and from learning over decades about the psychological states and avoidance patterns students bring.

    “The minute the student comes in...you think you're not good enough. Let's find out what flavor you think you're not good enough." (94:21–94:51)

The Role of Spirituality

• Catholicism and Buddhism:

  • Saunders’ spiritual journey moves from a “seriously beautiful Catholic experience” in Chicago to Tibetan Buddhism, seeing overlaps in ritual and empathy.

    “I practice Tibetan Buddhism...but...I’d already been a Buddhist before I knew what it was just from writing.” (13:02)

  • On approaching characters with compassion:

    “Jesus was sort of a novelist in that sense, because he could approach this person that other people didn’t like...by contemplating them through revision I can find a way in.” (14:09)

Craft Principles and Literary Wisdom

• Reaction as Creative Principle:

  • Saunders and Rubin both relate writing (and music production) as a process of reacting: sentence-to-sentence for writing, move-to-move in music.

• On Fiction vs. Nonfiction:

  • Saunders finds fiction allows more honesty, complexity, and darkness than nonfiction, where he is loath to hurt real people’s feelings.

    “With fiction, I don’t feel that compunction...I can let the darkness and the kind of negative valences come in.” (34:25)

• Presence, Rhythm, and Authenticity:

  • Both agree that the best work (in any medium) has rhythm and presence that is felt, not strategized or fabricated.

    Rick Rubin: “Presence is someone truly inhabiting...almost as if who they are is no longer around and just this thing is appearing. I would call presence. Like God steps in.” (79:13)

• On Causation and Plot:

  • Causation in story is simply giving the reader information and responding to how it changes them.

    “Causality really is just the parts of the story being in alert communication with each other. That this part of this story has done something...” (101:44)

  • He warns against overemphasizing plot or intellectual systems when writing.

    “Don’t worry about plot. That is a word that gives people a lot of conniptions.” (64:21)

Memory, Upbringing, and Humility

• Upbringing:

  • Shares comic and affectionate stories about his working-class family and experiences delivering chicken, seeing everyday diversity in the suburbs.

    “One of the things is, as a delivery guy, you got to stand in somebody’s house for a couple minutes...you were kind of told that the suburbs were homogeneous. But then...oh wow, this is a really...It’s a city, you know.” (47:26)

• Critical Moments in Life:

  • Tells stories of formative feedback early in his music and academic experiences that directed him toward humility and writing.

    “He leaned away and he said, I’m going to tell you something. He said, if you don’t change the way you’re living, you’re going to be a very unhappy adult...” (51:01)

• Teaching Philosophy & Empathy:

  • His current teaching lauds emotional honesty and encourages students not to fear sentiment or imperfection.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Story/Creation

• “I crank out some crap this morning, doesn't matter what, tomorrow I look at it and I react to it with a pencil in my hand. That seems to me where creativity actually happens.” (05:09, George Saunders)

• “If you revise enough, I mean, what are you revising from your own stuff? So I think a lot of young writers, and I certainly did, get locked up on this idea of what's my great idea. I need a great idea. And you won't get one because there's no such thing.” (21:57, George Saunders)

• “I love that God steps in. And, like, in writing terms, there is a corollary because if...I'm present as a person...the idea and the sentence and boom, they're just there.” (79:13, George Saunders)

On Teaching

• “If I go on tour and I get a bad review, I'm flinchy. If I get a good review, I'm confident. So sometimes I even will be a little overconfident just so...lure them [students] out a little bit.” (97:00, George Saunders)

• “You think you're not good enough...Let's find out what flavor you think you're not good enough. And then I'm gonna do some judo and I'm gonna show you that the thing you aren't good at is actually a unity with the thing you're good at.” (94:21–94:51, George Saunders)

On Revision and Rhythm

• “It's everything. So like, sometimes there'll be a sentence, they'll go like, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like, yech. That last part. Lop that off...the correct rhythm will present and then words will come in to fill that.” (41:56, George Saunders)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:11: On how Saunders’ Substack came to be, transition from teaching.
• 05:09: Creativity as reaction; anxiety and the role of revision.
• 10:42: Specificity and trust in teaching and feedback.
• 13:02: Saunders’ spiritual practice and its link to writing.
• 21:53: The myth of the ‘great idea’; generative vs. prescriptive writing.
• 27:10: Roadblocks in writing as positive signals.
• 34:29: Fiction as a more truthful medium than nonfiction (for Saunders).
• 41:56: The importance of rhythm in prose.
• 79:13: Presence and “God steps in” in creative moments.
• 94:21–94:51: Insecurities of young writers and the central lesson of craft instruction.

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Episode Tone & Flow

This episode is marked by generosity, warmth, and candor—Saunders’ humility and self-awareness are matched by Rick Rubin’s thoughtful, gently probing questions. Their rapport toggles between quiet meditative moments and exuberant laughter. Whether you’re a writer, artist, or an aficionado of creative process, Saunders offers hard-won wisdom on navigating doubt, teaching and being taught, and the mystery at the heart of storytelling.

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Further Resources

• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (Saunders’ craft book on Russian short stories)
• George Saunders’s Substack (for in-depth story analyses)
• Tetragrammaton Podcast archives

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For anyone seeking to understand the hidden mechanics of great stories—and why they move us—this conversation is a masterclass in process, intuition, and human connection.

Transcript

[George Saunders]

Tetragrammaton. Actually, honestly, the last few years, my whole intake has changed. I don't know if it's. Takes more time to do my work. I feel a little more delicate outside of it. Like, I'm a little more protective about what I'm listening. So I think when I was younger I was like, I got to hear everything, I got to read everything. And the last few years I'm like, eh, maybe you don't. Maybe, you know, can kind of be a little quieter. And I'm doing this, the substack, which is we do a story every two weeks. So that means pretty much I'm reading that story for two weeks, which shuts out a lot of stuff.

[Interviewer]

How did the substack start?

[George Saunders]

I wrote that book about the Russian short story. And then I just kind of enjoyed that there was a different modality.

[Interviewer]

Swim in the Pond. I love that book.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Thank you. I'd been teaching all those years, you know, that Syracuse. And I came back from a tour and I had my first class and it was like the kids left and it's just like the chalk dust in the air. I'm like, I love this. I didn't. I always knew I liked it, you know, but I had this notebook that was like an accumulation of all the notes I'd taken and teaching those Russian stories over 20 years and nobody else could make any sense of it. It's just scroll. But I thought, you know, if I kick it right now, all that goes away. And it wasn't only me. It was all those generations of students that were giving me feedback. And so. So anyway, I wrote that Russian book and then really missed it when I was done and somebody said, would you like to do a substack? And I thought, yeah, I could do. Do it on story craft. Like, what is like always going back to, okay, forget everything, you know, what's a story really? And especially experientially, what is it? You know, so the whole idea of kind of which you explore in your book, like, what is the mind on art actually doing? And at some point when you watch what the mind on art is doing, it's what the mind is always doing. And so that opened the door for me as a kind of a working class person. So I had a real anxiety about art. Like that's the thing that everyone else can do, but I. I'm not smart enough. And somehow think of it this way, it's like, well, you. You can perceive. You can perceive your perceptions, you can adjust. You're an artist, you Know, like that.

[Interviewer]

Is that the way you find out what you think through? Do you surprise yourself when you're speaking and come to understand your worldview?

[George Saunders]

Yes. Although I also noticed it's not necessarily a worldview I'd endorse, but it's the one that's most authentic or it gets spit out by process. So that's interesting to. Sometimes I'll say, well, I'm starting a story to demonstrate this aspect of my worldview. And the story goes, no, you're not. You. We don't do that here, you know. So you start tweaking it and working with it. Then at the end it says something and you're like, oh, is that what you mean to say? And the way you check that is you, you know, you check all the seams and if everything holds up, you squeeze it all tight. And then that's what you said. And is it your worldview? It's. I think it's a leader. It sometimes will show me what I ought to be thinking.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

In a swim in the pond, there's a lot of wildly analytical detail. Do you think that the writers wrote knowing those things or no?

[George Saunders]

Depends how we define knowing, I think. Not intellectually. I don't think they said, I'm going to do this.

[Interviewer]

They couldn't explain it to you?

[George Saunders]

No. I would even say they might not even know that they did it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. But some way you think inside they knew.

[George Saunders]

Yes. And I think it's through. My theory is. And again, all this is just based on my, you know, my. My thing. And I'd love to hear how it is in the studio, because sometimes you just keep micro choosing this over that, this over that, this over that. And I would say being a great artist has something to do with creating the maximum number of choice points, because if you're choosing one time, that's only one dollop of you. But if you're choosing a thousand times over the course of the thing, a lot of you is getting in there and you don't necessarily vet those things. You just go, you prefer A to B. So I think with these great Russian writers, I think they did things. I think they laugh at me talking about it as analytically as I do, but it doesn't mean it's, you know, it's not.

[Interviewer]

It may be accurate.

[George Saunders]

Yes. So there are ways of knowing that are deeper than the ones that you and I can explicate right now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And that's, for me, the beautiful thing is I don't, you know, 66. I'm kind of. I'm kind of know this guy and I'm like, yeah, I can predict his neurotic behavior to some extent, but the person that comes out when I'm doing this writing process is more interesting. So I think you can have a. By having micro attention to the thousands of choosing points. And even then you're not saying what fits my theme or what. You're just saying, I like the optometrist. I like this better than that. If you do that a thousand times in six pages, there's a lot of you in there. And it's not this you, it's some other you. So to me, that's the enduring kind of addictive thing, is you to keep luring better parts of yourself out onto the page. Oh, that's, you know.

[Interviewer]

Would you say that's the editor part of you?

[George Saunders]

Yes. Although at this point I don't really make much separation between. I mean, I've been thinking lately, if I had to boil down creativity, I'd say it's reaction. So I crank out some crap this morning, doesn't matter what, tomorrow I look at it and I react to it with a pencil in my hand. That seems to me where creativity actually happens. Not so much in that first. Well, also, I've kind of been thinking lately that one of the things we do with craft is, at least for me, is I'm trying to get my anxiety down. I'm very anxious person. So my artistic approaches aren't necessarily true, but they are anxiety reducing. So for me to say, don't worry about what you put down on the blank page. That's a real anxiety reducer.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Type any old thing because you're such a good reviser that tomorrow you'll. You'll look at that mess and go, oh, poor baby, you know, and you'll start tweaking and you'll find something in there that's got some life on and on and on. So, yeah, it's editing, but I don't really make a, at this point, a big distinction between editing and writing. It's just referring.

[Interviewer]

Is anxiety a big issue in your life?

[George Saunders]

It's been a slightly under the surface issue my whole life, and to which I would say, when I was young, I responded by being very jovial, you know, like just always, I can do it, you know, puppy energy. But yeah, it is, it is. And especially artistically, it was because when I was younger I had that terrible lockup of like, which artist am I going to be? I have to decide. And then you can't be any of them except the one that you haven't found yet. Yeah, so there's a lot of, you know, obsessing over which lineage and should I be funny or not and so on. And so I think as an older person I can kind of say, well, all that deciding is in the realm of conceptual thought, which can be helpful, but it can also kill you because I don't think what we do works on. I mean, you can describe it conceptually, but I'm not sure you can make it conceptually, so to say. I don't know what writer I am, I don't know what lineage. I don't know whether I'm going to be funny or experimental. And to keep saying that till you're dead, that seems to me the tricky part to say. I'm going to start a story tomorrow, as much as I can manage. I don't have any. Any concepts about it. I'm going to go to it and see what it wants to tell me. So that's all good. But then of course, I'm sure you felt as you're a master. So don't you have some theories? Well, I do trust them.

[Interviewer]

When you sit down with the blank page and you write some not great stuff like may have happened this morning, where does the starting point come from?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, it's usually as little as possible. You know, if I just hear somebody say something funny, put that down. And remember like in biology, the seed crystal. You put the seed crystal down and it kind of just spontaneously accretes outward. That's the best case. Some little funny line of dialogue. You don't even know who said it. You put it down and you react to it over and over. But other times they're bigger, like with that Lincoln and the Bardo, which is like a two line outline. Lincoln comes to the crypt, interacts with his son's body and leaves. Meanwhile, the sun shouldn't be here and he is. That's it, you know, so that's a whole other one. But for me, the less is word precious. Is that the word? If the, if the. If the thing is front loaded with meaning, then I don't like it.

[Interviewer]

It'll end up being too narrow.

[George Saunders]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, the sentence already did that. It's like, why continue?

[George Saunders]

He wrote your book already.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Saunders]

There's that thing I always quote Einstein. I don't think he said this, but it was. No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception. So if you do that, it's a buzzkill for everybody. So I think that's part of the. As a young person with literary aspirations, you think your job is to be super smart, have a worldview, and then just shit it down on people, you know, and that's how they'll know you're powerful. And then turns out that's not it.

[Interviewer]

I love the idea of the reaction being what creation is about. Also. I haven't thought about it in that way before, and it's a helpful framing from moving forward. And it's true. Everything we do is in reaction to something. And I love the idea of writing a sentence and then the next sentence is a reaction to the last sentence.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

That's a different way of looking at the process.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. And it also. I think it mimics what the reader's doing. The reader, you know, you have a sentence that's a little wobbly on its feet.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

The reader notices. So what do you do with the reader's noticing the. That's the reaction, too. So I don't know. Is it true in the studio? Are there analogs to this? When you're producing somebody, are you reacting?

[Interviewer]

Always. If whatever's happening makes me lean forward and want to hear what happens next, it's good. And if something happens I wasn't expecting, it's very good. If it starts and I lean back and nothing happens, chances are I want to stop it.

[George Saunders]

So, because I'm thinking about this in terms of my teaching, what does the corrective look like?

[Interviewer]

I would say, what else can we listen to? What else do you have in that case?

[George Saunders]

That's. That's. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Or I would listen to the whole thing and say, it got interesting to me at this point. How do we make the whole thing feel like this?

[George Saunders]

Yeah. See, that's something in my. I teach at Syracuse, and I talk a lot about specificity of response. Because, you know, in a workshop, if someone says, this is boring, it's hurtful. And also, you can't work with that. But if you push down and say, where is it boring? And do you have a different word for boring then, oh, it's repetitious on page six. We can fix repetition.

[Interviewer]

Agreed. By the way, on specificity, when I'm making notes, the more specific I can be in comments that I give, the more helpful they are.

[George Saunders]

Yes. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Early in my career, I would state what I thought the solution was. And now I don't do that.

[George Saunders]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

And the solutions turn out to be much better when I'm not suggesting them.

[George Saunders]

See, that's a beautiful idea, because I think part of the reader, writer thing is intimacy and trust. So if I say something on page six, then all the energy goes to the writer. And they usually know, actually. So that move where I say, I trust you to find out, that's, you know. And it's likewise if I'm writing something and I do three repetitions of the same idea, because you might not get it. My theory is you suddenly feel that as condescension, which is disengagement, and you like me a little less. So if I. A lot of the editing is going, you know, let's pretend that my reader is actually 12% smarter than me, make cuts on that basis. A little scary because sometimes you might, you know, have to trust more than you feel like it. But if it works, then you get that thing where the reader is having a normal day, picks up the book and goes, oh, this. This person likes me and respects me. And this experience is coming out of a. A shared pool of experience. We've both been here, he knows that. And he's speaking to the higher me. So the higher me comes out and you get this kind of engagement of. I always think of it as the ghosts, like ghosts coming out of the writer and the reader. And they meet up in that beautiful high territory and then afterwards they go back and they.

[Interviewer]

How did you come to that?

[George Saunders]

Just through feeling. Feeling it like it's like nothing mystical, but, you know, the sacramental space of hard work, like bearing down on the manuscript. And you look up and you go, whoa, that ghost did some good shit today, you know, And. And then. And also feeling that you. You would meet people at readings and they would talk about a certain story. And we met in another place, the two of us. You know, I love the idea that

[Interviewer]

you talk about the writer and the reader. Ghosts come out of each of them and meet. But it's nothing mystical or metaphysical.

[George Saunders]

It's completely like.

[Interviewer]

Okay, I understand.

[George Saunders]

Very quotidian. Quotidian ghosts.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about your spiritual life.

[George Saunders]

Well, I practice Tibetan Buddhism and the Nying Ma tradition. I'm a little lapsed at the moment. I don't quite know why, but we, my wife and I lived near a community for many years ahead at that time, a really intense three, four hour a night meditative thing, which kind of changed my.

[Interviewer]

When did you get into it?

[George Saunders]

Well, I was about 40 and my wife went. Actually, she was turned on the Thich Nhat Hanh by a Catholic none. And then she went to a Tibetan empowerment, which was very exotic and strange, and then came out kind of saying, yeah, that's. That's pretty weird stuff. And then I started practicing, and there was this big change in her that I. You know, as a husband, you're like, how come we're not having fight 9A anymore? You know, And I want some of that. So I started kind of messing around with kind of just homemade meditation. And then we eventually found a teacher, and. And it seemed to me, I mean, so much like that I'd already been a Buddhist before I knew what it was just from. From writing. So that's been a real interesting cross firing, you know, to say this aspect of. Of Dharma has a corollary in writing. Maybe this one doesn't quite as much yet, but I could try, you know. And then.

[Interviewer]

Did you have any spiritual life growing up Catholic?

[George Saunders]

And like, seriously beautiful Catholic experience? For me, you know, it was in Chicago, kind of south side of Chicago, kind of Dorothy Day progressive Catholicism. And I remember, well, I think probably getting into some kind of meditative state during the long masses. And then there would be, you know, stations of the cross. They were visualizations, basically. And so. And I think I also. I remember kind of being stunned by some of the stories about Jesus being super empathetic, like the woman at the well, you know, what I took from that. I don't know whether a nun told me this. Sorry, I just took it, but is that Jesus was sort of a novelist in that sense, because he could approach this person that other people didn't like and judged. And just by being in the presence, he could pick up on a lot of data that a normal person couldn't pick up on. And that increased data made him fond of her, and the fondness made her open up and then brought up a ghost. So I love that idea. And I think when I started to read more, I thought, oh, that's kind of what my job as a novelist is. I can put anybody in front of me, even if in real life I can't stand them. And by contemplating them through revision, basically, I can find a way in and sort of recognize that they're me on a different day, briefly, you know, while on the page.

[Interviewer]

Do you have to do that to be able to write them?

[George Saunders]

I don't think so, because I think there are a lot of people who do it a different way. But I like to do okay. You know, there's that Flannery o' Connor thing. She says, writer can choose what he writes, but he can't choose what he makes live. So you can have all the plans for how you're going to be. But if it doesn't work. So for me, what works is I call it third person ventriloquist. Where it's like, if I'm going to write your story, I'll start off Rick sat in the yard, you know. But then I have to quickly get into your voice and your head and also your limitations and your aspirations and all that. So it's more of a voice thing. If I. If I do that, if I say, okay, I'm now this person, the voice comes alive in a way that it doesn't if I'm me out here looking at them. So just a kind of a trick.

[Interviewer]

It's still always your imagination of who that person is. It's not really who that person is. You're not channeling them. Right.

[George Saunders]

And mostly they don't exist anyway. I mean, if I write about Lincoln, I mean, the real Lincoln would be kind of unknowable to us, but you could say I'm me in a Lincoln suit.

[Interviewer]

When you write characters, are they often based on people you know, or.

[George Saunders]

No, no. I mean, some of that gets in. But my thing is, it's like, so. So a story will be going along and it has a certain need at a certain point. So I need somebody. Like in Lincoln, Lincoln would be walking across the graveyard, and I need him to turn over here and see a ghost. I don't have any thoughts about who, which one. Just somebody start talking to me. I think, oh, okay. The word hunter comes into my mind and I start saying, okay, he's a hunter. What would a hunter's afterlife look like? And suddenly, spontaneously, there's this big pile of dead animals. All the animals he's killed in his. So it's not anybody I ever knew, but it's kind of just being generated. But other times I will see that I put someone's speech patterns in there. Somebody I know, or an anecdote that somebody told me will get in there. But I think with stories there's always like, why do you need this thing? So the quality of the thing would be colored by why you need it. So let's say that the hero has a goal and I need somebody to impede him for moral reasons. Well, that person has to have that quality. And so then once I figure that out, I start throwing in bits from my own life. And it could be something from you and something from my uncle, even put into the same package. I'm not a writer who says, I want to write a book about this person. But sometimes stuff just gets in there and if it's authentic, then there's a story called Sea Oak. And there's a. The moment in the story was the character who's a real working class guy, has got a girlfriend who's a little bit above him and he's going to have to lose her and he's going to have to lose her for class reasons. That wasn't an idea, but that's the way the story was set up. So I was looking for something that could happen to somebody for class reasons that would, you know. And I thought back to my own youth. I had a friend who was actually an ex brother in law who was really an alcoholic. And one time I was on the couch with this girl I was really in love with who was a couple notches ahead of me. And this guy comes in, just blunders into the house and starts pissing on the wall, you know, and, and I'm there with.

[Interviewer]

This really happened.

[George Saunders]

It really happened. Yeah. And there's this. I'm. There was this person I really kind of cherished, you know, and she's seeing this. So all I could really say was this doesn't usually happen or, you know, but. So that was a painful, you know, like embarrassing memory. Well, co comes along and I need something, I'm like, okay, you're in. But at the same time I'm going to alter it to make it apropos of that situation. So it was different.

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[Interviewer]

How much of a story do you know before you start?

[George Saunders]

Ideally, none. Literally the best stories are the ones I just start with a little something and then it, it grows outward sometimes. I mean, there are times when I, I do know a little more than that, but. But I think the move for me is to look really askance at that idea. Like, okay, yeah, yeah, you claim you're the story, but can you just wait out here a little bit while I investigate? If I find myself clinging to that, then it, it's going to be, I think Gerald Stern, he said, if you start to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking, then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking, you know, so. So I think mostly the ideas, I'm, I'm really dubious. I just think you stay out.

[Interviewer]

It sounds like you could literally start with anything and the story that you are to tell will reveal itself regardless of where you start.

[George Saunders]

That's exactly it. Yeah, exactly it.

[Interviewer]

That's really cool.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. I mean, and it's again, it's anxiety reducing because I don't have to have any ideas, I just have to have a first line. Yeah. I always say, you know, if we wanted to write a story, we could make that coffee cup talk, that glass of water talk in your baseball hat talk. And if we spend enough time on it, all of our personal stuff would come out. Of course it would. Because if you revise enough, I mean, what are you revising from your own stuff? So I think a lot of young writers, and I certainly did get locked up on this idea of what's my great idea. I need a great idea. And you won't get one because there's no such thing. Actually, there's no. The great idea is the one that allows you to grow it, you know, and it becomes a different idea. And it is that. Is that, I mean, I'm wondering, is musically, if someone just goes in and plays a riff, can that sometimes lead to.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely. Even when an artist has well written material, I might suggest that they spend time just jamming and then out of the jams, something comes up unexpected. No one's trying to write a song.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

They're having fun making music. And from that, something happens, right?

[George Saunders]

Because I know in literature, it's kind of like. It's not really that, you know, the first line. It's. I throw the first line at you. You go, okay, you throw it back at me, and I throw it back. It's the path that the story follows. It's actually interesting. So, again, that's cool, because it means there are no beautiful ideas, or if there was, you could put it in there. But the story's going to start poking at it, and it's going to start tearing it apart, and it's going to be. So in this sense, a story is a dynamic. It's like a linear temporal experience that unfolds this way. And like a roller coaster. You're not on the roller coaster going, what does this mean? You know, you're just going, oh, we're going up.

[Interviewer]

You know, do you ever think about what does it mean? Or not until after it's all done.

[George Saunders]

And honestly? Yeah. And this is the kind of cool thing, the. The kind of purest answer is, no, never. But of course you do, because you want to finish it and you want it to be good. So it's kind of like the voice that says, I know what it means. Would you like to know? They're like, yeah, okay, come on in. It's about patriarchy. Oh, all right, duly noted. Step out in the hall again, we'll find out. But it would be silly to not let that guy in. You know, he knows something about it.

[Interviewer]

When that happens, do you say, okay, I know it's about patriarchy now, or do you think, okay, it might be about patriarchy?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I know it's about patriarchy now, but we're going to see if it's.

[Interviewer]

If that's what it is to want to be.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, yeah. There's a great Chicago writer named Stuart Dybeck, and he said, the story is always talking to you, but you just have to listen. And so the story is saying, I think I'm about patriarchy. And you see, you might. Good for you. You know, you might very well be. I hope you are. But at the same time is the minute I say, oh, yes, it is, then what happens with me is procedurally, you know, you have five pages and it's about patriarchy. All right, then, since you know that, you now know the next five pages and you're dead, because the reader feels when you checked out and went on autopilot. So you have to say yes, conditionally you are. But let's keep going and stay fresh. And see what else you want to be about, you know? And to me, the fascinating thing is even that's not theoretical. It's. It's in this rereading process. You know, you're a little meat in your head. I like it, I like it, I like it. And suddenly I don't like it. So to say, in the spirit of specificity. Okay, we don't have to panic. You know, we're not suddenly a bad artist. Having difficulty on page eight. I always, like, have an imaginary voice to the story, like, aw, what's going on? You know, the story says nothing, just, I'm fine. Just keep going. No, no, really, what's. What's happening? Well, I'm kind of boring. You are boring. Poor baby. You know, and then, then you can kind of go, well, yeah, let's just not use boring. And let's look a little closer. And then the story will say, it's basically saying, I'm discontent with your over management of me, and therefore I put in a cloudy section or I put in an alien invasion or some weird shit because I don't like where you're going and I'm stopping in the road. So I kind of developed this idea of avoidance moments, which is if a story has bad language or sometimes a factual error will get in something that couldn't be true or like an unwarranted flashback or forward or change of point of view. That's often the subconscious being very smart and saying, I want the best for you. If you keep going, you're going to fuck up the story. So can we pause here? I'm going to make you pause by injecting something yucky. In a traditional workshop format, that would be an error and you would fix it. But now I'm like, no, that's actually your layers of your subconscious process revealing yourself. This is a draft six tendency. Totally honorable. Let's just note it. You got a to be continued sign up there on page six and one on 11 and one on 12. Don't panic. Just remember they're there. And weirdly, those places often speak to each other. If you fix one, the other very much. Yeah, and I know them. And I also will kind of provide a technical description of why I stopped, why it affected my reading energy. So sometimes it's often semantic. It's just the sentence goes haywire just so I just make that correction. And then. And as you were saying, I used to fix it, but now I just say, you know, leave it alone. Yeah. And nine times out of 10, the writer already Knew it. You know, they knew. And so you say, page nine and a half. I know, I know, I know.

[Interviewer]

I love the idea that those roadblocks along the way speak to each other. That's really a helpful idea because then it's the opposite of when it coming up, you feeling like, oh, you failed. It's more like, oh, another clue to unlock the whole picture.

[George Saunders]

Exactly.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. And there's also. I noticed a pattern to that. Like, as I get further along the revision process, those become more specific and more. They glow. Like, I've got three now. I've been working on this for six months. I've got three places that, you know, on a scale of one to 10, when I hit them, and they're like sixes. The rest of the story might be 8 or 9. It's a 6. So at first you say, well, we can have a few sixes, can't we? But then you say, well, you can, but what if you don't? You know? And then. Yeah, and those are always sort of like. I wouldn't say thematically, but they're causally related. If you fix one, it throws light on the other two and limits the range of possibilities that you could do to solve them, you know, so that's cool, because then when you have problems, you're like, in a certain way, the more problems I have and the more unsolvable they are, the better the story is going to be. It's got kind of bigger shoulders. It's like Houdini, you know, like, if Houdini said, I'm gonna. Now I've got a windbreaker on. I'm not gonna take it off. You'd be like, okay, you know, but if he really, you know, it's got chains and he's at the bottom of the Hudson and he's drunk or whatever, then he's got a real problem to get out of. So whenever. Now, whenever I get a story that has really impossible problems that I would have that would cause me to bail when I was 30, I'm like, oh, good. Now we're. The subconscious is giving me a higher place to go on the mountain.

[Interviewer]

Amazing. Are you the best judge of your own work?

[George Saunders]

Well, I think yes, because. Well, only. Only. I mean, maybe not once it goes out in the world, then. No, but I'm.

[Interviewer]

During the process.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. I'm a late shower. I don't. I show nobody anything for a really long time. And it's interesting because I don't know how this must be in music, because it's so communal. But for me to keep it private for a really long time, because then I can make those choices with complete openness. Like, if someone says, I love your story, I can't change it, you know, or harder to change it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah.

[George Saunders]

If someone says, I hate it, I just feel like throwing it out. So if it's me in private for a long time with it, I can mess it up, I can fix it. I can mess this part up and fix that part, and there's a lot of freedom. And then weirdly, at some point, all that iteration, it starts to solidify, you know, like at some point, like, yeah, okay, I'm not worried about that anymore. That's fixed itself. And then you get just these three little issues or four. And then I still feel like, yeah, everybody stay out. I'm going to decide this. And then at some point, when I'm really done, I think I give it to my wife and she reads my work very emotionally. She knows me, she knows my cheap tricks. So she has an emotional reaction. Then I'm good to send it out. And if she says, oh, yeah, pretty good, you know, then like, oh, damn it, yeah, start over.

[Interviewer]

Would she give you specific comments like, I was with you up until page 40 or something like that?

[George Saunders]

Not really, no. No, she just. At the end, she's either moved or she isn't. And I really value that because she's right. She knows. And so. And we both kind of came from of working class backgrounds, and art was a very specific thing for us, very important, you know, so. And I think the kind of emotional aspect of it was important to us. We weren't necessarily so taken with wild postmodernism, but like Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolf, you know, so. So I trust her emotional reaction to it. She wants to work hard to be about something that we share, that people share, instead of just like a pyrotechnics.

[Interviewer]

Do you ever stop along the way to do research on something that you're writing?

[George Saunders]

Sometimes. Well, with Lincoln and the Bardo, I try not to get too in the weeds. But like, so I knew the date that that happened, so I had to kind of research what happened the two weeks before and what happened the next two weeks to see if some ideas that were in play were made sense, which weirdly, they. They did. You know, I. But before I did that, it was just Lincoln on a graveyard on any old night. And then it improved in specificity because he was in a graveyard, I think, three weeks before the Emancipation Proclamation. And he was there Four days after a big battle at Fort Donaldson where a lot of like the northern casualties were higher than they'd ever been. So then that specificity, out of all the stories about Lincoln in the graveyard, I'm telling this particular one. I think I'm more of a cartoonist really. Like, one of my big early things was Charlie Brown, you know, the Peanuts thing. And that still works for me. Like kids with heads that are too big, you know, and no, the sidewalks come and go, you know, and I, I love that. And all of that in service of something that's. That's kind of deep when you get down to it, but it's cloaking the depth in a lot of sort of surface craziness.

[Interviewer]

Is writing fiction and nonfiction the same thing?

[George Saunders]

It ultimately kind of is. I feel, I feel less freedom with nonfiction as you would, but it's kind of the same, except with non fiction. I go out and do a trip Egypt for 10 days and then just have a bunch of notes, you know, and recordings and stuff, and then start writing it all. And whatever glows gets in the story. So the structure gets made by glow. Like these four things are. Even this one that shouldn't be important. It writes really well. So you're in the story and then the structure is just okay, how do I connect those so that they kind of make sense? And then sometimes with that, you arrange the six glowing items and you go, oh, oh. That's the meaning of that trip that I didn't even realize. Whereas with fiction you're kind of more. Well, you're creating the incident and then trying to make it glow. And so one of the real problems is which incidents are essential. And do you ever know Stuart Kornfeld? He was in la. He was a Stuart Kornfeld, really good. He had been still a producer for a while and he had this idea, he told me once, it was like in narrative, every structural unit has to do two things. It has to be entertaining in its own right and it has to contribute to the meaning of the story in a non trivial way. So sometimes in fiction you write something that's got a lot of jokes and it's funny and it's fast, but it's just not. It doesn't know what it's there for. So that has to come out always well, or you have to figure out why it's there. And what I'll do is I'll take something like that and keep it in the back. Like you're really good. I. But stay outside of it.

[Interviewer]

Is there ever a Reason that a digression from the main story, even if you don't understand it, stays.

[George Saunders]

Yes, but. But then kind of circularly, therefore isn't meaningless. It's just got a complicated meaning, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you just don't know it.

[George Saunders]

Right. Or you only know it in rereading. Like. Yeah, it has to be there because, you know, one of the things with fiction, it's. We tend to reduce it to meaning, but it's given off like a piece of music, giving off incredible frequencies of nuance that it's not really meaning, but it's flavor, it's quality, all that stuff. So the beautiful thing is a reader, even just a kind of above average reader, will catch all that stuff and she'll take it to the next thing. So meaningless. We wouldn't want to reduce meaning just to theme. It's the whole thing you've received. You're taking it to the next bit, you know. So, yes, I say this in a way that makes it sound more mathematical than it is. But for example, if I had a really good bit, I would be really open to the ways it was contributing, even if they weren't linear.

[Interviewer]

Can fiction be more true than nonfiction?

[George Saunders]

For me, it. Yes. Yes. Because one reason for me is that I'm a person who, like. I don't like writing. This is weird. I don't like writing anything that would hurt someone's feelings. So if I was writing a profile of you, it would be so complimentary and I would never have that impulse to go, look, what's the dark side? I just don't. I don't like it. But with fiction, I don't feel that compunction. So I can let a certain Pollyanna, ish part of me step aside for a minute and I can let the darkness and the kind of negative valences come in. And then also there's something about a short story that is so free, you know, there's no like once upon a time, what anything. So in a certain way it's almost like a mirror. Because if you start a totally made up story, which in my case is kind of cartoonish, then, well, what's the fuel of that story? It's 100% my phenomenon, you know, it's. There's nothing else it could be. So I like that freedom now. I was raised Catholic, always was kind of a good kid, which is nice, you know, like, socially it's okay, but when you. Artistically, there's a. It takes a lot for me to be really honest, actually, you know, so fiction it's under the guise of being funny or entertaining. A lot of weird stuff comes out that I didn't know. I.

[Interviewer]

Do you think of yourself as a. A writer or a storyteller?

[George Saunders]

I think a writer, because I know a lot of people who can tell better stories than I can. A lot. And my stories, I don't have any good stories except when I start working on them. And again, the ones I make up are good. The ones that are like, here's something that happened to me. They're not good. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How are writing short stories different than writing a novel?

[George Saunders]

Well, I think with the novel at least, I've only written one, and there's one coming out, and the first one had a lot of white space, so I'm not sure. But for me, it was that the novel has some kind of through line, like with Lincoln, you know, that I'm going to put on there, and then I'm going to have fun fulfilling the through line. But I don't really know what it means. I don't know how I'm going to do it with a story, in the best case, it's just literally just putting something down and then reacting to it. And the beautiful thing is, out of that very playful process, something really serious can come out, you know, that something shaped and kind of momentous. So for me, the story is a little more. It's harder, actually, because you don't know that it's going to work. It's like a joke, sort of, you know. Yeah. And the story doesn't really like a novel. You know, if I say there's this guy named Gatsby and he wanted to meet his, you know, give his old girlfriend to go, okay, did it work? And then I tell you in 280 pages, you find out. But with a story, you're not even sure what you're asking. The story starts, it creates its own context and its own meaning, and then it lands itself in a funny way that you couldn't have predicted. And a lot of. I think there's an overstory, which is, you know, will Akaki Akakievich get a new overcoat? And that's kind of novelistic. But then with a good short story, there's an understory that's coming up all the time that the writer doesn't even understand until it bursts through the surface. And that's when that story is a story. When you realize we were telling a story about this over here, but actually all along we were talking about this

[Interviewer]

thing without knowing it, while you're doing it without knowing.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Yeah.

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[George Saunders]

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[Interviewer]

I read that your first published short story was one that basically was recounting a dream that you had.

[George Saunders]

Is that true? That's true.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about that.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, it was, it was called a lack of order in the floating object room. I had a dream of. It was kind of like a theme park where you go in there, they press a button and gravity gets suspended and stuff starts floating around. So the narrator was the guy who runs that, that place. So that place came to me in my mind. But also there was a narrating voice that, that gave me these sentences that were very unlike the ones I'd been writing. Too modern and kind of, you know. And so I just. Ah, that's weird. And I got up and started writing it down and found that I could continue in that mode and wrote for, you know, three or four pages and is done, you know. And that's the story I got into Syracuse with. So that was the first time I ever had that experience of intuition being part of the game, you know. But it was, in a way it was kind of bitter because I didn't. It didn't sound anything like Hemingway. It didn't sound like anything classic or anything. But you know, that feeling of like, oh, I don't know what that is, but it's new. And in that newness I like, well, that's, there's something of me in there that I didn't. That I maybe don't even like. But that's kind of what I've been hunting Ever since is that feeling of. I guess it's like blurting out. I had Actually, funny, I had a dream the other night of. I did an event with. In New York with Zadie Smith last week. And on stage she mentioned that book Civil Warland and the voice of it. So in the dream she was kind of saying, you know what? You should go back to that. I'm like, how do I do it? And the answer was. In the dream, I had the same feeling I had while I was writing that book, which was fuck meaning, fuck structure. Sound, sound, sound, sound. That's it. If a sentence doesn't make sense, if it sounds good, it's in. And the sense will find me later.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. In general. Are you looking at the way the words look on the page or is it the way they sound?

[George Saunders]

That's a really smart. It's a combination. I never read aloud, but it's like there's a voice reading it in my head that is also taking note of the look.

[Interviewer]

You purposely not read it out loud.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, because I don't. My voice is kind of. I would mangle whatever. I. You know. And also I think I obviously a fast talker and I have a very quick monkey mind, which is sometimes a real curse. But when I'm reading on the page or when I'm doing this thing we're talking about, I'm kind of reading and it feels like I'm reading it in the back of my throat while I'm not. I'm going a little faster than I could read it out loud and be understood.

[Interviewer]

Are you mumbling it even silently? Because you say you're reading it faster than you can read it.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So are you getting every word or not?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, more so than if I read it aloud weirdly. And I can also. It's really hard to talk about, but I can feel the inefficiencies in it as I'm scanning it, you know? And.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How important is rhythm in that?

[George Saunders]

It's everything. So like, sometimes there'll be a sentence, they'll go like, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like, yech. That last part. Lop that off. And then you have the first rhythm. Da, da, da, da. And then the correct rhythm will present and then words will come in to fill that.

[Interviewer]

It's like writing a song.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Have you written songs?

[George Saunders]

I've written. No. I'm going to talk to you about that. I've never written a good song because in songwriting the literal thing takes over. I on line two, and I think, oh, what should line three be.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Or have a good exercise for you to try.

[George Saunders]

Oh, I'd love to have it.

[Interviewer]

Based on something you said. It's amazing. You said the exact same thing as the exercise I'm going to tell you for songwriting.

[George Saunders]

Oh, but, but so, so there is, it's, it is sound. And somehow reading it faster than I, it helps me figure out the sound better. It's almost like turning up the, the, the speed of a tape and you hear the rhythm a little more acutely or something. So. Yeah, I've never, I've never thought about

[Interviewer]

this before, but yeah, in music, when you slow the music down, you can learn more about the rhythm. And when you speed it up, speeding it up tends to fix the slightest imperfections. Slowing it down amplifies the imperfections because

[George Saunders]

there's also something about. Okay, so I'm reading the work from yesterday and lately I noticed there's a second part of my brain that steps aside and goes, how's your reading mind today? And some days I'm just skimming it. I can't read it. I've read it so many times I can't process it anymore and I don't like it. This guy goes, okay, just note that you're in a shitty mood today. You hate everything. Duly noted. Okay, then other days I'm like, wow, I'm the greatest. Even this coffee stain is so good. You know, do you ever put something

[Interviewer]

aside when you have that feeling of nothing's good?

[George Saunders]

Not really. I usually just note that I feel that way and work through it. Yeah. And I'm like a little less willing to make a change maybe. But part of the value of the supports is even if you mess it up on Wednesday, you can fix it on Thursday. And I remember where I've altered it. So the idea that you have some awareness of how adept you are at reading that day, and then the dream day is when everything is landing. Kind of like you're a first time reader. Oh, I can really hear this today. And those days I just try to keep reading, reading, reading.

[Interviewer]

Do you only ever work on one thing at a time?

[George Saunders]

No, with stories it's usually like, I'll have. In a perfect world, I have three or four going. And then I just kind of go in the morning, like, which one? Anybody? Fun. You know? And if one says, no, but I'm, you should finish me. I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not.

[Interviewer]

If one isn't working that day, you wouldn't stop working on it to start working on a different One?

[George Saunders]

Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. Lately, I've got one story at home that might be an exception. But if I start something, I feel like I'll finish it. It might take six, 15 years even. But if. If something presented.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

And I like any part of it, then I'm just going to keep. You know.

[Interviewer]

And if you finish it, it means you'll finish it, or it means you'll finish it and share it with the world.

[George Saunders]

If I finish it, I'll share it. That's kind of my psychology. Okay. So. So there's a feeling of, like, if there's four things I want the most fun one to come, the one that I feel like, oh, yeah, I can do something with that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Whereas if it seems tedious or it seems like that's the one I'm locked up on.

[Interviewer]

Wait, is there a market for short stories?

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Where the New Yorker is the best place. And then I published one in the Atlantic this year. And then collections will tend to. Sometimes they catch on, they sometimes sell. And what I'm finding out with the substack, because it's all about the short story. And they are, like, amazing readers of stories. People who really kind of live their life by short stories. So we'll put a story up there. Like this week we did a Tolstoy thing and we get hundreds of comments, and there's so many, like, measured and courteous and smart. And then sometimes I'll say, does anybody speak Russian? Yeah, they do. And can you look at this part in the Russian? Are we misreading it? You are, you know, or sometimes I said, any neuroscientists out there? Yes, there are. I mean, it gives me a lot of hope because you can certainly feel that there's not a market for stories.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And it's not a huge market. But I think the people who are into them are really into them, and they tend to be pretty interesting people.

[Interviewer]

Describe the home you grew up in.

[George Saunders]

It was in a south suburb of Chicago called Oak Forest. I think my dad bought it when he was 22. Kind of a tract house. I just remember it as a place of so much fun, really. We had a pretty verbal, funny, extended family, and doors were always open and people come in and out. And he worked for a coal company in Chicago, so he was always downtown and come back with some really interesting stories and. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So if you wanted to drive into Chicago proper, how long would it take?

[George Saunders]

Probably 20 minutes.

[Interviewer]

And how often would you go into that?

[George Saunders]

Not that often. In high school, we used to go down to The Earl of Old Town. And kind of. I was always trying to catch John Prine or Steve Goodman. I thought they'd just be hanging out down there. But, yeah, not that often. It was kind of a. More of a suburban life of me.

[Interviewer]

And tell me about your parents.

[George Saunders]

They're both still alive. They're 88 and doing great. So my dad was. He was in the Air Force. Met my mom in Amarillo, Texas. They got married at 19 and then moved to Chicago. Had me when they were 21. Yes.

[Interviewer]

Did they move to Chicago?

[George Saunders]

That's where he was from. And so that was just. And so he worked for a coal company. He would go to the landlords and sell them coal, basically. So did that when I was a kid. And then when I was in high school, he quit that job and opened some restaurants. Their franchise is called Chicken Unlimited. And so I was his delivery boy. And we just, you know, got my license and started working the next day, just driving the chicken van around.

[Interviewer]

And so that was a chicken van.

[George Saunders]

Like, it was a. It was a 77 Chevy van that had. First, for. For no reason we could. It had carpet on the whole inside carpet. And we had something called a Crest Core in the back, which is a steam here, so you could keep the chicken hot when you were delivering. Had a little stove. So it was just a dream, you know, like, just to kind of. I mean, one of the things is, as a delivery guy, you got to stand in somebody's house for a couple minutes, you know, while they were getting the money. I always thought that was interesting because you would be kind of just have a few seconds to look around and see what kind of family it was, what the vibe was. And you were kind of told that the suburbs were homogeneous. But then as you go into individual houses, you say, oh, wow, this is a really. It's a city, you know. Yeah. And my mom was just a real sweetheart from Texas. Very loving heart, you know. And whenever I would be, like, in the Catholic Church and they would talk about love and acceptance, I think of her.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about your relationship to school over the course of your life.

[George Saunders]

I was a real weenie. Good Catholic boy. Loved Catholicism, loved the nuns. Pretty good student. So I was really good. And then somehow when I got to high school, I just couldn't be bothered. I didn't study a lick because of what.

[Interviewer]

What else was happening?

[George Saunders]

Music. Music was happening. Weightlifting was happening. Everything seemed really boring. But then, luckily for me, my junior year, there was a great teacher named Sherry Williams was her name. English teacher. And she had a way of teaching novels and stories that I really. It really spoke to me. And then she had a. At that point, a boyfriend that she married named Joel Emblem, a geology teacher. And they kind of took an interest in me and basically persuaded me to go to college. And he actually called and got me in. He literally called the School of Mines in Colorado and said, you won't see it in this kid's record, but he's worth a look.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[George Saunders]

And so, yeah, and this being the 70s, they went, okay, have him go to summer school for 18 hours. Take all the technical stuff.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And if he gets this grade point, he can come. So I did. I did it. And I never. I literally had never worked at anything except guitar, a little bit in sports. So I. I went out there, and the funny thing was I had my transcript, and I went out to the School of Mines in Colorado and I said, basically, you know, I'm George. I'm here for college. And they were like, okay, hold on a second. And they took the transcript in the back room and came and said, okay, you're in. But that was for engineering, because he was a geologist. And I admired him so much that I just thought I'd do it. He did.

[Interviewer]

When did you decide to become a writer? And did you want to do something else before that?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I think before that, I mean, I think I wanted to be a musician, really. And, in fact, I was in a band right before I met this couple. And the guy, he was a really good guitar player, and he knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody in the Eagles. That was the thing. And he thought he could get us on as the opener for the opener. And so. All right, so that's my career plan. And we practiced for a couple months, and then I just. Then I met these teachers, and I just thought I had a couple of experiences that made me realize I was kind of full of. And that was very helpful. Like, I took a classical guitar lesson at this community college in Chicago, and I had kind of, quote, unquote, learned this. That Caprice Arabe, that beautiful classical piece, was way above my level, but I could sort of play the first part. And so I went into this guy and I played, and I just wanted a mentor so badly, you know, somebody. Because I could tell I. I was adrift. So I played it for him, and I played it probably the best I ever had. But, you know, I was waiting for him to kind of put the crown on my head, you know, and he said. He leaned away and he said, I'm going to tell you something. He said, if you don't change the way you're living, you're going to be a very unhappy adult. And it just. I mean, it stopped.

[Interviewer]

It's done.

[George Saunders]

Your guitar player? Yeah. Yeah. And he must have seen that I was kind of stung by it. And then he explained that my tongue.

[Interviewer]

I think anybody would be stunned by that.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Based on guitar player, you're 17.

[George Saunders]

You know, I did do my best, but it was interesting because I still think about that guy. And that was a long time ago.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

But then what he did was he gave me those Segovia scales. You know, it was really slow. And he. He gave me a metronome setting that was insultingly slow. It was so slow, you know. Okay. So I started doing it, and sure enough, my tone got better, and I could see that I wasn't a thoughtful player. I was just a, you know, doing it fast. And so he did me a favor, but I had a grudge against him and I couldn't really continue. But that. So that was one big thing. And then that teacher, Joel Lindblum, took me to kind of all Chicago City Science Fair with kids my own age were doing this stuff, and he was such a sweet guy, and he just took me there, and I hadn't done any work. Literally no work. And these kids were building, you know, nuclear power plants and I don't know, everything. We just walked around and he let that sink in, you know, that these are people my age who were applying stuff. Yeah. The thing that I love so much is I get very moved by this, because he never. There was not a single touch of judgment. You know, he just let me look at it, and he. He knew that it was getting in there.

[Interviewer]

Was your reaction to that? I can't do this or I'm never going to do this, or I need to focus more?

[George Saunders]

Yes. Well, actually, the first reaction was, oh, shit, I haven't done this.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And they have. You know, what does that say about what I'm doing? And then it wasn't really that I could, but I had to try. That was the feeling like. And so then a lot of my ambition and I had a lot. It got channeled into not flunking out of engineering school. So I went to this place called the Colorado School of Mines in golden, which is a. I studied geophysics. So it was all. All science all the time. So that was. That was deep because I wasn't good at it. I really wasn't good at it. And I worked really hard which was great for an artist you know, to learn that effort doesn't equal results.

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[George Saunders]

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[Interviewer]

When did you start teaching writing?

[George Saunders]

Years later. So I was writing a little bit there but I wasn't reading well. I was reading like kind of weird self help stuff and Khalil Gibran and kind of. So I didn't start teaching until many, many years I'd been out of the Syracuse program. I was working as an engineer and wrote my first book and had a chance to go teach there for a year and I sensed correctly that that would be. It would give me a lot more time to work.

[Interviewer]

What was the first book?

[George Saunders]

It was called Civil Warland and Bad Decline Book of short stories. Wrote it at work actually.

[Interviewer]

And was it well received?

[George Saunders]

Critically? It didn't sell very much, but it was critically. Had a couple of good reviews. That kind of made it. Yeah. And I wrote that one at work. I was just at this engineering job and stealing time here and there. So it was a big and I was 38, so it wasn't. I wasn't a prodigy, you know. But so that got me a chance to teach at Syracuse for a year which then grew into a full time, full time gig. It was nice because by that time we had our two kids and I already had a sort of a lot, you know, a life being a tech writer. And so there was a lot of the stuff that I still write about was already in my experience, you know,

[Interviewer]

from being how do you learn to teach writing?

[George Saunders]

I think it was gradually, you know, you first you think the job is to find mistakes and fix them per year value system that doesn't work and then slowly you see what works. I guess it must be like, you see, if I do it this way, the kid stiffens up and leaves in a huff, you know, If I do it this way, they lean in and the next draft is more interesting. So it became less and less talking and more listening over the years.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. How long did it take to get good at teaching it?

[George Saunders]

I think I'm still working on it, but I would say there was a big jump after five years or so, because then I just got kind of sick of the sound of my voice haranguing somebody, you know, or coaching somebody. Like, if I had a conference with somebody, we were talking about their work, if I could just shut up for the first three minutes, they would tell me, and they would always identify exactly what I had identified if I gave them enough time.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Then you're not the person saying, there's something, you know, you're not the doctor saying you're sick. You're the doctor saying, oh, you feel that you're sick. Then your advice is, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. But it took a long time because the insecurity of being somebody who wasn't exactly trained in English, you know, in English education, being faced with these. We get like 700 applications and pick six people, so they're great. So early on, I was so intimidated by that that I thought the only way to counter the intimidation is with information, you know, so that's been a sweet. Part of it is to go, oh, yeah, actually, 98% of the work is being done by the student. Yeah, yeah. Is that. Is that something that rings? Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The less my fingers are involved in the process, the better it's going to be.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's only, like in an emergency situation do I step in.

[George Saunders]

Right, right.

[Interviewer]

You know, if someone's drowning.

[George Saunders]

Right, right.

[Interviewer]

In general, in the best versions, it sort of happens by itself. And if there's something that I feel when I'm listening, I can share what I'm feeling. But it's never mistakes or what could be better. It's more like, let's look at this part. Like, this part may not be as good as the rest. Why is that? Or it seems like there's a better way to do this.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, what about this?

[George Saunders]

The sonic things? Because there are. And I think there's a corollary in writing, there are things happening off the page. In a sense, they're very real and they're actually what makes great and good different. But with what I do, you just kind of. It's there and you let it stay or you subtract from it. But at some point, you're making decisions on how. What the sonic landscape looks like, really.

[Interviewer]

I try to have it be as whatever they bring. Like, there was a time earlier in my career when we would try to make it sound like something that we liked the way it sounded.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

And we don't do that anymore. Like, the idea of the best snare drum sound is on this album. So if we try to make our snare drum sound like the sound on that album, that's gonna be best. Yeah, that is never best.

[George Saunders]

That's my Hemingway years. And that's that thing about. About.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's always for what we have. What's the best version of what it is. Not trying to make it anything else.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Same.

[George Saunders]

Same. I find that with that mindset, you can let it be a lot more things at the outset, for sure.

[Interviewer]

And it also takes patience because it's not formulaic in any way. It becomes what it wants to be over time. But if there's any expectation it's going to be good tomorrow or in a week, that's totally out of our control.

[George Saunders]

Right, Right. Scary. And I think that's what a listener feels, is that you went to the scary place. And, you know, I think Toni Morrison. My wife studied with Toni Morrison. At one point, she says something about. In the early part of her books, she's kind of digging out a foundation. And she doesn't control how deep it goes, but the deeper it goes, the higher the building. And the reader feels that.

[Interviewer]

How important is setting when you're writing where the story takes place?

[George Saunders]

For me, not that much. And I think that's actually a reflection of a kind of value system I have. I don't really write very well. Like, I had to describe this beautiful place. I couldn't. It would be kind of. It's so beautiful, you know?

[Interviewer]

So say you don't have a descriptive style.

[George Saunders]

I don't really. Except what happens is. So that means I have to emphasize something else, which is usually action or dialogue. Something happened then. A lot of times the description will come in just very lightly. Almost just like one line of something that sets you in a certain place. So I had a line in a store called Com. Com, which A guy's walking some woods. Woods. I don't know anything about trees, you know? So I just said, well, there's. I don't know the line, but it's like. There's three toilet seats with price tags on them there. So that's setting. I think what I Do a lot is. I assume that if I say graveyard, you give me a graveyard, and then there can be some individualization of the graveyard.

[Interviewer]

Earlier, you gave an example of Abraham Lincoln is walking over a bridge, he notices something, he looks, and you say, it's a hunter. You decide it's a hunter. If your first thought is, it's a hunter, is it always a hunter for the rest of the story? Or do you ever say, okay, it's a hunter, and then you play that scenario out and then you realize, no, you know, it's not a hunter. It's going to be something else?

[George Saunders]

It could. Yeah. You know, it's funny, sometimes those ideas, they come in through the window and they trip.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And it's evermore. It's an idea that trip and it's got a little. It doesn't quite communicate. So those. I definitely will adjust. But in the ideal case, like that one, it was a ghost of this guy, a hunter. The idea came up and the words just came right in behind it. And that had a kind of a. Had a kind of authority that doesn't go away, you know, so. So there's that. Russian writer Isaac Babel said something like, a good sentence is like, you throw the switch once and there it is, you know? Whereas a less good sentence is you're kind of deciding and you're thinking and you're conceptualizing, and it kind of comes up a lumpy. But for me, there's a moment where the. You asked earlier about how the words look on the page, and I think that is important. Sometimes the image or the thought and the sentence wrapping come just at the same moment. And that has authority and authority in that sense. It's also respect for the reader somehow, and that it's the glue that pulls them in. So there are times when that just happens and you go, just leave it alone. And other times you have to work towards it, I think, a little bit.

[Interviewer]

But when it happens, you didn't decide that it happened.

[George Saunders]

It happened. It just happened. Yeah. Yeah. But it's almost like two trains coming to the station at once. You know, the. The idea and the sentence and boom, they're just there. And then I can go through hundreds of drafts and that sentence just stays there because it's authentic, you know? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Would your creative writing class be similar to other creative writing classes?

[George Saunders]

It's that workshop model, so it's pretty similar. And the only thing that I think it's not just me, but a lot of people do are doing now is kind of critiquing that method, because that's a little bit of a. I mean, it's an economic construct that they came up with in the 60s to get writers and readers paid, you know. And, you know, you think about like the way we're talking about this, if there were seven people here and we're talking about Fred's story, that discourse is always beneath the level of mystery. You know, you're articulating, so you're, you know, so there. It's a little bit good to be suspicious of the form itself. So we do a lot of talking about how are we doing as a group? Are there things we're missing? Something I've done lately is to say, let's not go longer than we have to. Because that's one thing in those kind of meetings is you got an hour and a half. So you do all the essential work in 45 minutes and then suddenly you're talking about the color scheme or something that's not. It's more concept. So I think I just try to be a little wary of the how far below the activity the articulation falls, you know, like, because, I mean, you know, I'm sure if you're having a session that's really like up here and then someone's oh, that was good, and you start yapping about it, somehow it's not. I think it's okay to talk about it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

But at the same time, like, if you just had your peak sexual experience, you could talk about it and maybe you would like to, but it's not the same. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Are there any accepted rules of writing that it would be better not to learn?

[George Saunders]

I think don't worry about plot. That is a word that gives people a lot of conniptions. And I don't think it's avoid plot or the word plot, you're still going to have plot. I mean, a lot of the ways that we talk about writing are post writing descriptions of things that happened that were magical and now we're going to name them. So that's okay and that's criticism and it's important. But then when you think about the moment that you did it, I'm not ever thinking about plot or theme or character. That's not how it works. So you do a student a disservice if you say, well, how's your plop? You know, who could do that? So it's interesting because the one thing that might be different in my class is I really want to talk about, as you did in your book so beautifully, what does it feel like in the moment of creation, what's your mind doing and what can we do to nurture that state? What are the things that peck at it and take us down from that state? Hard to talk about. But when you. With writing, it's nice because you have the text. So in editing it, you can sort of say, if six people are editing a text and everybody loves page three, then you can say to the writer, think about, where were you? What was going on when you wrote that? That's probably a good state for you, that kind of thing. I think of it as a telescope. Like, there's the critical end of the telescope, which describes and elucidates and analyzes, and that's really useful and it can help the creative. But the other side of the telescope is something much more mysterious.

[Interviewer]

Are you superstitious?

[George Saunders]

No. No. I got rid of that because I. That first book I wrote at work, so it was like there was no time for any. I couldn't design the ideal writing moment, so I just forget it.

[Interviewer]

Are you superstitious about anything in life?

[George Saunders]

I'm ocd, which is. Which is kind of similar. But no, I'm not.

[Interviewer]

Describe the ocd.

[George Saunders]

It's kind of mostly in the positive sense, it's rewriting with no limit. In the negative sense, it's kind of a self suspicion, I guess, which is very close to being a good editor, but not quite.

[Interviewer]

Are you a perfectionist?

[George Saunders]

Yes. Yes. But I think also, honestly, I would say maybe from Buddhism, I've become a merciful perfectionist, which is to say perfect really is the enemy of good. So pretend to be a perfectionist until you start being a pain in the ass and then stop because you're going to drive yourself into the ditch. Because I published late, I had a real palpable period where I was like, okay, all your life you thought you're gonna be a writer. It looks like you're not. Are you okay with that? You know, and so once I got going, I was like, okay, somehow I just said, I'm not gonna let neurosis get in the way of productivity. Can we agree on that? And for once in my life, I said I agreed with myself. Yeah, we can. So I don't tend to be superstitious or like, if I have a book that's successful, I have about two days of going, oh, no, you peaked. And I'm like, that's so babyish. Don't do that. That's selfish. And it's kind of. It's contradictory to the experience you had. While you were writing it, which is you. The self went away.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

So don't be all Babish about that. You've got some gifts to keep giving. So in many, many ways, there's a kind of a. I would say for me, fairly high functioning productivity mind that says, if that's going to get us in the weeds, let's not do that, you know? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Are you OCD outside of your work?

[George Saunders]

A little bit. Probably not clinically, but.

[Interviewer]

In what ways might it show up in life?

[George Saunders]

Mostly just I'll go to a party and say something and go, oh, my God, what did I say? You know, or feel negative about things that I've said or done that in the light of day weren't much. So I think that's a form of ego, actually, and imperfectionism. You know, I couldn't possibly be the guy who says something stupid at a party that would, you know, it's part

[Interviewer]

and Swim in the Pond, where you're commenting on a section of Tolstoy and you say the writing leaves you with envy and resentment.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Was that sarcastic?

[George Saunders]

No.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about that.

[George Saunders]

You know, that's actually receding a little bit as I get older, but when I was young, it killed me when somebody was so good.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Yeah. It was very egotistical. I just. I just wanted to be the only good one, I think that was. Yeah. And then.

[Interviewer]

Are you competitive in life?

[George Saunders]

Yes. Although less and less. I. I think at that point I hadn't done anything.

[Interviewer]

I see.

[George Saunders]

So I just wanted to be the best at this thing. I'd never tried. And then as I. As you get into it, it's a de. Ego. Find practice. And so you go, well, it doesn't matter if. If I did it, it matters that it got done.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

And of course, that comes and goes. And when you're done, you're like, I did it. But. But no, for sure. I. I think I read Tolstoy now, and I'm like, God. But for the first time in my life, I'm like, yeah, he's great. He's greater than you'll ever be. And that's okay. But when I was younger, that really got under my skin somehow, you know? But the more I did it, the less that feeling was.

[Interviewer]

Do you pray?

[George Saunders]

I meditate. Which is. Yeah. Very similar. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And how do you meditate?

[George Saunders]

Well, lately, not enough. But we have practices that are called pujas. They're kind of. They're actually very similar to a Catholic mass. So they're kind of guided visualizations. With chanting. And you just.

[Interviewer]

Do you listen to something or. No.

[George Saunders]

Yes, I. I do, because I don't. It's in Sanskrit. And so I. We. There's a text and then there's a tape or a recording.

[Interviewer]

And is it melodic? Is it chanting?

[George Saunders]

It's kind of melodic, but in kind of pentonic, you know, it's like. It's not wildly melodic, but it's. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Would you say it's hypnotic?

[George Saunders]

Not really, no. No. I don't know how actually. You know, I'm. I had a friend who was a really serious practitioner, and he said, well, I would describe you as a fellow traveler. You know, some of. And I talk too much about it and. No, too little. But for me, it seems like it's. It's really similar to the Catholic mass, which was a. As I experienced it, it was a. You were imagining making offerings. You were imagining getting blessings.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

And somehow the effect of that when. When I was doing it more was that a certain kind of ambient negative part of my mind that I thought was me would kind of just go quiet. And then I said, oh, look at. There's something else there. You know, so it was. It. It was a. Like a de. Identification process. And then in the absence of that strong identification with self, something else would come up that was, you know, very positive.

[Interviewer]

If it wasn't for your time in the church, would you be a different person today?

[George Saunders]

Oh, yes. I think the sacraments, and it's just. It's the first time that you realize your everyday mind isn't the only.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And so you go there every week to just get that reminder. Every week.

[Interviewer]

And I had some, like, practice, like any sitting practice. Same.

[George Saunders]

Exactly. Because you can't, you know, because it's funny how quickly you just go back to your old regular self, but then the ghost, you know, you see that. Were you a spiritual young fellow? Were you?

[Interviewer]

I learned to meditate when I was 14.

[George Saunders]

Wow.

[Interviewer]

And I was always interested in metaphysical things before that, but I didn't have a form to practice. And then when I learned to meditate, it took over. And it was a real miracle that I got to learn because no one in my family did it. No one I knew did it. It just worked out.

[George Saunders]

And what tradition are you. Would you.

[Interviewer]

I learned TM at that time.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. I mean, amazing. I just remember the first time, I was about 40, and we had our kids, and I. I didn't have a technique, but I was just trying. I was trying to make my thoughts stop. That Was the goal just that noticing that little split second between thought and speech suddenly just. I said, oh, what a blessing. When you have little kids, you know, you can have an urge to correct and go, that's incredible.

[Interviewer]

Or the need to say how you think it is.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, right.

[Interviewer]

Who cares?

[George Saunders]

Who cares? And if you don't say it, the moment goes by and you. Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

What's something that you don't believe now that you believed when you were younger?

[George Saunders]

So many. Well, it's. It's kind of what we were just talking about. The. When I was younger, came from Chicago, kind of working class, had a little macho periods, and I think I was much more a believer that one did great things, one must. You asserted yourself by talking and acting. And that thankfully has started to fade. And one of the things about having a public life is that that delusion gets re enlivened sometimes. You get a lot of attention. You're like, oh, but I really like the fact that if I looked at myself at 18, I just wanted to be noticed and I wanted to be great at something. And it was all me, me, me, me. And thankfully it's kind of a little more like you can sort of watch the river go by and the river still goes by and you don't have to. The river doesn't care that you're watching it, you know, or that you're talking about it. But so in writing it's interesting because then it purifies the activity to where maybe even 10 years ago I was on a kind of a. I wanted to write my great book. And then now I'm kind of like, well, yeah, I do, but only to see if it can be done, you know, because it's that feeling of something secret then flowing out through process and being real. I love that. And whether it's credited or not, or whether I did it or not, I don't care as much. I would actually like to just finish that one and do that, do the

[Interviewer]

next one and tell me something you've changed your mind about recently.

[George Saunders]

Well, it would have to do with. We have a dog at home who's sick. And I can feel my sense of myself as being a flawless person or a flawless caregiver, giving away. And just. I'm like, what? It's hard, you know, she's old. You're going to make mistakes, you know, and so that, I mean, that's an ongoing thing. But on the good days, I feel like I'm such a great owner, such a loving, compassionate person. And then on the bad days, I'm like, oh, you're fucking everything up. And I'm a little more comfortable with that flux now. Like, oh, yeah. So. So whoever you are, you're not exclusively either one of those two things. And then noticing the way that my sort of day to day pleasure has to do with identifying with the first one and subduing the second one. And so I'm trying, I'm thinking, I wonder what would it be like if I really was really free of ego and really could say that guy's going through a hard time or that guy's doing a good job instead of, you know, denying the difficult valences. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I've changed my mind about, I guess, well, one, thinking of myself as someone who never, never up. But two, with that, that might be, you know.

[Interviewer]

Okay.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

In general, would you say you're hard on yourself?

[George Saunders]

Yes. Yeah. Except when I'm way too easy. But yeah, I think I'm. I think I'm pretty hard on myself.

[Interviewer]

And would you say you're equally hard on other people or. No, it's only you.

[George Saunders]

In fact, one thing I sometimes will do if I get myself in a spiral is go, okay, if this was your friend.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

What would you say? You know, But I think, you know, my students, I talk about this, that whatever manifests in yourself, I mean, naturally we judge it, but we can also use it. So for me, like, I'm very hard on myself, which in editing is a great blessing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

I don't know how I would do it otherwise. So in that arena, I'm going to accept it. Then when you get into some other area, can you be a little bit easier? You know, and actually you can, you know, you can. Yeah. Let me ask you something. At this point, and this is relevant to my experience. When you get up in the morning and you're thinking about work, what's motivating you now at this point in your life?

[Interviewer]

Just whatever is on the schedule for that day. I don't think past it. Just.

[George Saunders]

Would you describe yourself as ambitious, still more ambitious ever, or is that a word that doesn't.

[Interviewer]

I want to do good things. I feel like to live up to my purpose. There's work to do.

[George Saunders]

I love that.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Ambitious is not the word I would use. Ambitious would be, what am I going to do to make the outcome happen? And that's not what it is.

[George Saunders]

When you look at, let's say a day, a day in the studio or whatever you're Doing. What are the pleasures? What are the peak pleasures?

[Interviewer]

Yeah. When nothing sounds good and then all of a sudden it comes together. It's the most exciting feeling.

[George Saunders]

And you know that when it happens.

[Interviewer]

Feel it. Everybody feels it.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, everybody feels it. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

It's a very exciting feeling. Like it's probably the reason to continue doing it. The feeling of nothing's happening and then all of a sudden something's happening. That moment of spark of creation is so exciting.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Thrilling. It's like magic.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. And you're having it with other people, which is beautiful.

[Interviewer]

Not always. Sometimes I could be working on an idea myself and it just comes together.

[George Saunders]

Right, right.

[Interviewer]

But most often it's with other people.

[George Saunders]

I call that in the story. It's when the face comes out of the stone. It just been some words and suddenly it's an actual wow. Okay, so I can answer this question. What makes music good? And I can say presence, authenticity. But is there a stratum of descriptors above that? That's more.

[Interviewer]

Authenticity is a big part of it. Because when you hear it, you hear the artist. Belief in what they're doing doesn't have to be true. What they're doing has nothing to do with truth. It has to do with their truth. If someone is spilling their guts about something you don't agree with, it's still moving to us. It's that it's someone being human and sharing being human, what that feels like. It could be good or bad.

[George Saunders]

Okay. So David Foster Wallace used to talk about. He said, with young writers, there's some people who think if they're feeling it while they're writing it, it's good writing. And then the more advanced ideas, well, you could use that feeling, but it has to convey feeling to the reader. In other words, if I just feel like I'm in a. Yeah, I'm stoned, I'm typing, doesn't necessarily communicate to you. So if, let's say that somebody's playing a guitar solo, I mean, presumably they could be thinking about something totally different. And yet authenticity is still there.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

So I can understand the songwriter emoting authentically and being in the moment. But say, for a mix or for an instrumentalist, why was one solo cell and the other one doesn't or sell or move you? And I know it's kind of, you know, when you see it, but I

[Interviewer]

don't think it's an answerable question. That said, I now think, and this is a new thought, it might have more to do with rhythm than anything else. There was a Time, I would have thought, well, it could be the melody, could be the tone, could be the context. I'm feeling more and more the internal rhythmic feel is maybe the most important thing of anything.

[George Saunders]

Now, that's interesting. Does that have a relation to presence? Because in other words, if I'm kind

[Interviewer]

of a. I don't know if it does.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Maybe something else. Presence is another one of the things that when you feel it, you know it. It's hard to say what it is.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But you can feel it. I would describe presence as someone truly inhabiting, whatever the thing is, almost as if who they are is no longer around and just this thing is appearing. I would call presence. Like God steps in.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. So that has nothing to do necessarily with the meaning of the song. It just has to. The moment. No. Yeah. No, that's beautiful. I love that God steps in. And like, in writing terms, there. There is a corollary because if. If I'm present as a person, then, you know, that moment we talk about where the trains come in together. If I'm on the track going, no, no, no, even a little bit, it impacts the feeling, which I wonder if that has something to do with this rhythmic idea. Like, if somebody is fully.

[Interviewer]

If someone's thinking about it, it won't be good.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

It can't be.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

The best version is they're gone.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And then only when they get to hear it back do they understand what happened. Transcendent experience.

[George Saunders]

Yes. But see, for me that it's interesting, the transcendent. If I would have heard that a few years ago, I would have thought, oh, you're just like in some crazy mystical state. But in writing, it's not at all. It's just. You just step out of the room and for a second and then you're back, you know?

[Interviewer]

You know, you're not in control of it happening. You can certainly get in the way of it happening, but you can't make it happen.

[George Saunders]

Right, right.

[Interviewer]

You just have to wait.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, yeah.

[Interviewer]

It won't happen if you're not participating.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You can't just think it'll happen sometime. You have to show up.

[George Saunders]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

But you can't make it happen.

[George Saunders]

And in writing. That's right. And in writing, one of the ways you make it happen is to be a little conceptual. You're kind of going, oh, this is a story about patriarchy. And then at some point your mind goes, step back. Yeah. It's incredible. I think that's where it kind of. It kind of brushes up against the meditative because in a given writing hour.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

You're doing all the things wrong and all the things right. And it's kind of. I can, I can be working and just literally be gone. Do something and go, ooh, the New Yorker is going to love that. I'm back. So, you know.

[Interviewer]

Do you write for one hour? Is that.

[George Saunders]

No, no, no. I write for whatever I can.

[Interviewer]

What's your schedule? Or is there one?

[George Saunders]

It's kind of loose. I. I mean, on a perfect day, I would just get up and walk the dog and then come up and just spend five or six hours. But there's kind of an inner rhythm. Like if I have a hard copy marking it up and then put it in once, read it again and do that about three times. And then at some point I start to make mistakes. I can tell I'm just not. Sharpness isn't there, so just quit. But I can go easy. Four or five hours.

[Interviewer]

When you're not working, do you ever have an idea and make a note? Yes, but how often?

[George Saunders]

Not too often. When I was younger, I'd always be thinking about it and then have an idea which is different than if the idea just comes. I find. So I don't. I tend to just. If an idea comes to me out of nowhere, there'll be a split second reaction like, oh, yeah, then I'll do it. But there's a slight degradation of that, which is like, it's a little more of a know it all feeling like, here's what you should do, you know, and if that comes to me, I know it's not going to work because it's, you know, it's almost like. I think certain ideas come purely out of the subconscious. Then when you go to put in, it just folds in perfectly. And others are like, put me in, put me in. And you. It doesn't. The surface doesn't want it in there, you know. So I kind of learned a little bit to be really skeptical. Same with dreams. Like most dreams aren't stories.

[Interviewer]

But do you write your dreams?

[George Saunders]

No. Unless it's a good one. Yeah, but I had to think one time after that, Lincoln and the Bardo came out. I just had the tour and I was so happy, but also a little bit anxious about the next thing. And I had a dream. And in the dream I could see the second book. It was just huge book and everything. And I woke up and I thought, I should write this down. No, I'll just write down the title, that'll be enough. And the title was Custer in The Bardo that didn't work out. Do you know the writer Gino Diaz? He. He's really good, and he had a first book of stories that was really beautiful. And he had a dream one night of. Of the eight stories in the book, and they were all color coded. Different sections were color coded, and he understood that. I remember, like, all the purple stuff could be cut, and he went in and took it out. Yeah, that was, like, really bad stuff.

[Interviewer]

Does your knowledge of past writers shape your work?

[George Saunders]

Yes. How? Probably. Well, these days, just. It's like. I read Gogol, and I think, oh, God, I love this about that. Let's try to get in that party a little bit. Just. Just like that. Just almost like they're up on this high level.

[Interviewer]

And you say inspired by.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Or, you know, I think a lot about permission giving. Like, I read Gogol, and his is so crazy, really, you know, and it just makes me think, okay, so you can do that. You can go there. But honestly, the last couple years, I'm kind of like. I read them just to be kind of reminded that greatness exists and go, okay, I can't go there in that flavor, but I can go there in my flavor. So I hope I can, you know, just like that.

[Interviewer]

Regarding Tolstoy, you said after a series of fact statements, simple opinions stated in the same way has more credibility. Is that a usable trick or is it just something you noticed in the writing?

[George Saunders]

I think it's true. Because if. Okay, so in fiction, you know that I'm making it up.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And so if I say something really high concept and personal, you're gonna go, oh, maybe. But that's your opinion. But if I describe this, the light on the table, very well, and I describe three or four other things that are very familiar to you, then you're kind of sitting over here with me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

You know, but Tulsa also, he. He would be incredibly objective about even psychological states. You know, he was so good at it that it landed in the same register as a description of a horse. So, you know, and even when he would kind of cross over into opinion, he does it in the same syntactical thing. So it's a little tricky. He can. He can fool you a little bit with that, you know?

[Interviewer]

And do you think he knew what he was doing or.

[George Saunders]

No, I think he was a person with a lot of authority, a lot of confidence. So whatever he said, he said it in a simple, objective sentence because he knew it was true, including God and everything. So I think he. When you read descriptions of him. People really were, like, taken by his charisma and his certainty. So I think he. But the thing on him that's amazing is he can do that in one character, and then he can run around to the other side of the table and do it from another character's point of view, too. And they both sound equally certain and equally real. So I think that's what makes him so amazing. He's God going into your head and accepting everything he finds and describing it in these precise sentences. Then he comes over here in mine, he does the same thing, and then he just lets it sit there, you know, and you're kind of like, what's true? And he said, I'm God. It's all. It's all true.

[Interviewer]

On some level. Would you say you're all of the characters in your stories?

[George Saunders]

Yeah. I mean, you could understand the story as just an argument objectified. You know, you have a story that takes up this topic and you let a bunch of people opine on it, but they're all coming from you. And I think what I'm starting to think now is that the highest level of that craft is, like I just described, to let all those voices come out, calibrate the arguments so all of them are substantial. Instead of. When you're younger, you want to put your finger on the scale and say, this is my belief. But the Chekhov in that both are gooseberries. He just. Is happiness good or bad?

[Interviewer]

You have to believe what you're writing.

[George Saunders]

You have to believe in it from the point of view of the person who's saying it. I think, you know, they have to believe it. They have to believe, and you have to really get on their team.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And let them believe it and articulate it in a way that's genuine to them. And that's. I mean, it's tricky because it's stagecraft. I mean, if I'm. If I'm trying to be a Trump supporter, I can get pretty far there. But. But then there's a little bit of mystery. And so at that point, you can make some mistakes. You can make somebody more sympathetic than they should be. You can make them less sympathetic. You can give them a reason that isn't authentic. So it's tricky work, you know, that. Inhabiting other people. But I think to go back to the Charlie Brown thing, I mean, if I put six people around the table, none of them are real. They're all emanations of me. And what we're doing is not trying to make it a catalog of real People, we're trying to get some energy going, you know, that's. I think sometimes a story is like a board and it controls light. So you're just adjusting the things to make the most light come off of the work of art. What does it mean? I don't know, but that's the brightest I can make it.

[Interviewer]

Have you ever written anything and come to realize it means something different than you thought it meant?

[George Saunders]

That's actually the goal, I think, or maybe to find out there are overtones that you didn't know were going to come out.

[Interviewer]

If you write something and everyone who reads it thinks it means the same thing, have you succeeded or failed?

[George Saunders]

You know, Christmas Carol, Everybody knows what that means and they're right, you know, So I think it can go either way. In my personal thing, I'm trying to get more where there's less agreement because my story sometimes will be, you know, where you stand, you know where I stand. We all. And it happens, you know, and this new book I just wrote, it's interesting, it's. It's giving off complicated light, which I was happy about.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, it sounds more honest, like, yeah, it's complicated.

[George Saunders]

It's like Chuckle said, you, work of art doesn't have to solve a problem, it just has to formulate it correctly.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

When you finish a piece, do you know where the pops are? Like in six minute piece, do you know where the, the listener's gonna go?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I just know where I feel it and I assume they'll feel it in the same places, but if they don't, or if they feel it somewhere else. Nobody's wrong is what it is. The only thing I have to go on is how I feel. That's my only metric, right?

[George Saunders]

Yeah. But what I've, I think, I believe this is that if I. So if I'm reading my work, let's say it's revising my own piece, I read something happens on page five, I kind of assume that you're going to feel that too. And that's part of that communication thing. Like if I, if my heart rose at this place, I think my imaginary reader's heart is going to rise at that place. That's the contract. I think that I have to, I have to have that idea. But in practice, it's just watching myself, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, you can't know.

[George Saunders]

You can't know.

[Interviewer]

What do you think it was about Khalil Gibran that spoke to you when you were younger?

[George Saunders]

Well, I think at that age I had a real desire to know something that nobody else knew. And he seemed to know that. He seemed to be that guy, you know, and also that my friends wouldn't have liked him. So there's a little bit of elitism.

[Interviewer]

It felt more like it was yours.

[George Saunders]

That didn't really. But I just. I like that he was. Seemed to be speaking about something that wasn't just quotidian. He was.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And I. At that age, I really was a kid who wanted wisdom. I wanted. I was looking around for. So, like Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and then later Ayn Rand, you know, that was big for me. So I wanted. I thought that the purpose of literature was to tell you how to live. And Julio Gabran seemed to be. To be doing that. But I hadn't developed any ability to see what things felt like to me and then gauge at work by that. I was all just, well, that sounds really big, you know, and if I. If I am a Cleo Gibronite, nobody can touch me because I know more than everyone else, you know, Funny you

[Interviewer]

say that, because I made a note. In your teaching, there's a great deal of wisdom. I use the word specifically. It's bigger than information. Where do you think the wisdom you hold comes from?

[George Saunders]

I don't know that I really.

[Interviewer]

It's there. I'm telling you it's there. I'm reading it.

[George Saunders]

I'll accept it. I think it comes from a kind of trial and error. So to have read as many stories I've read, especially student stories, and go, okay, take your knowing mind down a notch and just listen. See what's actually happening there. Okay. And after 20, 30 years of that, you do kind of know some things conditionally. So I think to offer information conditionally is kind of like wisdom, you know? So if I say that sentence is no good, that's too certain. If I say it feels to me as if that sentence goes hazy at the end, that's more like wisdom. Because I'm not sure, you know, that.

[Interviewer]

I feel like I'm talking more about the actual content, not the writing.

[George Saunders]

So the content of a story or content of the Russian book, or the

[Interviewer]

Russian book as an example.

[George Saunders]

Well, that has to do with 20 years of teaching those stories. Because you can have a class in 1992 that goes off the rails and it's no good. 1994, you correct it. And then you start noticing that every time you talk about that story, these are the issues that come up.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

So you honor that and think, and then. Yeah. So it's it's anticipatory, I think, a little bit. You. I know that I've had, you know, eight groups of really brilliant kids have read that Turgenev story and gone, ugh, God. You know, so then part of your approach is say, I know what you think. You think it's boring. And then maybe that feels like wisdom of some. Maybe. But I mean, I'm sure, you know, for you, like, you. You must have understanding of this stuff. That is.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I understand. I don't know where it comes from, but I feel it.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think for me, it's. It's a bit of. Okay, so it is. It's repetition, but it's also trusting. It sounds weird, but it's trusting other people. So I've had all those generations of students.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

They come in. They come in. They come in. They react authentically to these pieces. So there's a crossovers there. If you're a bad teacher, you go, well, these students reacted correctly and these reacted incorrectly. And I only want to talk about the ones who. If you're a good teacher, you go, huh? There's a range of reactions. Okay, let's lean into that. And then with years, you start to see that that's a reliable thing, and it has something to do with that story, and then you can track that down. So I think it's. And I'm glad you feel that way. I don't feel particularly wise, but I do know I used to feel wiser, and I used to be much more free with my wisdom.

[Interviewer]

I think now you're getting wiser.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm saying less because you get to

[Interviewer]

see these really brilliant young writers year after year. Would you say there's some part of it that they're mostly good at and some part of it that they're mostly not good at? Or is it always case by case?

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Interviewer]

In new writers.

[George Saunders]

Not that I can discern, but there's a trend in all writers.

[Interviewer]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

Which is we all think we don't know the secret, and we're faking it. And all our writing lives, we've been faking it better than most, but we are faking it. And so because of that, we're avoiding certain things, whether it's content or voice or something. We're avoiding something. So for me, the job is to just say the minute the student comes in. I don't say it, but I know you think you're not good enough.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Okay. Now let's find out what flavor you think you're not good enough. And then I'm gonna do some judo and I'm gonna show you that the thing you aren't good at is actually a unity with the thing you're good at. And the only problem is you're denying so energetically the thing you're not good enough that you're. You're stifling yourself. I mean, practically, what that means is I'm quiet long enough for you to tell me what's bothering you about your story. And then I say, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I think everybody has that kind of feeling.

[Interviewer]

You're describing a psychological state, and I was guessing you were going to talk about something technical about writing. Is there anything not on the. How they're thinking about what they're doing, but what they're actually doing? What's on the page?

[George Saunders]

Yes. I mean, well, sometimes there's first order imitation. They're imitating somebody and you can see it. They're imitating, avoiding, like we talked about earlier. Sometimes the story wants to go here, but for some reason, usually it's an intellectual reason. They don't want to go somewhere else. And also what I find with my students is sometimes they are really afraid of being corny. And so at a moment which is actually going to be an emotional moment, they're afraid of being schmaltzy. And so they take off into some other area. So as an older person, you can kind of go, I love that moment. That was so moving. And then I think you kind of got distracted from it. And they'll go, yeah, yeah, so. So it's almost like maybe the wisdom has to do with seeing that pattern over and over again.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

Someone who has come to literature because it has all the stuff in it, all the feelings, but they. They're a little afraid of being sentimental, so they veer away from that. And you just gently saying, oh, no, actually that's okay. That's what we do. Yeah. You know, so I can sort of. I would say I can see somebody before they do a little bit.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

And go, oh, okay, I know, I get this. And then. Then you can skillfully, I'm sure. I mean, it sounds like exactly what you're talking about earlier. You can skillfully move it to the point where they can discover for themselves, and then you bless it and that's it. I mean, it is technical. Yeah. I think what it has to do is having confidence. In the old days, I think I felt students didn't know how to be emotionally in touch, and I had to tell them how to do it. And now I'm just like, of course they know how to do that. They just haven't brought it into this realm yet. So the confidence that you. I know that you're a fully emotionally formed person now, your art is impeding you a little bit, but that's okay. That's normal. You know, then that I think they feel that confidence that, you know, of course you can get there.

[Interviewer]

You know, Would you say sometimes you have the confidence for them that they don't have for themselves?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I think so. And sometimes I even will be a little overconfident just so they can just lure them out a little bit.

[Interviewer]

I think we share that. Yeah, that's part of the.

[George Saunders]

Right.

[Interviewer]

The mentoring, really?

[George Saunders]

I think so. Because I know from my own experience, if I. This is so sort of pathetic, but if I go on tour and I get a bad review, I'm flinchy. If I go on tour, I get a good review, I'm confident.

[Interviewer]

You know, what is on tour?

[George Saunders]

It's just. It means like book tour, you know, on book tour. So.

[Interviewer]

And what does that look like?

[George Saunders]

It looks like 18 cities in 20 days just going to a bookstore. And then usually these days it's a Q A like this. We just sit in front of people doing Q and A sign books. Go to the hotel, go to the next place.

[Interviewer]

Do you enjoy it?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I actually love it. Maybe I enjoy it a little too much, but I love the meeting the people. Because then you're like, if you have any temptation to project negatively about your audience or fearfully, that washes it all away. They're so nice.

[Interviewer]

And would you say most of the people in all the different places you go are relatively the same or is it different area by area?

[George Saunders]

Well, they tend to be left leaning and they tend to be literary. I don't get a lot of people across the political spectrum, I don't think. But I mean, in general they're really nice. I mean, really open to ideas and very. And for me, that's kind of built up over the years. So it's a very welcoming.

[Interviewer]

And they're coming there because they like you. Otherwise they wouldn't come.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I have to. Some sometimes before I start something, I have to say that, like, they. They came here, you know,

[Interviewer]

when you write something funny, do you laugh out

[George Saunders]

loud the first time and then usually never again just kind of go, okay, but that got a laugh back in 1990. So you can leave it in there.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. What's your expectation when you sit to write?

[George Saunders]

Not Much, actually. I mean, I think to improve something somewhere. But more I'm looking at how well I'm reading that day. Starts reading. How well am I reading? Am I getting it?

[Interviewer]

Do you equate how well you're reading it to how well you can write?

[George Saunders]

Yes. In other words, if I can. If I'm reading it well, I'm correcting.

[Interviewer]

Well, I see.

[George Saunders]

Because then I'm reading it the way you'll read it. Yeah. And if I'm a little out of touch with it, then it's almost like driving a little bit blind, you know?

[Interviewer]

How are speaking and writing the same and how are they different?

[George Saunders]

Well, writing is speaking over and over. You know, I can sometimes blurt out something kind of good, but if I talk for 10 minutes, it'll just be one little thing. Yeah, I know a lot of people think, you know, one of the things that young writers are obsessed with is finding their voice. And I really was too. And we always think it's voice, it's whatever you blurt out. But what I love is the idea that voice is achievable by subtraction. You know, you can have a page of mediocre writing and by lining it out, you can make it really unique. Just by cutting.

[Interviewer]

You think if you have some mediocre writing and two different people edit it, you'll get two very different things.

[George Saunders]

I think it's a good. If they're good editors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so.

[Interviewer]

And might both of them be good?

[George Saunders]

Sure. And in fact, I think, I mean, really, you can be both people. So Monday you can edit it in a certain flavor, and Tuesday you come back and add a different flavor. And my theory is that over time that model stabilizes and you're getting the benefit of all your people. You know, you're so grouchy, you're so funny. You're self skeptical. You're so.

[Interviewer]

That's really exciting idea and.

[George Saunders]

But when you're young, it's scary because it doesn't work that way. You just keep changing it. But then over time, now I can kind of like, let whoever's here today come and work and they won't hurt it. And tomorrow we'll do something else to it. And in the end, it starts to kind of lock in.

[Interviewer]

How different are you from day to day?

[George Saunders]

Not that different, but it's almost like around the edges, there are. There are certain, like, I'll. I'll go buy a line 97 times, and the 98th time I'll find the joke. Like, oh, of course. Boom. I guess, like if you were in this yard looking for treasure, you just look and look and look and look and look. And most days you don't find any. And then one day you find something, you know, so it's. That's where the iteration comes in.

[Interviewer]

And when you're looking for treasure, is it something that's already there?

[George Saunders]

Usually no. It's a reaction moment. There's a little something that I didn't see and then you react to it.

[Interviewer]

So it's the new thing that you're adding.

[George Saunders]

Usually, yeah. Or, or just as valuable, you'll have a phrase, a three beat phrase, and you go, that middle section is redundant. Cut it out. And in the two beat phrase is much better. And the third is already is implied and you have to say it. And then that can sometimes teach you the voice of the whole piece. Once you find one line that sounds the right way, then you're like, okay, the rest of you guys have to respond to this in some way.

[Interviewer]

Is there anything that can't be put into words?

[George Saunders]

Sure. Everything.

[Interviewer]

Thing. So then what do you do?

[George Saunders]

You just try your, you know, it's just, It's a fun game we're playing together.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[George Saunders]

You know, I can't put everything. Words. That's important. I know I can't, but let me try. And then we get sort of a simulation of that. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about causation in fiction.

[George Saunders]

I believe in it. It's. It's just.

[Interviewer]

How does it work?

[George Saunders]

I think it works. I. I think it's another fancy word. And what it really means is when I read you four lines, it changes your location and now you're ready to receive something. And I'm alertly looking at you to see where I put you. And then I do the next thing. That's causation. And on a larger scale, if the first section of a story is, you know, Jerry had been in love for 50 years and never doubted his love. You're like, all right, you know what? Yeah. Something has to respond to that. So causality really is just the parts of the story being an alert communication with each other. That this part of this story has done something, it's clarified itself and it's doing something to you as a reader and as a writer. I can't make the next section as if this hadn't happened. But as we said earlier, that can be quite complicated. But it has to take it into account in some way, I think.

[Interviewer]

Does a writer need to have something to say?

[George Saunders]

Everyone does, I think. But Also, I think a story isn't what you say, it's how you say it. So if you have a method of saying something, that's it, you know? So I think everyone has something to say, but I wouldn't want to hear it. I don't want to hear what I have to say because I hear that every day. But when you're writing, you're doing something else. It's. You're making an object that gives off energy or something.

[Interviewer]

And are there any basic rules about writing? Like shorter sentences are better than longer sentences?

[George Saunders]

The only thing that I honor in my work is that there's a kind of a hierarchy of complication. So I always want to start with the simplest. So first person, present tense, continuous time. One character, that's the first. Just because it's just like.

[Interviewer]

It's classic, like grounding.

[George Saunders]

It's grounding and it's simple. And I'm not. There's no tricks. Then at some point, if the story says, you know what? This really shouldn't be first person. You feel obstructed. Okay. Okay. It's a third person story, one character, continuous time. Draft 15. You need a second voice here. Do I really? I don't think I do. Okay, have another couple weeks. Then you go, oh, actually, I do need a second voice. So in other words, you only go up the chain of complexity as the story demands it. I'd say that's something I've internalized. I mean, I don't like, slop. Like, if somebody doesn't is making a mistake and they don't know it, I don't like that so much. And just in syntax and stuff. But other than that, I think it's, you know, since the story is mostly language responding to language, you can do anything. I had a kid one time, one of my students, he was analyzing the Metamorphosis by Kafka, and he wrote his essay. The first sentence was. Upon peruing this work of literature, I felt myself at a distinct tilt. I'm like, wow. So I put that in a story. I started writing around that, you know, and it generated a whole story with really fucked up syntax. But so. So really there aren't any rules, except I think you have to be aware of what you're doing.

[Interviewer]

Are you ever confused by strong emotions that come up when you're reading and not understand them?

[George Saunders]

Yes, but not in a, like, troubling way. Just. I just taught a story called A Fabulous Animal by this writer, Samantha Schweblin. And it's so good and I got to the end and I couldn't have said what I was feeling except the kind of gratitude like, wow, you picked me up and lifted me and you never let me down until the very end. Then the analyzing is to go back and go, all right, why? Okay, well, also, where. Where did those things happen? Where were my expectations fulfilled and subverted in that cool way? And then at the very end after that, you can go, okay, now what does this mean? Yes, I think that confusion is in a good work of art. I think you feel a lot and you don't know why. Then maybe if you want to, you can go back and kind of try to suss it out. But I think the roller coaster designer is the best metaphor. You know, you get off the thing and you're not exactly analyzing it. You're just feeling it.

[Interviewer]

You just had the experience.

[George Saunders]

Maybe you want to go on it again. And if you wanted to, you could sit, you know, with some paper and go, oh, this is why. But so. So the trick is you as a story writer, you're trying to make that magical thing happen and not be reductive for a few minutes.

[Interviewer]

Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

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