A Human Conversation with Writer George Saunders

Published Oct 15, 2023, 8:00 AM

Last fall, George Saunders published Liberation Day, his first short-story collection in nine years. This week, we return to our conversation with the beloved author.

At the top, we discuss his process creating the book (3:40), the influence of Chekhov and Gogol (4:56), and a timely passage on democracy from “Love Letter” (8:35). Then, we unpack how he builds stories (13:30), a guiding philosophy from our first talk (14:58), and an excerpt from the titular story, “Liberation Day” (21:30).

On the back-half, we talk about the power of revision through “Elliott Spencer” (27:40), the seeds of the book’s moving final story, “My House” (36:34), the ‘failures in compassion’ it reveals (40:50), Saunders’ enduring relationship with his wife (45:08), and how he hopes to continue surprising himself as a writer, at 63 (48:40).

Pushkin. This is talk Easy. I'm standing for Goso. Welcome to the show. Today. I wanted to return to my conversation with writer George Saunders. He's the author of books like A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, Lincoln in the Bardo in the Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award back in twenty thirteen. He's also contributed to The New Yorker magazine since nineteen ninety two and has been called the best short story writer in English by Time magazine. Last fall, he published Liberation Day, his first short story collection in nine years. True to form, each short story contains a mix of humor, joy, and despair as he grapples with these timely ideas around oppression and revolution, free speech, and civil liberties. The book was released in paperback earlier this month, and if you haven't read it yet, I loved this line from George's publisher, Andy Ward, who said, the book is about the way we lose sight of our humanity through little failures in compassion and that refrain. Especially after the week we have had with everything that's happening right now between Israel and Palestine, It's something I feel we ought to hold on to. Obviously, compassion alone cannot solve what's happening, but it's certainly a place to start. And you know, no podcast can undo the pain, the brutality of this moment. We can't explain it away either, but we can sit with it, hold space for it, and that is something we will be doing on the show in the months ahead. Until then, I hope, whoever you are, wherever you are, that you are safe and sound. I hope your loved ones are safe and sound, and I hope this conversation offers just a little bit of light and what has been a dark, dark week. This is George Saunders. George Saunders to have you pleasure to be here. Set the scene for the listeners.

I requested this six foot divide because I'm going on tour, act like I'm applying for a job. Your table is big. I don't have a table. I feel like you're a little higher than me, which you're probably not.

It was not a contest, per George's request, We're more than six feet away.

Yes, I noted that, but I appreciate it. And it's actually really cozy in here. It's nice.

It is a true honor to have you. How are you doing.

I'm kind of just starting to talk about this new book, which is always fun. You know, you finish it and then you just move on. And then I heard it on audio book the other day and it kind of was interesting to hear it and kind of like it.

What did you like about it?

You know, it's like a written by a pretty manic person with poor aim.

You're describing it like it's a different human being.

Well, it kind of you know that person is different. It's like the accumulation of different obsessive episodes from the last eight years and you put it together in a final us AN episode. You know, at that point, I don't really know what it means at all. I just know that it's right. It should be that way, and you talk about it, and again you hear it in an audiobook, it starts to kind of does feel like the work of somebody else, you know, But there's a feeling of like somebody really intensely trying to say something, but maybe being a little drunk or something, you know, and so the good intention comes through and it's intense, you know, but I admire the attempt, the gumption. Yeah, the gumption, right, you said recently, in each book, I find out something new about where I was for the period of the writing. What did you find out about yourself in that period in which you wrote this book? So I think when I'm looking at the book now, it's shown me first that I was in over my head. I had this system of thought that you can sort of see intent of December, and then all this stuff happened. And so a lot of the subtext of the stories is somebody who doesn't is on pretty firm ground. He thinks buddy isn't on a more technical level, and this came a little bit out of that book that we talked about, that Russian swimming upon in the Ring. A lot of the stories, I think what they're doing, they're taking the reader on a certain trip, and the point of that trip is to show the reader how fascily she judges, and then overturn the judgment, put her in a different place, do it again and again, until at the end. I think the result is kind of a state of like befuddlement, maybe happy to befuddle one But oh wow, I didn't realize my mind did that. And I think I picked that up some from Chekhov and Google and those guys. You know, My model now is that you're a rollercoaster designer. I'm going ahead and I'm designing the first dip over and over for months until it's going to be really good, and I'm going to sort of know where you are at the end of that dip. Then I start designing the second one. In the end, the thing is just to put you through an experience rather than teach you something or have a theme or whatever.

You mentioned that this was produced somewhat in the lockdown, and the through line, if there is a through line in these short stories, is that some one is usually stuck in something and then by the end of the story, or sometimes in the middle of the story, their conditions have radically changed. And I wondered if the book was in some way reflecting on the precarity and the impermanence of this moment that we're in.

I hope so, but not by intention, you know, like as we talked about last time, I kind of just go into it with that roller coaster designer mind. Also, what you're describing is sort of what short stories do. They set you up in a certain place relative stability. Oh, this world is like this, and then somebody throws a rock through the window and the whole thing changes, And in some stories that happens three or four times. Maybe we say that the story is a particularly good mode for right now, because if you're thinking about change, and even negative change, what do we do in the face of negative change a short story? That's kind of the main question that's asking. You know, it's never a short story. Is never a really cool happy guy stayed cool and happy. So you start with the stasis. You know, it changes, and that teaches you something about the character, but it also teaches you something about your your mind observing them.

I guess you said it was a good form for right now. How do you see right now within that context?

I think it's a kind of amazing moment of disruption because so many ideas I'm going to do a big generalization, but so many ideas that I think a lot of people felt or corrupt and had been around lazily for too long got overturned. So democracy is just what we It's just the air we breathe. We're just good at it. Well, guess what the whole idea of the American dream and that work hard will be rewarded, at least in my age. You kind of go, wow, it's amazing how long those ideas were sort of under suspicion but tolerated, and then suddenly, like it seems like within three or four years, they all get called into question. So this pandemic was a bit like you're on the back of a tiger and the tiger sleeps, so you don't even notice the tiger, but then it gets up and suddenly you go, shit, my tiger's walking, you know. And in truth, the story form is based on aida tiger is always about to hop up and we don't know it, and so it kind of is the moment that the tiger leaps to its feet and throws you off.

Well, I think you explore this very idea toward the end of your short story love Letter, which I thought maybe we start by reading from Sure.

So this is a grandfather who kind of was there during the time when democracy crept out, and he's kind of writing to his grandson to explain why his grandson has got some issues that he's trying to work through, whether you should be involved in like a counter revolution or not something like that. Okay, seen in retrospect. Yes, I have regrets. There was a certain critical period. I see that now. During that period, your grandmother and I were working on every night a jigsaw puzzle each at that dining room table. I know you know well we were planning to have the kitchen redne We're in the middle of having the walls out there in the yard rebuilt a great expense. I was experiencing the first intimations of the dental issues I know you've heard so much, perhaps too much about. Every night, as we sat across from each other doing those puzzles, from the TV in the next room blared this litany of things that had never before happened, that we could never have imagined happening, that were now happening. And the only response from the TV pundits was a rious, satirical smugness that assumed, as we assumed, that those things could and would soon be undone, and that I would return to normal, that some adult or adults would arrive as they had always arrived in the past, to set things right. It did not seem, and please destroy this letter after you've read it, that someone so clownish could disrupt something so noble and time tested and seemingly strong, something that had been with us literally every day of our lives. We had taken, in other words, a profound gift, for granted did not know the gift was a fluke, a chimara, a wonderful accident of consensus and mutual understanding. Because this destruction was emanating from such an inept's source, who seemed at that time merely comically fogush, who seemed to know so little about that which he was disrupting, And because life is going on, and because every day he they burst through some new gate of propriety, we soon found that no genuine outrage was available to us anymore. If you'll allow me a crude metaphor, as I'm sure you, King of Las Croma ste Fartos will, A guy comes into a dinner party, takes a dump on the rug in the living room. The guests get excited, yell out in protest. He takes a second dump. The guests feel well, yelling didn't help, while some of them applaud his audacity. He takes a third dump on the table, and still no one throws him out. At that point, the sky has become the limit in terms of future dumps. So although your grandmother and I during this critical period often said, you know, someone should arrange a march or those effing Republican senators, we soon grew weary of hearing ourselves saying those things, and to avoid being old people emptily repeating ourselves stop saying those things, and did our puses and so forth, waiting for the election, uplifting.

That push and pull between the grandfather and grandson as the grandfather is conflicted about his grandson getting sort of politically activated. Is that something you've felt in these last few years.

No, not really. I mean it's all sort of projective imagination. So you imagine I don't have a grandchild, but I have daughters, so I imagine them. You fast forward ten years, you imagine things worse. And then a lot of fiction for me is just saying once I had a mild headache, Okay, exaggerate that times twelve. You've got a brain tumor, you know, and within the sort of like tolerance of the form, you don't have to get it just right. Actually you're just saying, you're kind of saying to the reader, let's pretend that I have a brain tumor, and less pretend it's sort of like a headache, and then they go, okay, sure, that's close enough.

So in many ways it starts from a very simple, sort of mundane idea, I have a headache, and then you amplify it.

Yeah. Or you know, there's a great Israeli writer, Ecker Carrot and if you're never read, yeah, and he came to Syracuse one time and he gave an incredible talk about growing up the child of two Holocaust survivors, and he basically said that he went to his dad one time and said, you know, Dad, I know I could never understand your experience. And his father basically said, well, nonsense. You know, have you ever been hungry? Scared? Cold? And you see? Yeah, he said, well it's just more, It's just that, but more, you know. So I think that's kind of the essential creed of the fiction writers. You don't have to have done it, but you have to have had some inkling of it, and then you go, okay, well, if it was a different time, or I was more sensitive person, or then you just go for it. And the great sort of forgiveness is that it doesn't have to be precise. I don't think fiction is there to kind of tell you exactly what somebody else's life is like. You know, you're making sort of placeholders in a certain way.

I'm wondering how this may tie into this larger idea that's inside these stories, which is this investment in our own phenomena. What exactly did you mean by that, this investment in our own phenomena?

I think what that means is it's my paraphrase of a Buddhist idea, which is that you you're born, and you are too, and suddenly everything that's happening is happening for you, for your benefit. You're the center of this drama. And then as you get older, you just keep going, oh yeah, look, you know, the world is actually revolving around me, and luckily I'm eternal and I'm the center of the story. And I think that's done by your thoughts and by your ruminative mind. You know that it's always saying George has a new book out, Yes I do. I'm so happy about it. You know, So that's fun. You know, that's like it's great fun. Or it can also be pretty miserable. George has hemorrhoids. That's not the best. That kind of thing that's true. No, that's a rumor, but it's not true. I heard about that. So you're constantly constructing yourself with your thoughts, and that's fine. I mean, that's you know. But then on the other hand, when you get sick or someone you love die is whatever, then that accretion around the self is suddenly costly. So what I mean by, you know, investment in our own phenomenon is I believe in my separateness and my importance. That's okay, but then there's a cost on the other side. So this liberation day for me after I assigned the tide lives kind of like, yeah, I think what it means is everybody wants to be free of the kind of moment by moment discomfort of life and the hurt and the you know, the sorrow and all that stuff. Ultimately comes from the fact that we really like ourselves and we believe in ourselves. And that's the conundrum, this.

Idea of the phenomena dropping away. It's something we discussed actually in our first conversation, and I thought maybe we would take a listen for a second.

After some years of living, we can all look back at our lives and realize that we have been different people at different moments. You know, the moment after somebody or something you love has died. There you are and the world seemed a certain way. A moment six months later, when that's faded and you're deeply involved in your business concerns, the mind is working differently. It's literally a different lens through which you're seeing the world. Okay, so that's great. I would actually I think I think I would prefer to be in the first state all the time. And if you could be in the first date all the time, the state you're in after somebody died, for example, I think you're seeing the world more accurately. Why because this thing we call the self has actually dropped away. And the self, the way I understand it, is this thing that you make with your thoughts, your conceptual planning, locating mind is working to make you central to the narrative. And although that's intelligent in a Darwinian sense, it actually is an intelligent in an ultimate sense. So when that mind is working, you're actually kind of full of shit. You know, you're wrong about the truth of things. When that mind recedes, which it does in a time of loss or say, or if you're a good meditator at receides, then I think I just prefer that state, and maybe maybe art is one of the ways that we simulate or stimulate ourselves into that state briefly. And the value of it then would just be, you know, it's reminding us of such a transformation as possible.

What do you make of that?

I pretty much agree with that. I'm consistent. You got to say that. The only thing I would add or note is that we're doing revisions. Yeah, because it's true. But what I've noticed that I mean to be frank, is I haven't done anything about that in the meantime, you know, like I'm still like, yeah, that's that's exactly right. Why, you know, there's so many things in this kind of stuff we're talking about, and also in writing, there's the knowledge about it, and then the kind of epigrammatic stuff, and there's the doing. And so I'm cringing a little bit that because I agree with that, I would say the same thing today. And yet you know, I'm somebody who if you showed me how to fish for three minutes, I could really talk a good game about the meaning of fishing. But it doesn't mean I could fish. So I'm coll me a little more. As I'm getting older, I'm getting skeptical about my own You know. I give pretty good advice, I think, or what sounds like good advice, but you know, at some point it's just talk. And the only thing I think I've gotten better at is writing.

If the writing is a thing you've gotten better at, why don't we dive into some more of it? In that clip, you talk about how through writing you can achieve that kind of honesty and clarity that one sometimes feels in the aftermath of a death.

For example, it's a baby verse baby version, you know. And for me, what it means practically speaking is just that for some portion of the three hours I'm writing, my mind stops yapping, you know. There's not so much rumination, and it's really like I'm just concentrating on this sentence to make it better, almost like if you were, I suppose a plumber or a rock climber. You're just concentrating on the thing, so your monkey mind gets quiet, and that's good.

Well, so I want to get into what is the result of a three hour dive that you've had before I do that mentioned earlier, how this was your first collection of nine years. In the interviewing time, you've said, I've come to think that these days we judge too harshly and too quickly. Now, one of the things fiction can do for us is impose on us, as we read, a sort of enforced suspension of judgment. What do you mean by that enforced suspension of judgment?

Okay, So in the simple form, I say, once upon a time there was an incredibly graceful man, and then you go okay, and then two minutes later he stumbles. Suddenly, I still accept the first name, and he's incredibly graceful. Andy stumbled. That's already a more interesting guy than the one who never stumbled. So your judgment said, oh wow, incredibly graceful. That's awesome, you know. And then I said, however, and introduce the second thing. So we talked last time, I think maybe about the story of Gooseberry's at Chekhov's story, and in there, you know, he has a guy makes this beautiful speech about how the urge to make yourself happy is kind of decadent, especially when so many people are unhappy, and also when your happiness might be built on the necessity of their unhappiness, and so as a reader you're like, oh god, that's so true, that's original. I've had that thought. But also yeah, wow. Then Chekhov runs around and shows that same guy in a state of complete self absorbed happiness when he's swimming in this pond. And so Chekhov just lets those two things sit there. So you're immediately wondering about your judgment. Am I supposed to believe A or B? My contention is that that right there is the gold when you go, oh, I don't know. Again, I'm in this thing of talking about the roller coaster designer, But if you get off a roller coaster in that first minute, you're not going, oh, you know, that second hill seem to be at the same angle as the pyramid of chiops. I mean, you're just like fuck. And so that little three second stunned period is actually why you're there. And now you might talk about it on the way to the car. You might say, oh, that was really But I like the idea that you're trying to stun yourself in the writing and the reader into something like, man, I don't know, it's a falling away of something. I'm not quite sure what that's a moment of astonishment. Yeah, that's it. It's funny when you start talking about stuff, it's kind of hard to make the case for the value of astonishment. But you couldn't live a day without.

It, really, well you hoped live a day without it.

Yeah, and you do. But I think you know, then you can kind of break down the concept of astonishment, which is to me, it has something to do with what we're talking about, this loss of judgment, which is also maybe it's like all those selves that you are kind of pulled back and go ooh, you know just first, but second, what keeps me coming back to reading is that then you have the memory of that person. You're not always that person who in the moment that you finish something, but you have the memory that that person exists. So it's sort of like when we were kids and I was a Catholic kid, and some really cool shit would happen in church, you know, like for me internally, and then when I would come out, I would remember later that it was powerful, you know, so even if you were not in that mode, you could remember that such a state was possible. Also, some other things that I think we're probably somewhat like writing because sitting there for hours on end, and then it got real quiet, and outside and inside real quiet, and then there'd be a little narration from the priest about this or that, and then your mind would start working on it. So I can see you're skeptical. I can see it from across the room.

You're right, My Catholic experience was, let's say lackluster. Let's try to practice that suspension of judgment for a second and dive into the titular story of this new book, Liberation Day. To set the scene. Inside this world you've created, there exists a three story high speaking wall where humans are opinion against their will and directed by a hobbyist to perform historical reenactments. With this passage, one of the opinion people is explaining his devotion to this craft, the dramaturgy that goes into it. Am I missing anything?

No? That was perfect what I have found. The more I live in my mind beforehand, within my topic, the better my flow will be once I begin. Mister Hugh calls it priming the pump all day. I prime my pump getting to know my city better by thinking about it. It is a sad city, yes, for that is in the settings. But I imagine a livelier quarter of the city, where all the city's celebration occurs over there, on a small island that may only be reached to be a canoe. A small fleet waits at a common pier. What color are the canoes? Have they drivers? What is the direction of the current? As the drivers propel their canoes across the bays? At the isle of celebration? Are there fireworks which light up the faces of the shop keepers and workers who have scrimped and saved to celebrate there, so that they may, for at least this one night, leave their sadness behind. The fireworks, must, I imagine, be reflected a rippling in the shallow water lapping in the narrow inlets that punctuate the island, along which orange brown cafes are nestled, strung with tiny lights, lights that bob with any slight breeze. They're in the cafes that nightly ring with the sound of the laughter of those relieved to find themselves made briefly joyful in this way. All day, while Lauren and Craig nap I prime my pump. Lauren wakes gives me a look as in Jeremy Waite, are you priming or pump? My look in return says I am is that an issue? Laurena and Craig feel that I am strange, too sensitive. I fall under the sway of the settings, It is true, with greater alacrity than they always have. Well, I love my work. I aspire to always be feeling more, thus speaking with more gusto, thus evoking greater emotion and engagement in my listeners. This is what I feel makes me unique among the three of us.

You look up at me after you're done reading with a sort of like, is it okay that I do it right? And I keep.

Thinking he's not doing it right.

No, it's the opposite. But I can't compliment you too much. No, I'm blown away. This idea of priming your pump. Well, for one, it sounds extremely sexual. Are you aware of this?

Yeah? Yeah, I mean he's not what I.

Was okay, But the actual idea of it is to pour over the material in the mind before performance. And I wonder could this description double for your own writing process?

Yeah, one hundred percent. I'm always priming my pump. But in that actually, in that part I read, that's I'm sort of demonstrating it because in this world, at least at this stage in the story, it's almost like he gets a little boost in his verbal abilities, but from this this thing that they've done in his brain. So if you tell him your topic is city, he can kind of riff basically at a pretty high register. And what he's found is if he prepares a little bit and he kind of rewrites basically, then when he riffs, he's going to have more to say. So that is exactly like what you're doing in revision, you know. So when I wrote that, I remember thinking, okay, city, I'm going to sort of demonstrate in this paragraph what he does, which is by adding clauses and specificity, he's going to build a city out in his mind. And once he builds it, then later that night when he has to perform it, he sort of has that. So it's totally, yeah, totally analogous.

You know, right before he read that story, he said, I can say you're skeptical about the church. It wasn't skepticism. I was smiling because that image of you as a young boy sitting in the church silently taking in the vastness that is around you. It reminded me of this passage of having to quietly build the story in your mind before performing it, and that was what my smile was.

Na, that's beautiful, that's fair. And actually as you were, as we were joking about that, I remembered that what and maybe this has to do with me turn into you after the reading. My first gig was I was a reader at the Catholic church in our town. First, so we got to get out of class early. This was for the weekday mass. You were sort of ritually excused, and it was kind of like, oh, well, I'll have to go to church business, you know, And you get up and left, and then you met the priest and he would make kind of a big deal of there's there was this big, huge Bible with a lot of beautiful colored like place markers and stuff, and he would show you what you were to read, and I think you had to sort of read it once to make sure you could pronounce it. And then you got to go up to the mic, and it was a pretty nice mic and it was a podium and that feeling of reading in that reverberating room and then reading a really good text, I mean, those are well written you know, And I remember that feeling of like when you would get it right, even the bad kids would kind of like, oh, you know, So that was that was a pretty in retrospect, a pretty formative thing to say, these words have power, they can come through me, and they can they can actually make a ripple.

And that was at what age eleven twelve? It was the first book reading you did.

Truly, and I laugh sometimes I didn't. I never thought of it a couple of years ago, and it's exactly the same feeling.

Putting a pause on the conversation, we're right back with author George Saunders in regards to this priming the pump way of working. I'm not even gonna make the joke this time. Why don't we talk about this story of yours called Elliott Spencer, which exists in a kind of dystopia that I think the last piece also did. Here, our eighty nine year old protagonist finds himself brainwashed, his memory scrapped, a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. Before we read a path from it, where did this emerge from?

I'm sort of like a little bit embarrassed to admit about. For me, when I'm like, don't have a story, I'm always just like, well, is there any voice you'd like to do? Is there? Just like almost it's like at the back of your throat or in your chest, like I feel like saying something. It's almost like if somebody you know puts you in front of an empty out a horn with a microphone, would you like to sound like sort of right? You know? And the goal I think is to find something that's a little bit well onen, it's got to be kind of a deep well you have to be able to do it for a while. Two With me, it's that you're not quite sure where it's coming from, so you have an overdeterminate in that way, and can you do it? Can you do it day after day? You know? And then behind that there's a little hope that as you're doing it day after day, it might have a little room to develop, you know, it might get a little richer. And at the time I was also I think related to meditation. I was thinking, you know, like, well, so is the goal to have zero thoughts? Which is sometimes here and I think that's not actually the goal, but sometimes there are times when I thought it was so when you're meditating, you get your thoughts to zero, and that's always seem like a positive goal. But then I thought, well, if you literally could do that, if you could take the operating system does your brain and leave it functional, but take out all the data. And I think I was thinking, well, you'd also take out you know, the words and the concepts, but also the habits. So if I'm a slightly whatever, fearful person, also whatever causes that is going to get plucked out. Then if you turn the system on again and let the person be in the world, would they become what they were? Or does the you know, the operating system somehow do something different, revert back to factories right exactly. Yeah, So that was just a thought, and then I thought, oh, that would be fun to try to sound like that guy, sound like the guy who's just been returned to factory settings. And then it's like, well, actually, I have no idea because he wouldn't have language, Okay, so let's give him somebody who's teaching him language. So at that point she's like, oh, that'd be fun. I don't really know how he would sound, but he wouldn't sound boring, So let's try it.

Well, Why don't we take a listen for a second. Sure, This is the scene towards the end of the story in which Elliot is about to be reset, so to speak, and the pieces of his life begin to come back to him and flashes.

Ma holding picnic basket, rushes over wax me with basket. I laugh and laugh, and Ruth is there, Ruth. I recall you, Oh pretty Ruth lies at base of tree. I just have amblotto, have just knocked Ruth right. Ruth on ground, holding stuffed bear. I gave her. You break my heart, Elliot. I wouldn't marry you if you were the last. Ma. Ell sweet Jesus, you drink and drink and do such crazy grab bear from Ruth, throw bear on grill, bear burning ring I bought Ruth still taped to Paul. Look at you, idiot, MA says, is that who you are? Gimme all's goddamn keys, go out gate to my electra, brand new electra. Ma drops gray heads so sad helps Ruth up, blink little sick, recalling that no, if I could go back in yard, would take bear from fire, pul ring off bear, give ring to Ruth, saying, Ruth, sorry, let us love each other forever. But Ruth married Philip moved far away. I recall, I now recall. If Ruth not gone, Ma, not death, I would say, Ruth, Ma, the me I was then is not the only me I may. Ever, there is a me under that me who yet wishes to do lovely in this magnificent Watch Ruth, watch Ma, this knew me. In what time he has left, We'll try. I go through gate using both hands. I'm out of yard into hah. I now recall it, lot, vacant, lot. Never have I been so alone with myself while outside, knees hurt, no spring chicken. When will I death? Might I death alone? Probably? Yes? A little scared about that, I must say, But I am not death yet, not dead yet, not yet, and not yet. World lays out before me knew with each click of step and swish of aspen leaves above. For that, I say thanks. For as long as world is shiny new, there is no death, And what lovely may I not yet do? Here is cactus word I know from long ago cartoons. Watch with Ma. These West trees I know, like snap, are not my old East trees that I knew by heart, sycamore, dogwood, beach. I do not as yet no west trees names, Western trees names, but will will soon. Can learn. Am learning all the time. No night, star moon, no walk, no hide, no path, and a little bit smiling. Take it.

There's so many parts of what you just read that I found fascinating. But as I was preparing for this conversation, pouring over those last few paragraphs specifically, I noticed in the version I received over the summer that the ending is different. The last paragraph you just read is actually the third to last paragraph in my version, And I was thinking about that revision process as I have it here in sort of real time.

There was just a place late in the game where I was reading the manuscript and something just you know, sometimes like when you get really in touch with it, you just feel like, I don't know, it's okay, I can't do anything better. That's good enough, but you just feel a little bit of potential for something better.

What do you think it does?

You know? I actually I have to kind of remember what it was before. Yeah, let's see. No, No, that's exactly right, I thought. No, Okay, actually this ending that I just read is more like the New York ranting because it ends with that ticket, which I really liked. And so when I read this in manuscript after the galley went out, somehow this ending felt a little mushier somehow, So I moved this up, and I kind of inverted the two things. I think.

Can you read that last paragraph on my version?

Yeah? Not dead yet? Not yet? Not yet? And not yet world still lays out before me. Knew with each click of step and swish of aspen leaves above, And for that I say thanks. For as long as this world is shiny new, there is no death, and what lovely may I not yet do?

It's a more sentimental ending.

Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. And you know it's funny how just I didn't cut it. I moved it up. So that's his first pass at it, and then the second passes the other thing. Yeah, that's interesting. I love those kind of micro decisions because they're like who knows.

And yet, however micro it seems in the moment, it completely changes that feeling you walk away with at the end.

That's a beautiful thing, because you know that's the real article of faces, that those kind of changes matter. And sometimes when you're working. It's hard to believe, but I think that's that's really true, you know, and I think you're exactly right. It felt a little bit like an uplift at the end. It wasn't quite in keeping with where he's going. Actually, maybe something like that, so sentimental.

As we get to the end of you and I talking, I'm thinking about endings, and I can't shake the last story in the book now as I understand it, this piece was sent to the publisher after you had already finished the book. You sent it as a hey, here's one more I've been working on. What do you think kind of thing? Is that? Right?

Yeah, that's right. When I got the stories in about the right order and you read through them, there's just a feeling like one of your feet is still up in the air, like ah, yeah, So it was going to end on that Elliott Spencer. It's not bad, but something I just felt like there was one more little, you know, breath in it. And so I've been kind of carrying that idea around or the seed of it for a long time. I thought, what the hell, you know, you're you're sixty three, Maybe you can do it quick. So I did it in about five days, and it felt really like it was just almost like reading the book had wound up my subconscious and then it said I got one more thing, and it just kind of came out.

The energy of the other eight stories had produced this final one exactly. So what was the seed?

During the pandemic? We ran out a house up in Cherry Valley, New York, which is near Cooperstown and outside of town. There was this big yellow house that looked like it was maybe built in the early part of the nineteenth century, like really sprawling, you know, beautiful something that was like, yeah, that's why I should get old there. That would be cool. All the grandkids could run around on the lawn. It was just very kind of palatial, you know. So in that I was driving some and I just thought of buying that house basically, and kind of like what a weird moment that is when you're buying a house from somebody and it's like kind of like you're exchanging this really intimate thing and you're supposed to kind of pretend that you don't care. But in this story, both men really loved this house. And then I just imagine this thing going wrong as it does in the story. So I just held that for about a year in my mind, like, yeah, that's kind of that's kind of Chekhov in that little misunderstanding that they have. And then when I decided to write this last story, I said, okay, just quickly put that in a matrix of some stuff.

So one man, the homeowner, has had this place for a long time, his wife has recently grown ill, they're in need of money, and it's always put it on the market. It's been on the market for about two years. This other man is the first potential buyer that he's considered. Said buyer goes to the old home. They have a cordial exchange that then grows into something actually more familial, like, oh, we could be friends maybe in another lifetime. Then towards the end of their discussion there's a breaking point where homeowner at least says to himself, I'm not selling it to this fucking guy. In turn, which is where we're gonna enter. Potential buyer has written a series of letters to homeowner and they start very nice, then they become increasingly unkind. Why don't we start with the fourth one?

A fourth letter, You'll die, I'll get the house. Trust me. Why not sell now, use the money to live a better life than the tormented one. It would appear you are living sitting up there, lonely and bitter, letting that beautiful place, a place you loved, a place to two of you loved, go to seed. Shame on you. I hope you're enjoying the fruits of your arrogance, you stubborn, mean spirited old bastard. That one, to my credit, I ever since I wadded it up, burned it over the stove I had fallen ill. I am ill. Now my time is short. I burned that letter to prepare myself to face what is coming. With as pure a heart as I can manage, I need to write another. Of course I know that, if only for my own benefit. I am truly sorry. It will begin. Sorry for my pardon this. What did you deny me? Really? After all, a beautiful year or so in a lovely place they would have made me happy. But what is it? A year in the grand scheme? Nothing? What are ten years? One hundred a thousand? I am going, friend, I am all but gone. I believe you prideful and wrong, but I have no desire now to cure you your wrongness was an idea I had. I am all but gone. My idea of your wrongness will go with me. Your rightness is an idea you are having. It will go with you. For all of that. I hope you live forever. And if the place falls down around you, as it seems to be doing, I hope even that brings you joy. It was always falling down around you. Everything has always been down around us, only we were too alive to notice. I feel the truth of this in my body now. I'm trying not to be terrified, but I am sometimes in the night. If you are a praying man, pray for me, friend, friend who might have been, friend who should have been. That letter exists in my mind, but I'm too tired to write it. Well, that's not true. I'm not too tired. I'm just not ready. The surge of pride in life and self is still too strong in me. But I will get there. I will. I will write it yet, only I must not wait too long. Yeah, at this story for me, it was fun because it's a little bit chekhovy, and it's just five pages, and it's only you know, a lot of times, my tendency is to have an explosion at the end, or a death or something like that. And this is just a little tiny thing, you know that it's almost funny what these two guys go through, you know, and it's kind of inexplicable, but I'm kind of interested in the idea that you could illustrate those failure years of compassion in kind of small ways. It doesn't have to be, you know, grandiose. But that story took a turn there at the end. I carried that nugget around for all that time, but I didn't know how to get out of the story. And so one day I'm just looking at what I've done so far, and it's kind of corny, but something just happened, something takes over. That to me is the biggest thrill when you don't know way that I see that kind of ending coming, and then it came very naturally. It was fun, And when I stepped back the first time I read it, I was really moved by it and thought, that's pretty much what I believe, you know. But it was a blurt, you know, I blurted that out. So that's really why I keep doing it. It's just so fun, you know, to be temporarily briefly smarter than you are, and to get a look into your own heart by blurting something out is really great.

It was always falling down around you. You're right, everything has always been falling down around us, only we were too alive to notice. It's funny we started this conversation by talking about the sort of precarious ground that we're standing on right now, and these sort of large assumptions that we made about our place in the world democracy, whether the world will even be around fifty years from now, And to read that line, only we were too alive to notice.

Yeah, it's this book. I kind of felt like there was some kind of connection between the immediate, which is, Okay, things are falling apart, how kind of sad that is, and you know, and then also that even if we backed up to whenever we thought it wasn't falling apart, it actually was. So you know, in that sense, this may be a little bit polyannisy. I felt this in the early days of the pandemic. It's kind of a gift to have your ass kicked a little bit by the world, because the world is just saying you are totally temporary. Everything you believe in is temporary, and it's saying it now so emphatically that we can't deny it, you know, and for me, I hope that. I mean, if it does go back to quote unquote normal, you know, I'd like to think I retained some of that, Like, yeah, that was just you know, the world came alive and had a wrathful aspect to it for a few years. But it always does. Actually, you know, it always has a wrathful aspect and a joyful aspect, and we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that it's ever going to be just one or the other.

I guess, you know, I was preparing for this, and I thought, reading from that last chapter is the natural point to end our conversation. But then kind of in the spirit of revision, I changed a couple things around, and I feel like there's one last place we have to go before we stop talking. In a recent sub stack of yours, you wrote, I'm at a point in life where I'm finding I really value a story that authentically praises the good. I feel this to be somehow a higher order artistic accomplishment. The French writer de Montulant claimed that Happiness Rights and Whiting on a white page. And if we could, I thought we would read from a passage written maybe in white ink on a white page, from the titular story Liberation Day. This book, of course, is dedicated to your wife, Paula, who you've been with ever since that creative writing program at Syracuse back in nineteen eighty six. And as I read this passage, I thought, I wonder what she thought of this.

Every man, I whisper, is born with a certain store of desire. It is a treasure he has been bequeathed that he must spend wisely. Over the course of his life, one moves through the world, finding objects on which to expend it. Blessed is he who finds a worthy object, shaped by God, provided fortuitously unto him, that elicits his longing so strongly that all else briefly receiveds, and he becomes pure desire. Then, wonder of wonders, that which he desires embodied may become pure desires herself desiring him. Here is what I wish to say, dearest wan Trap, as I am on this desolate, godless hillside, surrounded by demons who wished to destroy me, Because I have known such a moment with you, the firelight playing across the walls, the dog asleep against the door, the bed shifting beneath us, as if making a proving commentary in his own unique language. I may die now if I must die, knowing I have truly lived.

Your Pastard, that's the highest praise. When you finished tenth of December, the first person you gave it to was Paula. You asked her for some feedback. As you asked her, you had to go out for some reason or another. Then you came back home. And when you came back home, there was a note on the book and it said, from her tears, send it out. And as you read that last bit, I couldn't help but think about the love you two have have had nineteen eighty six and what it evokes in you reading it now.

Yeah, well, I mean it's it's really deep. You know. It's like all the things that they make you say at the alter, that's actually what it is. It's sickness and health and better and worse and all that. And there's something about for us, you know, to just endure, enduring or you know, or kind of sticking with abiding. You know, it opens up a lot of doors that you learn so much about the person and you know, so I'm grateful and I think, really, the funny thing is it just when we first met it we got engaged in three weeks, which is kind of a record for the Syracuse MFA program, I think so far. And it was just interesting. I was so interested in her, couldn't quite figure her out. And that has just that's been true to this day, no matter what, whether it is I'm interested in what she has to say, and the idea of writing something she'll like is still a really really big motivator for me.

What did she say about that?

She hasn't read it yet. Actually, it's kind of a running joke because she's working on a beautiful book of her own, so I'm like, yeah, don't read, don't worry. So it's almost like I'm waiting for her to read that passage. So I'll let you know.

Yeah, call me up. Yeah, honey, I have to call Sam. We've only met once, but he needs to know your reaction.

You know, It's a great thing being married to a writer because they get it. She saved me so many times because her way of reading a story is like my deepest way, which is you read it, and if it moves you, it's good, and if it doesn't, you get to figure it out. She's incredibly honest person, so if it doesn't move her, she can't. She has no interest in faking it. And then you just go back to the drawing board, muttering, you know, but knowing that she's right.

My last question, it's kind of an epilogue on the subject of writing. I was going to ask you at sixty three, what compels you to keep doing this? To sit there, painfully, sit there, try to produce something on a blank page. And then I remembered that you and I discussed this very thing at the beginning of twenty twenty one. So why don't we take a.

Listen when you really get down to it, and ask why would someone read a short story or right one? It's all about the micro fluctuations of the mind. You know. You start a story with nothing in mind. You pick it up and suddenly there's Scrooge or whoever you know. And then when you come out, when you get spit out the other end of a good story, you're in a different state, you know, And the same is true of a song or whatever. You're in a different state if you think that different state is preferable, then that's proof of concept. You know, it doesn't last forever. It lasts, you know, maybe what half an hour's I don't know, but it's I kind of feel like, at this stage of my life, I'm like, well, that's better than nothing, you know, it's better than not. Yeah, I like that idea of alteration. You come in in one state and go out in another. It occurs to me that the reason I'm still interested in it is that to have written a book and surprise yourself in the process, that's so fun, you know, to say, oh, I wasn't done, after all, there's still other selves to come forward. When I was younger, I think there was a more complicated matrix of motivation. There was you know, ambition for sure, earning a living, a lot, all that kind of stuff. And now it's more like the form is really I wouldn't say it's taunting me, but I realized how little I've done it and how vast it is. So I'm kind of like, oh, God, you've got a little bit of talent, you were slow to start using it, and now you've got some number of years left, so hurry up, because there's new places to go. Just the idea of spending the next year popping out new kinds of stories that really makes me happy?

Is that what you say when you look ahead?

Yeah? I mean on one level, that's kind of good and kind of bad because okay, then just fast forward. I'm ninety six, Hey had eighteen more stories. Boops, he's dead. Not the greatest, you know, So there's another level for me, which has to do with also has to do with alteration and can I actually become a more relaxed, generous, loving person. Those are kind of the three things. I always had this idea that someday I'll do a big retreat or I'll get back to meditating more regularly, but I tend to not. You know, since the last time we talked, that hasn't that strangely hasn't happened, So I don't know. It's on my mind. You know that, left to my own devices, I'm a pretty productive, pretty anxious, semi loving person, and that's not probably going to be good enough. You know at some point that that's gonna work. Then, So that's on my list.

You're all these people at once.

Yeah, A certain person is dominating in a given moment, and I mean to me, it's a thrilling idea that you could change, that you could somehow do certain things and then a different aspect of yourself would be dominant. And the weird thing is just thinking back on, like, for example, the time I was the biggest mess versus the time I felt the very, very best. The weird thing is the world changes around that person. And because that's the state of your mind that's different, the world coming in is actually process differently. So it's an incredible opportunity. And I kind of kick myself because I don't know why I don't feel that more urgently.

More urgently now that you're sixty three.

Yeah, that's pretty old. You know you should by then you should have the fire lit under your ass, which I kind of do. But it's just, you know, kind of interesting.

At the end of that clip, you talked about the power of art being that if it works, you leave it on the other side just slightly different. You enter a different kind of state. And I had to say, having read every page of this book, I left it feeling just like that in a different state.

How would you characterize a different state?

I'd characterize it in the exact same way we characterized it earlier, which was when something horrible happens, like a death, or something great happens, like a job promotion. These big things sort of snap you out of the quotidian like a snow but whatever, it jostles you around a little bit, and it makes you actually look around with the fresh set of eyes, the same way you do walking out of a movie theater when the movie is good. You ever notice that, like you go into the theater in a certain way, you walk out and all of a sudden you're like, wow, even the not so interesting restaurant that is in front of me has a glimmer to it.

I always kind of think like, oh gosh, you know, after a good work of art, the birds matter more. Those are kind of like story birds or something. Yeah, that's beautiful.

Everything else that's not me, everything else that's not the neurotic person that you are that I obviously am. That falls away, you know, and then it doesn't, but you know.

It can that's yeah, Oh thanks for that. That's beautiful.

I have felt the same way in this conversation. Now as we have to leave it.

So we have to stay another couple hours, and now I really love being with you. You've got an incredible mind.

George Sanders. The pleasure has been all mine.

It has not, but thank you so much.

Much love, and that's our show.

If you enjoy today's episode, be sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening. I want to give a special thanks this week to Aaron Richards, Penguin, Random House, and of course our guest George Saunders. His latest short story collection, Liberation Day, is now available on paperback. You can find that and more on our website at talk easypod dot com. To hear other conversations with some of my favorite writers, I check out our talks with Zadie Smith, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, Ocean Wong, Jump Lahiri, and Nick Offerman to hear those and more. Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. If you want to purchase one of our mugs they Come and Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with writer fran Leeboitz, you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop Talk Easy is produced by care Oline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jeni sa Brava. Our associate producer is Caitlyn Dryden. Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's Talk was edited by Caitlyn Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was engineered by Tim Moore out of York, Recording here in Los Angeles, California. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christian Chanoy. Photographs are by Julius Chue. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julie Barton, John Schnar's, Kerry Brody, David Glover, Heather Feane, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Cure, Posy Paramachado, Maya Cannic, Jason Gambrel, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with a new episode. Until then, stay safe and so long a

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, activists, and 
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