George Saunders (Extended) | Late Show Book Club

Summary

The Late Show Pod Show with Stephen Colbert

Episode: George Saunders (Extended) | Late Show Book Club
Date: March 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special Late Show Book Club episode features acclaimed author George Saunders in an extended, insightful conversation with Stephen Colbert. The discussion ranges from Saunders’ revision-heavy writing process and the role of fiction in turbulent times to the themes behind his latest book, Vigil, his influences, and practical advice for writers. Throughout, the tone remains candid, humorous, and deeply thoughtful, providing a compelling look into the mind of one of America’s most celebrated literary voices.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Saunders' Approach to Writing and Revision

• Revision as the Core of Writing
  • Saunders describes his writing process as "really revision heavy," relying on multiple drafts and imagining the reader as smarter and more compassionate than himself. By doing so, he strives to elevate his own voice (02:20).
  • "You read something and go, ooh, that's kind of dull. She won't like that. And so over the years of doing that, what will happen is a better version of me will appear on the page, which is so refreshing." — George Saunders (02:25)
• Overcoming Writer’s Block
  • The first draft, he says, is "for babies." Real writers trust revision, so writer's block fades away once you accept that early drafts don't have to be good (03:53).
  • “First drafts are for babies. You know the first one is bad, but you trust that your coming back to it again and again, will open it up.” — George Saunders (03:53)

The Role of Art and Fiction in Troubled Times

• Art as a Recalibration of Truth
  • Saunders reflects on the challenge of being an artist during “enormous stress and turmoil,” equating the consumption of persistent political untruths to being served “three turds on a tray” at a fancy restaurant (05:29).
  • “It’s not a huge thing, but it’s not nothing. We can look at a text, and by doing that, we can recalibrate our relation to truth.” — George Saunders (04:43)
• Fiction as a Tool for Empathy and Vulnerability
  • He recounts how mediators use literature (like Chekhov stories) to help conflicting parties open up by discussing imaginary situations, which can free people from defensiveness (06:17).
  • “With fiction, a writer can reach out, and even if the person is very different from you, you can hit something essential.” — George Saunders (06:17)

Vigil and the Allure of Deathbed Stories

• Themes in Vigil
  • Vigil centers on “a guy who hasn’t lived an exemplary life,” his final hours, and interventions from angelic visitors, blending humor with existential reflection (11:45).
  • “It’s kind of like Stinker dies…hilarity ensues, I hope.” — George Saunders (11:45)
• Why Deathbed Narratives Resonate
  • Such stories, Saunders argues, are actually "right now stories," asking, “At this very moment, am I aligned correctly with what's actually true?” (12:13)
• Repentance & Daily Alignment
  • Borrowing from Buddhist thought, Saunders frames repentance as a continual process: aligning oneself with truth and reality in each moment (12:43).
  • “Any way in which you adjust your mind so that you're more open and more in touch with truth, that's sort of a descending move, and it's a kind of a micro repentance, I guess.” — George Saunders (12:43)

Influence of Catholicism and Inspiration Sources

• Lasting Catholic Influence
  • Saunders shares a formative moment from Catholic school when a nun recognized his literary potential, reinforcing his love for reading and writing (13:39).
• Seeking Inspiration
  • Music (Wilco, Sleater-Kinney, Aaron Copeland) inspires him, especially as a reminder of artistic excellence that spurs him to “reach a little deeper” (14:44).
  • While he listens to music for inspiration, he does not write while listening to music, as he needs quiet to craft prose with the recipient (the reader) in mind (16:00).

Teaching and Advice to Aspiring Writers

• Revision and Microchoices
  • At Syracuse, Saunders coaches students to “get in touch with how you revise,” emphasizing writing as the accumulative result of countless ‘microchoices’ (20:49).
  • "You know, to kind of do away with the basic anxiety we all feel with the blank page and just go, yeah, just put something down..." — George Saunders (20:49)

Substack, Russian Literature, and Reading Habits

• Story Club and Russian Short Stories
  • His Substack, “Story Club,” grew out of his book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and now has over 300,000 subscribers. He recommends Chekhov’s “Gooseberries” for newcomers (23:38).
  • “It turns out to be a beautiful meditation on happiness...the beauty of it is, it's not entirely clear why we're responding.” — George Saunders (23:38)
• Impact of Substack on Writing
  • Writing for Substack hasn’t changed his fiction process much but has strengthened his community and close reading practices (25:15).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Revision:
  “The first draft is for babies. You know, like, everybody gets writer's block when they think the first draft has to be perfect.” — George Saunders (03:53)
• On Truth and the Political Climate:
  “This administration seems to be working at a task of lying so often that we get used to it...if you keep bringing the turds on a tray, like, okay, leave it. I'll get used. Bring me a fork.” — George Saunders (05:31)
• On the Power of Storytelling:
  “A writer can choose what he writes, but he can't choose what he makes live.” — Flannery O'Connor, quoted by Saunders (09:01)
• On Early Literary Encouragement:
  “Me and the other nuns have been discussing you in the convent...this is a really hard book. But I think you can handle it.” — George Saunders recounting a nun's words (13:39)
• On Teaching:
  “At Syracuse, with this quality of students, you're really just trying to get them to do the thing that only they could do.” — George Saunders (20:49)

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Key Segments and Timestamps

• Saunders’ Writing Process & Revision (02:20–03:53)
• Art in Dark Times & Truth (04:31–05:47)
• Fiction as Empathy/Healing (06:17–07:29)
• Saunders’ thoughts on Vigil, Deathbed Stories, and Repentance (11:45–13:29)
• Influence of Catholicism, Early Inspiration (13:39–14:33)
• Mitigating Writer’s Block, Microchoices in Editing (20:49–23:02)
• Substack & Russian Short Stories (23:02–25:03)

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Notable Book and Story Recommendations

• Russian Literature:
  • Chekhov’s “Gooseberries” for new readers (23:38)
  • Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol as a desert island book (18:13)
• Flannery O’Connor:
  • “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “The Enduring Chill” (09:46–10:12)
• Children’s Books:
  • The Little House, Dr. Seuss’ The Sneetches and The Sleep Book, The Hundred Dresses (19:04–20:12)

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Closing Reflections

• Saunders highlights the centrality of revision, the ethical potential of art, and the enduring relevance of fiction as a means of fostering empathy and self-examination.
• Practical writing wisdom—accept the imperfection of first drafts, trust in the power of micro-revisions, and maintain deep respect for the reader—blends with broader philosophical musings on truth, happiness, and the role of storytelling in connecting us.
• The conversation maintains a humorous, humble, and approachable tone, making profound insights feel accessible and engaging.

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For Further Engagement

• George Saunders’ Vigil is the Late Show Book Club pick.
• Join Saunders’ “Story Club” on Substack for writing prompts and deep dives into short fiction.
• Watch and engage with The Late Show Book Club for more author interviews and literary discussions.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Stephen Colbert]

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[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

It's the Late Show Poncho with Stephen Colbert.

[Stephen Colbert]

Folks of all ages. My next guest is the number one New York Times best selling booker prize and National Book Award winning author of 13 books. His latest is Vigil. Please welcome back to THE Late Show, George Saunders. Hey, George. Welcome back.

[George Saunders]

Nice to be here. This picture right here, I want to have this in my mind forever.

[Stephen Colbert]

I wouldn't mind having this one in my mind forever either.

[George Saunders]

This is the fourth time I've been on here. Fifth time maybe. And I want to say one thing. You come here nervous? Of course I do. A writer does. Because what. And the people that you have on your show, from the producers, all the technical people, so sweethearted. And it just makes it such a beautiful experience. And I know that comes from the top down, so thank you for that.

[Stephen Colbert]

Well, that's lovely to say and I completely agree. Incredibly lucky to work with this amazing group of people. Congratulations. In November, you were awarded the National Book Foundations. I'm gonna get this right lifetime achievement prize. Your writing gives me so much. Gives the world so much. What does writing give you?

[George Saunders]

Well, you know, my process is really revision heavy, so.

[Stephen Colbert]

Revision heavy?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I'm doing it over and over, day after day. And in that process, what works for me is to imagine the reader as being kind of better than me, like smarter and more worldly and more compassionate and funnier. So you're Always kind of writing up to that person. So that's a revision strategy. You read something and go, ooh, that's kind of dull. She won't like that. And so over the years of doing that, what will happen is a better version of me will appear on the page, which is so refreshing, you know, I mean, I'm not the usual dummy.

[Stephen Colbert]

Does that make you want to sort of edit everything you say and do in your life? You know that given another day.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, 100%.

[Stephen Colbert]

Can we do it again?

[George Saunders]

Could we do it again? Sure.

[Stephen Colbert]

You can even answer that question differently if you'd like right now.

[George Saunders]

So what happens is you're. I'm over here trying to be my best self, and hopefully the reader feels that. And then we both kind of come out of the usual kind of habitual self and have that little moment of kind of like high level union, you know, so that's really beautiful and addictive.

[Stephen Colbert]

Do you have trouble starting ever a book? Because I don't write the way you do. But whenever I write, the very first moment of writing is always kind of like a finger cramping, like neck hurting. I'm a little bit nauseous. My eyes hurt. I feel.

[George Saunders]

It's the prednisone.

[Stephen Colbert]

Exactly.

[George Saunders]

It might be the prednisone.

[Stephen Colbert]

Exactly. And then I can write a few things down that I kind of want to walk away from it and look back and maybe two of the words on the page mean something to me. And then I have to go, oh, what did I mean by any of that?

[George Saunders]

That sounds about right. Yeah.

[Stephen Colbert]

Okay.

[George Saunders]

But I think, honestly, one of the things I teach at Syracuse and one of the things we talk about is that the first draft is for babies. You know, like, everybody gets writer's block when they think the first draft has to be perfect. But once a real writer will get in touch with revision. So that says you can put out anything. It doesn't have to be good at all. Just bad words. Yeah. And you have faith in your own discrimination, basically. So when you come by, each time gets a little better. So then with that, writer's block kind of disappears because, you know the first one is bad, but you trust that you're coming back to it again and again, will open it up.

[Stephen Colbert]

Right now for a lot of people is a time of enormous stress and turmoil. And I'm just curious what you think the role of art is in times of growing darkness.

[George Saunders]

It's. You know, a lot of writers are worried about this, and I think sometimes you feel like you're doing Kind of painting the baseboards and then the ceiling comes down. You know, it can feel like that. But for me, okay, so I want the reader to feel that I'm there with her. The way you do that is in revision. You try to get in touch with some truth that you share. So I think now it's not a huge thing, but it's not nothing. We can look at a text, and by doing that, we can recalibrate our relation to truth. Because this administration seems to be working at a task of lying so often that we get used to it. It's like if you're in a really fancy restaurant and a waiter brings in three turds on a tray, you know,

[Stephen Colbert]

they're under a silver dome.

[George Saunders]

Yes. Yeah. And so in that point, I mean, basic sanity is to say, waiter, you know, let's take this away. But the idea is, if you keep bringing the turds on a tray, like, okay, leave it. I'll get used. Bring me a fork.

[Stephen Colbert]

You know, everyone else seems to be enjoying it.

[George Saunders]

Yeah.

[Stephen Colbert]

Yeah, right. Maybe I'm crazy, right?

[George Saunders]

No, I think that's true. So in a small way, I feel like things are so confusing and so sad and so cruel, this ambient cruelty. So for a couple minutes a day, I'm like, yeah, I don't know what I can do, but I can just recalibrate my relation to truth.

[Stephen Colbert]

What's the role of fiction in times like this? I'm curious, because some people. I don't necessarily agree. Some people say, well, fiction is not good in a time like this because it's a form of escapism. What do you think about that?

[George Saunders]

Well, my experience with fiction is it frees up everything. You don't have to be accurate to anything except the soul, essentially. So in that sense, it's so free. And I think that in itself is really powerful. And I have the feeling that with fiction, a writer can reach out, and even if the person is very different from you, you can hit something essential. I talked to a couple somewhere in my travels, and they were like mediation people, divorces or corporate problems and stuff. And they said in the most difficult cases, what they would do is take a Chekhov story and ask the different parties to read it. And they said it was so amazing, because whatever the real problem was, they didn't need to talk about that. They were talking about these imaginary people in a story. And in the process, they said people would become weirdly vulnerable. They would confess things that in the defensive mobile, they wouldn't confess. So I think that's you know, from the time we're little, our parents are telling us this story and we're trying to make sense of the universe through made up things, which somehow frees us from the constraint of the kind of everyday and the habitual, I think.

[Stephen Colbert]

So, like in fiction, you and I can speak at each other, but if we're like, say, if we're both reading the same book, for instance, let's say we were all reading Vigil.

[George Saunders]

Let's say that. And also I think it's good to read. Buy two or three copies.

[Stephen Colbert]

Exactly. Obviously, buy two or three copies. So you have one everywhere you go like that. Then we're side by side, like facing the story together and experiencing in a similar way. Which is one of the reasons why, even though you've won the Booker Prize and you've won the National Book Award, right now I'm about to bestow on you the highest prize any book could possibly get. Because I'm excited to announce that Vigil will be the Late Show Book Club's February pick. And it comes with we're all gonna read. We're all gonna read Vigil. There you go. And it comes with a mug, which I don't think the Booker Prize comes with. And it comes with a bookmark. That's for you. You get to keep this.

[George Saunders]

I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you.

[Stephen Colbert]

Yeah, yeah, Leave it right there. Now, I love Lincoln and the. It also deals with death in the afterlife. This does as well. Did you mean to write about ghosts or the afterlife again? Or do you start writing and a ghost just wafts into the room?

[George Saunders]

It's more like that, really. Yeah, I mean, I think the writer is basically like a roller coaster designer. So at the beginning, I don't think you should know what you're trying to do, but you're trying to thrill the reader somehow or another. And I think you love Flannery o'. Connor.

[Stephen Colbert]

I do love Flannery o'.

[George Saunders]

Clock. I do, too. And she said a really amazing thing. She said, a writer can choose what he writes, but he can't choose what he makes live. So what that means is you might have the idea I'm this kind of writer, but if you do it and it's boring, you're not that kind of writer, you know. So if you think you're going to be like a string quartet writer, like Shostakovich, and you write one and everybody falls asleep, that's not it. But if you start playing a polka and they dance, then you're. Then you're Good. So. So for me, if I have a. A realistic story, like with a couple having a serious discussion about their marriage, I just like, oh, I can't. I can't do it. But if I let her dead mom drift in, you know, and, and, and also the dead mom doesn't like the husband. Ah, then I'm in. I'm in heaven, you know?

[Stephen Colbert]

Do you have a favorite Flannery o' Connor short story?

[George Saunders]

I think A Good man is hard to find. Yeah. But she's so. I mean, she's a good example of somebody who can be super dark, but there's still celebration going on because she's so specific and so focused and so funny that you. Even if the story is deeply depressing, you come out kind of energized and alert.

[Stephen Colbert]

Yes.

[George Saunders]

Do you have a favorite one of hers?

[Stephen Colbert]

Oh, the Enduring Chill.

[George Saunders]

Oh.

[Stephen Colbert]

Which is not like on a lot of people's lists, I don't think, but I love the Enduring Chill.

[George Saunders]

And Resurrection is amazing, too.

[Stephen Colbert]

Yes. I like her stories because they also grab you by the scruff of the neck the last moment often.

[George Saunders]

Yes, they really do.

[Stephen Colbert]

And surprise you. It's almost if the story starts again right at the very last moment of it. I think the best. Salinger does the same thing, too. The last sentence is the beginning of a whole new story.

[George Saunders]

Yeah. There's a theory of the story that says there's this surface stuff which we think we're interested in, and all along there's something else coming up from underneath, and the writer often doesn't know that until it happens.

[Stephen Colbert]

Does that happen to you?

[George Saunders]

Yes, if I'm lucky. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Stephen Colbert]

George, thank you so much.

[George Saunders]

Thank you so much.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

More with George Saunders from the Late Show Book Club after this.

[Stephen Colbert]

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[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

George, thank you for being here. You are the celebrated and beloved number one New York Times bestselling Booker Prize winning author of 13 books. Your latest is Vigil. How would you describe it in one sentence?

[George Saunders]

Oh, it's kind of like Stinker dies. That's right. There's a guy who hasn't lived an exemplary life, and we kind of just spend the Last few hours of his life at his bedside, and there are some angelic visitors who are kind of trying to do different things with him. And hilarity ensues, I hope.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

What is it about deathbed stories? Citizen Kane, As I Lay Dying, A Christmas Carol, even kind of its Wonderful life like that strikes such a chord with us as a society.

[George Saunders]

I think it's. You know, at some level, we sense that they're not really deathbed stories. They're right now stories. You know, they're stories about at this very moment, am I aligned correctly with, you know, what's actually true? So I think by looking at those kind of exaggerated things or, oh, my God, I'm on the way out, you know, we can maybe get a little light on what's happening right now. In this more hopefully relaxed moment, the

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

idea of repenting comes up again and again in vigilance. Does that have to wait until the deathbed?

[George Saunders]

No. I mean, I think it's something. I mean, as a current Buddhist, I would say repentance just means aligning yourself in every instant with something like truth. So if there's any shred of denial or distraction, in my case, anxiety, then in a certain way you could almost understand that as sin, because that thing is keeping you from being fully in contact with reality. So any way in which you adjust your mind so that you're more open and more in touch with truth, that's sort of a descending move, and it's a kind of a micro repentance, I guess. But I'm not actually a priest or a monk, so I don't really know.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

De sinning feels almost more. I know you were raised Catholic. That almost feels more of that ethos.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I was raised very Catholic, and I loved it. And I had, at one point, I had this really powerful vision in church of sort of the lineage of saints and all this. So it really was with me very strongly. And I also got a lot of really loving support from the nuns and all that. So the Catholic stuff is really, really strong with me. Yeah, I had the first real literary experience I had came from a nun who gave me this book, Johnny Tremaine, and said this incredible sentence, which was, me and the other nuns have been discussing you in the convent, which, like, for a young Catholic boy, was like catnip. And then she said, this is a really hard book. And she was holding it as if she might not give it to me, and she said, but I think you can handle it. And then she handed it off. And it was the first time I ever thought of myself as, I guess, a literary person or a writer.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

I'm curious, where do you turn for inspiration? And I kind of want to take writing out of it, reading and writing out. Where do you go or what do you do when you are looking for ideas?

[George Saunders]

Well, I mean, I'm a believer of that thing about, you know, the muse finds you, likes to find you at your desk. So I don't. I would say normally I don't feel inspired particularly. I just feel like when I sit down, something will occur and it's kind of more like. Just to me, inspiration is reaction. So you have something you wrote yesterday and you, you know, you. You read it and you have an inclination to change it. That, for me, that passes for inspiration, but off the page, I. I mean, music is strong for me. You know, when I was finishing Lincoln and the Bardo, I was listening to a lot of Wilco, a lot of Slater Kinney, some Aaron Copeland. And I think what that does for me is it just reminds me of, like, excellence, you know, like, oh, my God, that moves me so much. And that piece of music is so intense and there's so much human intelligence in it, you know, oh, God, please let me come up somewhere near that bar in what I'm doing. So it's kind of like a. It functions as a renewal of ambition, like to be in the face of somebody who's a great artist and is working at the top of their game. It just. It makes me feel sort of inspired to do my best, but also kind of to say, you know, it can be done, you actually can do it, but you might have to reach a little deeper than your habitual energy to do that.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

I can't imagine the answer is yes, but. Do you ever listen to music while you are writing?

[George Saunders]

No, I don't. I don't. I mean, I feel like the.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

It's like patting your tummy and rubbing your head.

[George Saunders]

Well, it's also. Yeah, right, exactly. I also. I feel that, you know, when you're. When I'm writing, the main thing I'm doing in a kind of complicated way is trying to imagine you, the reader, when you receive that text. And my revision thing is all about trying through my cuts and my additions to communicate respect for you. So, like, trying to buy the cuts. Imagine a reader who is like 10 degrees, 10% smarter than me, and more worldly and better traveled. So that process requires kind of quiet, you know, I have to know. I have to have some approximation of how you're going to receive it. So if I'm listening to a great song that I love and. And I've got that kind of, you know, like, excitement from that, I can't assume that you're going to be listening to the same song. So for me, it's a very quiet kind of activity and lots of rereading in that quiet mode. And then I'm really just trying to posit a reader on the other end of it.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Last year, you were awarded the National Book Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Prize. In your acceptance speech, you said that, and I quote, literature is what we are doing in every moment. What did you mean by that?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, well, I mean, the neuroscientists are now finding out that when you walk into a new space and open your eyes, the mind kind of basically does a rough draft of where you are. And weirdly, it happens, I guess, at the back of your brain. And then as you dwell there for even just a few microseconds, the data is pouring in and that model is being essentially revised. And so in a certain way, you literally are writing a novel. Every instant you've ever been alive, you've been writing a novel. And so it's all kind of an approximation, but like writing, you're going from a kind of general, maybe vague, approximate thing into something that's refined by way of specificity into something that feels, anyway, really three dimensional and real. So very strange.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Something we ask all our book club authors. You're stuck on a deserted island. You can only bring one book. What book are you bringing?

[George Saunders]

How to Build a Boat? No, I think I would bring. I would bring. I don't know, maybe. Well, I would. I mean, honestly, I'd probably pick out the densest, hardest Buddhist text I could find, and then knowing that I wouldn't get it and would take me maybe all that time to figure it out. In literary terms, I think I would pick Dead Souls by my Nikolai Gogol because it's a weird book. I love it, and I can't really say why. It's funny, but not that funny. It's just weird. And whenever I read it, I think, I don't know why I like this, but it feels probably of any book to me, it feels the most like real life. So I might take that and kind of try to figure out what that was about. That would take two months and then I'm still there.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Am I right that you have two adult daughters?

[George Saunders]

That's right.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

What was your favorite book to read to them when they were young?

[George Saunders]

Oh, well, we read a lot of Books. And I hadn't really, as a kid. I wasn't a big reader, really. And so a lot of the classic books were kind of new to me. So I remember we read the Little House was always a lot of fun. And I think it was the sleep book, the Dr. Seuss sleep book, and the Sneetches. And we had a real. We basically had it memorized, and we'd do different voices and stuff. So that was. That was a really sweet period. The other one I love is. I think it's called the Hundred Dresses. Is that the right name? And it's just a beautifully compassionate story about this little kind of poor girl who's not really fitting in well in her school. And then she moves away. And that's the end of the book. Except that they. This group of kids who have kind of underestimated her. Afterwards, they. If I'm remembering correctly, they go into her house and they see that in her closet she's drawn the hundred dresses that she claims to own. And so they totally misunderstood her. But it's one of those stories that it snaps you into thinking, I should never assume that I know anything about anybody, you know. And it's so simply told, and it was always moving.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Gosh, that's like. And I know that you've talked to Steven about children's books, but that's. Children's books can just have so much that has so much behind it, even.

[George Saunders]

Yeah, it's so hard because you can't really get philosophical, and it has to be in pretty simple strokes. But then also, you're kind of relying on a real truth, which is that kids are basically pretty amazingly morally advanced. And they, you know, they. They respond and they understand injustice when they see it.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

You've been teaching at Syracuse for 30 years. This year, what is your best advice for aspiring writers?

[George Saunders]

Oh, well, it's little. It's a little inside baseball. But really the whole thing is to get in touch with how you revise. That's 100% it. So I think a lot of young writers have the idea that the first draft is it. You know, and if the first draft doesn't have merit or if the basic idea doesn't have merit, you're in trouble. But first drafts are really for babies. You know, no offense to babies, but you. The writing process really is saying, I'm putting something out. Of course it's not good. Now I'm going to apply my discrimination to that text and try to make it better with pass after pass. And that's really where you know, that's the process by which a person's actual stuff gets into the story. So I think, you know, to kind of do away with the basic anxiety we all feel with the blank page and just go, yeah, just put something down. It doesn't matter. My writing self is going to show up when I choose. Like, I use this phrase called microchoices. So in a book, you've made literally hundreds of thousands of microchoices, and you've made them. Some you've reversed and redone, but by the time you do that, it's kind of like, you know, if I gave a person an apartment in New York, let's say, and decorated it for them very nice, they would walk in and they'd of course, love it. But I'd also feel that it was hotelish, it wasn't their house. So if you gave them the right to take out one item a day and then replace it with something that they chose, and you did that for, let's say, three years, by the end of that process, that place would have so much of their essential spark in it. And that's simply because they brought a lot of different selves to that process. Every day they made a different choice. And over time, and re choosing and re choosing, the whole thing is permeated with whatever it is that makes you unique. And at Syracuse, with this quality of students, you're really just trying to get them to do the thing that only they could do. And that's a really kind of difficult task. But the structure of it is to make them choose and choose and choose and choose.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

You know, I think so many people would want to be one of your six students that earn those coveted spots at Syracuse every year. But now anyone can kind of be a student of George Saunders because you have this substack called Story Club. And, you know, over 300,000 people are subscribed to get writing prompts, discuss short stories. This substack came out of your book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, which is a masterclass on Russian short stories. If you had to recommend one story by one of the great Russian writers to someone who is completely uninitiated, where should they start?

[George Saunders]

That's a great question. I think I would do Gooseberries by Chekhov. And it's kind of a slow story. Not much happens, really, but it turns out to be a beautiful meditation on happiness. And there's this one part where a guy is talking to some friends, sitting around a fire, and he makes this beautiful kind of speech against happiness. Basically, Saying, you know, we spend so much time trying to be happy. Isn't it kind of decadent that we're only thinking about our own happiness? And doesn't our quest for happiness actually cost other people? You know, and he gives some great examples. And, you know, the reader kind of comes out of it going, wow, I never thought of it. I'm against happiness. Happiness sucks. But in the same story, there's the same guy who gives that speech, is shown swimming in this pond. He's bathing in this pond after a long trip, and he's having so much fun, and he's so happy. And so the structure of the story makes it so that you kind of turn the Chekhov and go, well, you know, is happiness good or bad? And he's like, yeah, you know, so I would use that. I've never seen someone who doesn't respond to that. And the beauty of it is, it's not entirely clear why we're responding. It's not a story that has, you know, a lot of escalation or a plot or kind of a. A big climax, but. But people are strangely moved by that. And I've never met anyone, even if they're not a reader, who. Who could get through that and not kind of come out a little bit, you know, brightened up.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

You know, you once talked about working on a short story for 14 years. Has publishing a substack newsletter twice a week, every week for the past five years changed the way you approach writing fiction?

[George Saunders]

Not really, because I have. You know, I wrote my first book at work, kind of sneaking it in between other assignments, and I had this computer set up so that the people coming in couldn't see what I was working on. And I hit. At that time, it was shift F3 and toggle the story in my actual work. So very sneaky. And from that, that was about six years of that. There's kind of a neurological thing that happens. Like, when I'm working on a story, it doesn't matter if I've just been doing something else or have something come up. Just kind of these walls come up, and I'm just working on that. So substack's been great in two senses. One, it forces me to really read more closely because, you know, when you have to write about something, you really have to pay attention to it. So that's been good. And also, the community that we have is so amazingly positive, but also not afraid to dig into a story with real rigor, you know, and also, they're really good at disagreeing in A really civil way, which is so unusual on the Internet. So I've kind of gotten addicted just to reading the comments and kind of being reassured that people are still thoughtful and still caring and still able to really disagree with some power without resorting to personal insults or that kind of thing.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Well, last question. George, can you describe what a typical writing day looks like for you?

[George Saunders]

Yeah, I mean, really, it's just ideally, in a perfect world, I have breakfast with Paula and I walk our dog and I go up and I just start farting around, you know, for hopefully like four hours would be good. If possible, we usually take a little lunch break. But it's just, it's very. Because I started at work, it's kind of a low demand environment. I don't have to have quiet. I don't have to have any. I don't really have any rituals. But the main thing is just to kind of, you know, take the story I'm working on and kind of have that little bit of anxiety like, oh, God, I hope it's good. And I don't know if I can work today and then just work against that by just pulling it forward, really, and kind of just looking at it and waiting for my natural kind of love of prose to kick in. So you read something and you go, oh, no, that's not right. Cross it out. And just like that, you're writing.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Well, thank you so much for being here, John.

[George Saunders]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Vigil is available everywhere. Books are sold. For Late Show Book Club updates, follow our Instagram colbertlateshow.

[Stephen Colbert]

Thank you for listening to the Late Show POD show with Stephen Colbert. Just one more thing. If you want to see more of me, come to The Late Show YouTube channel for more clips and exclusives.

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[George Saunders]

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