Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is talk Easy. I'm standing for Goso. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Today. I wanted to return to my
Speaker 1: conversation with writer George Saunders. He's the author of books
Speaker 1: like A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, Lincoln
Speaker 1: in the Bardo in the Tenth of December, which was
Speaker 1: a finalist for the National Book Award back in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: He's also contributed to The New Yorker magazine since nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two and has been called the best short story
Speaker 1: writer in English by Time magazine. Last fall, he published
Speaker 1: Liberation Day, his first short story collection in nine years.
Speaker 1: True to form, each short story contains a mix of humor, joy,
Speaker 1: and despair as he grapples with these timely ideas around
Speaker 1: oppression and revolution, free speech, and civil liberties. The book
Speaker 1: was released in paperback earlier this month, and if you
Speaker 1: haven't read it yet, I loved this line from George's publisher,
Speaker 1: Andy Ward, who said, the book is about the way
Speaker 1: we lose sight of our humanity through little failures in
Speaker 1: compassion and that refrain. Especially after the week we have
Speaker 1: had with everything that's happening right now between Israel and Palestine,
Speaker 1: It's something I feel we ought to hold on to. Obviously,
Speaker 1: compassion alone cannot solve what's happening, but it's certainly a
Speaker 1: place to start. And you know, no podcast can undo
Speaker 1: the pain, the brutality of this moment. We can't explain
Speaker 1: it away either, but we can sit with it, hold
Speaker 1: space for it, and that is something we will be
Speaker 1: doing on the show in the months ahead. Until then,
Speaker 1: I hope, whoever you are, wherever you are, that you
Speaker 1: are safe and sound. I hope your loved ones are
Speaker 1: safe and sound, and I hope this conversation offers just
Speaker 1: a little bit of light and what has been a dark,
Speaker 1: dark week. This is George Saunders. George Saunders to have
Speaker 1: you pleasure to be here. Set the scene for the listeners.
Speaker 2: I requested this six foot divide because I'm going on tour,
Speaker 2: act like I'm applying for a job. Your table is big.
Speaker 2: I don't have a table. I feel like you're a
Speaker 2: little higher than me, which you're probably not.
Speaker 1: It was not a contest, per George's request, We're more
Speaker 1: than six feet away.
Speaker 2: Yes, I noted that, but I appreciate it. And it's
Speaker 2: actually really cozy in here. It's nice.
Speaker 1: It is a true honor to have you. How are
Speaker 1: you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of just starting to talk about this new book,
Speaker 2: which is always fun. You know, you finish it and
Speaker 2: then you just move on. And then I heard it
Speaker 2: on audio book the other day and it kind of
Speaker 2: was interesting to hear it and kind of like it.
Speaker 1: What did you like about it?
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a written by a pretty manic
Speaker 2: person with poor aim.
Speaker 1: You're describing it like it's a different human being.
Speaker 2: Well, it kind of you know that person is different.
Speaker 2: It's like the accumulation of different obsessive episodes from the
Speaker 2: last eight years and you put it together in a
Speaker 2: final us AN episode. You know, at that point, I
Speaker 2: don't really know what it means at all. I just
Speaker 2: know that it's right. It should be that way, and
Speaker 2: you talk about it, and again you hear it in
Speaker 2: an audiobook, it starts to kind of does feel like
Speaker 2: the work of somebody else, you know, But there's a
Speaker 2: feeling of like somebody really intensely trying to say something,
Speaker 2: but maybe being a little drunk or something, you know,
Speaker 2: and so the good intention comes through and it's intense,
Speaker 2: you know, but I admire the attempt, the gumption. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the gumption, right, you said recently, in each book, I
Speaker 2: find out something new about where I was for the
Speaker 2: period of the writing. What did you find out about
Speaker 2: yourself in that period in which you wrote this book?
Speaker 2: So I think when I'm looking at the book now,
Speaker 2: it's shown me first that I was in over my head.
Speaker 2: I had this system of thought that you can sort
Speaker 2: of see intent of December, and then all this stuff happened.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of the subtext of the stories
Speaker 2: is somebody who doesn't is on pretty firm ground. He
Speaker 2: thinks buddy isn't on a more technical level, and this
Speaker 2: came a little bit out of that book that we
Speaker 2: talked about, that Russian swimming upon in the Ring. A
Speaker 2: lot of the stories, I think what they're doing, they're
Speaker 2: taking the reader on a certain trip, and the point
Speaker 2: of that trip is to show the reader how fascily
Speaker 2: she judges, and then overturn the judgment, put her in
Speaker 2: a different place, do it again and again, until at
Speaker 2: the end. I think the result is kind of a
Speaker 2: state of like befuddlement, maybe happy to befuddle one But
Speaker 2: oh wow, I didn't realize my mind did that. And
Speaker 2: I think I picked that up some from Chekhov and
Speaker 2: Google and those guys. You know, My model now is
Speaker 2: that you're a rollercoaster designer. I'm going ahead and I'm
Speaker 2: designing the first dip over and over for months until
Speaker 2: it's going to be really good, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: sort of know where you are at the end of
Speaker 2: that dip. Then I start designing the second one. In
Speaker 2: the end, the thing is just to put you through
Speaker 2: an experience rather than teach you something or have a
Speaker 2: theme or whatever.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that this was produced somewhat in the lockdown,
Speaker 1: and the through line, if there is a through line
Speaker 1: in these short stories, is that some one is usually
Speaker 1: stuck in something and then by the end of the story,
Speaker 1: or sometimes in the middle of the story, their conditions
Speaker 1: have radically changed. And I wondered if the book was
Speaker 1: in some way reflecting on the precarity and the impermanence
Speaker 1: of this moment that we're in.
Speaker 2: I hope so, but not by intention, you know, like
Speaker 2: as we talked about last time, I kind of just
Speaker 2: go into it with that roller coaster designer mind. Also,
Speaker 2: what you're describing is sort of what short stories do.
Speaker 2: They set you up in a certain place relative stability. Oh,
Speaker 2: this world is like this, and then somebody throws a
Speaker 2: rock through the window and the whole thing changes, And
Speaker 2: in some stories that happens three or four times. Maybe
Speaker 2: we say that the story is a particularly good mode
Speaker 2: for right now, because if you're thinking about change, and
Speaker 2: even negative change, what do we do in the face
Speaker 2: of negative change a short story? That's kind of the
Speaker 2: main question that's asking. You know, it's never a short story.
Speaker 2: Is never a really cool happy guy stayed cool and happy.
Speaker 2: So you start with the stasis. You know, it changes,
Speaker 2: and that teaches you something about the character, but it
Speaker 2: also teaches you something about your your mind observing them.
Speaker 1: I guess you said it was a good form for
Speaker 1: right now. How do you see right now within that context?
Speaker 2: I think it's a kind of amazing moment of disruption
Speaker 2: because so many ideas I'm going to do a big generalization,
Speaker 2: but so many ideas that I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people felt or corrupt and had been around lazily for
Speaker 2: too long got overturned. So democracy is just what we
Speaker 2: It's just the air we breathe. We're just good at it. Well,
Speaker 2: guess what the whole idea of the American dream and
Speaker 2: that work hard will be rewarded, at least in my age.
Speaker 2: You kind of go, wow, it's amazing how long those
Speaker 2: ideas were sort of under suspicion but tolerated, and then suddenly,
Speaker 2: like it seems like within three or four years, they
Speaker 2: all get called into question. So this pandemic was a
Speaker 2: bit like you're on the back of a tiger and
Speaker 2: the tiger sleeps, so you don't even notice the tiger,
Speaker 2: but then it gets up and suddenly you go, shit,
Speaker 2: my tiger's walking, you know. And in truth, the story
Speaker 2: form is based on aida tiger is always about to
Speaker 2: hop up and we don't know it, and so it
Speaker 2: kind of is the moment that the tiger leaps to
Speaker 2: its feet and throws you off.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you explore this very idea toward the
Speaker 1: end of your short story love Letter, which I thought
Speaker 1: maybe we start by reading from Sure.
Speaker 2: So this is a grandfather who kind of was there
Speaker 2: during the time when democracy crept out, and he's kind
Speaker 2: of writing to his grandson to explain why his grandson
Speaker 2: has got some issues that he's trying to work through,
Speaker 2: whether you should be involved in like a counter revolution
Speaker 2: or not something like that. Okay, seen in retrospect. Yes,
Speaker 2: I have regrets. There was a certain critical period. I
Speaker 2: see that now. During that period, your grandmother and I
Speaker 2: were working on every night a jigsaw puzzle each at
Speaker 2: that dining room table. I know you know well we
Speaker 2: were planning to have the kitchen redne We're in the
Speaker 2: middle of having the walls out there in the yard
Speaker 2: rebuilt a great expense. I was experiencing the first intimations
Speaker 2: of the dental issues I know you've heard so much,
Speaker 2: perhaps too much about. Every night, as we sat across
Speaker 2: from each other doing those puzzles, from the TV in
Speaker 2: the next room blared this litany of things that had
Speaker 2: never before happened, that we could never have imagined happening,
Speaker 2: that were now happening. And the only response from the
Speaker 2: TV pundits was a rious, satirical smugness that assumed, as
Speaker 2: we assumed, that those things could and would soon be undone,
Speaker 2: and that I would return to normal, that some adult
Speaker 2: or adults would arrive as they had always arrived in
Speaker 2: the past, to set things right. It did not seem,
Speaker 2: and please destroy this letter after you've read it, that
Speaker 2: someone so clownish could disrupt something so noble and time
Speaker 2: tested and seemingly strong, something that had been with us
Speaker 2: literally every day of our lives. We had taken, in
Speaker 2: other words, a profound gift, for granted did not know
Speaker 2: the gift was a fluke, a chimara, a wonderful accident
Speaker 2: of consensus and mutual understanding. Because this destruction was emanating
Speaker 2: from such an inept's source, who seemed at that time
Speaker 2: merely comically fogush, who seemed to know so little about
Speaker 2: that which he was disrupting, And because life is going on,
Speaker 2: and because every day he they burst through some new
Speaker 2: gate of propriety, we soon found that no genuine outrage
Speaker 2: was available to us anymore. If you'll allow me a
Speaker 2: crude metaphor, as I'm sure you, King of Las Croma
Speaker 2: ste Fartos will, A guy comes into a dinner party,
Speaker 2: takes a dump on the rug in the living room.
Speaker 2: The guests get excited, yell out in protest. He takes
Speaker 2: a second dump. The guests feel well, yelling didn't help,
Speaker 2: while some of them applaud his audacity. He takes a
Speaker 2: third dump on the table, and still no one throws
Speaker 2: him out. At that point, the sky has become the
Speaker 2: limit in terms of future dumps. So although your grandmother
Speaker 2: and I during this critical period often said, you know,
Speaker 2: someone should arrange a march or those effing Republican senators,
Speaker 2: we soon grew weary of hearing ourselves saying those things,
Speaker 2: and to avoid being old people emptily repeating ourselves stop
Speaker 2: saying those things, and did our puses and so forth,
Speaker 2: waiting for the election, uplifting.
Speaker 1: That push and pull between the grandfather and grandson as
Speaker 1: the grandfather is conflicted about his grandson getting sort of
Speaker 1: politically activated. Is that something you've felt in these last
Speaker 1: few years.
Speaker 2: No, not really. I mean it's all sort of projective imagination.
Speaker 2: So you imagine I don't have a grandchild, but I
Speaker 2: have daughters, so I imagine them. You fast forward ten years,
Speaker 2: you imagine things worse. And then a lot of fiction
Speaker 2: for me is just saying once I had a mild headache, Okay,
Speaker 2: exaggerate that times twelve. You've got a brain tumor, you know,
Speaker 2: and within the sort of like tolerance of the form,
Speaker 2: you don't have to get it just right. Actually you're
Speaker 2: just saying, you're kind of saying to the reader, let's
Speaker 2: pretend that I have a brain tumor, and less pretend
Speaker 2: it's sort of like a headache, and then they go, okay, sure,
Speaker 2: that's close enough.
Speaker 1: So in many ways it starts from a very simple,
Speaker 1: sort of mundane idea, I have a headache, and then
Speaker 1: you amplify it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or you know, there's a great Israeli writer, Ecker
Speaker 2: Carrot and if you're never read, yeah, and he came
Speaker 2: to Syracuse one time and he gave an incredible talk
Speaker 2: about growing up the child of two Holocaust survivors, and
Speaker 2: he basically said that he went to his dad one
Speaker 2: time and said, you know, Dad, I know I could
Speaker 2: never understand your experience. And his father basically said, well, nonsense.
Speaker 2: You know, have you ever been hungry? Scared? Cold? And
Speaker 2: you see? Yeah, he said, well it's just more, It's
Speaker 2: just that, but more, you know. So I think that's
Speaker 2: kind of the essential creed of the fiction writers. You
Speaker 2: don't have to have done it, but you have to
Speaker 2: have had some inkling of it, and then you go, okay, well,
Speaker 2: if it was a different time, or I was more
Speaker 2: sensitive person, or then you just go for it. And
Speaker 2: the great sort of forgiveness is that it doesn't have
Speaker 2: to be precise. I don't think fiction is there to
Speaker 2: kind of tell you exactly what somebody else's life is like.
Speaker 2: You know, you're making sort of placeholders in a certain way.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering how this may tie into this larger idea
Speaker 1: that's inside these stories, which is this investment in our
Speaker 1: own phenomena. What exactly did you mean by that, this
Speaker 1: investment in our own phenomena?
Speaker 2: I think what that means is it's my paraphrase of
Speaker 2: a Buddhist idea, which is that you you're born, and
Speaker 2: you are too, and suddenly everything that's happening is happening
Speaker 2: for you, for your benefit. You're the center of this drama.
Speaker 2: And then as you get older, you just keep going,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, look, you know, the world is actually revolving
Speaker 2: around me, and luckily I'm eternal and I'm the center
Speaker 2: of the story. And I think that's done by your
Speaker 2: thoughts and by your ruminative mind. You know that it's
Speaker 2: always saying George has a new book out, Yes I do.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy about it. You know, So that's fun.
Speaker 2: You know, that's like it's great fun. Or it can
Speaker 2: also be pretty miserable. George has hemorrhoids. That's not the best.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing that's true. No, that's a rumor,
Speaker 2: but it's not true. I heard about that. So you're
Speaker 2: constantly constructing yourself with your thoughts, and that's fine. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's you know. But then on the other hand, when
Speaker 2: you get sick or someone you love die is whatever,
Speaker 2: then that accretion around the self is suddenly costly. So
Speaker 2: what I mean by, you know, investment in our own
Speaker 2: phenomenon is I believe in my separateness and my importance.
Speaker 2: That's okay, but then there's a cost on the other side.
Speaker 2: So this liberation day for me after I assigned the
Speaker 2: tide lives kind of like, yeah, I think what it
Speaker 2: means is everybody wants to be free of the kind
Speaker 2: of moment by moment discomfort of life and the hurt
Speaker 2: and the you know, the sorrow and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Ultimately comes from the fact that we really like ourselves
Speaker 2: and we believe in ourselves. And that's the conundrum, this.
Speaker 1: Idea of the phenomena dropping away. It's something we discussed
Speaker 1: actually in our first conversation, and I thought maybe we
Speaker 1: would take a listen for a second.
Speaker 2: After some years of living, we can all look back
Speaker 2: at our lives and realize that we have been different
Speaker 2: people at different moments. You know, the moment after somebody
Speaker 2: or something you love has died. There you are and
Speaker 2: the world seemed a certain way. A moment six months later,
Speaker 2: when that's faded and you're deeply involved in your business concerns,
Speaker 2: the mind is working differently. It's literally a different lens
Speaker 2: through which you're seeing the world. Okay, so that's great.
Speaker 2: I would actually I think I think I would prefer
Speaker 2: to be in the first state all the time. And
Speaker 2: if you could be in the first date all the time,
Speaker 2: the state you're in after somebody died, for example, I
Speaker 2: think you're seeing the world more accurately. Why because this
Speaker 2: thing we call the self has actually dropped away. And
Speaker 2: the self, the way I understand it, is this thing
Speaker 2: that you make with your thoughts, your conceptual planning, locating
Speaker 2: mind is working to make you central to the narrative.
Speaker 2: And although that's intelligent in a Darwinian sense, it actually
Speaker 2: is an intelligent in an ultimate sense. So when that
Speaker 2: mind is working, you're actually kind of full of shit.
Speaker 2: You know, you're wrong about the truth of things. When
Speaker 2: that mind recedes, which it does in a time of
Speaker 2: loss or say, or if you're a good meditator at receides,
Speaker 2: then I think I just prefer that state, and maybe
Speaker 2: maybe art is one of the ways that we simulate
Speaker 2: or stimulate ourselves into that state briefly. And the value
Speaker 2: of it then would just be, you know, it's reminding
Speaker 2: us of such a transformation as possible.
Speaker 1: What do you make of that?
Speaker 2: I pretty much agree with that. I'm consistent. You got
Speaker 2: to say that. The only thing I would add or
Speaker 2: note is that we're doing revisions. Yeah, because it's true.
Speaker 2: But what I've noticed that I mean to be frank,
Speaker 2: is I haven't done anything about that in the meantime,
Speaker 2: you know, like I'm still like, yeah, that's that's exactly right. Why,
Speaker 2: you know, there's so many things in this kind of
Speaker 2: stuff we're talking about, and also in writing, there's the
Speaker 2: knowledge about it, and then the kind of epigrammatic stuff,
Speaker 2: and there's the doing. And so I'm cringing a little
Speaker 2: bit that because I agree with that, I would say
Speaker 2: the same thing today. And yet you know, I'm somebody
Speaker 2: who if you showed me how to fish for three minutes,
Speaker 2: I could really talk a good game about the meaning
Speaker 2: of fishing. But it doesn't mean I could fish. So
Speaker 2: I'm coll me a little more. As I'm getting older,
Speaker 2: I'm getting skeptical about my own You know. I give
Speaker 2: pretty good advice, I think, or what sounds like good advice,
Speaker 2: but you know, at some point it's just talk. And
Speaker 2: the only thing I think I've gotten better at is writing.
Speaker 1: If the writing is a thing you've gotten better at,
Speaker 1: why don't we dive into some more of it? In
Speaker 1: that clip, you talk about how through writing you can
Speaker 1: achieve that kind of honesty and clarity that one sometimes
Speaker 1: feels in the aftermath of a death.
Speaker 2: For example, it's a baby verse baby version, you know.
Speaker 2: And for me, what it means practically speaking is just
Speaker 2: that for some portion of the three hours I'm writing,
Speaker 2: my mind stops yapping, you know. There's not so much rumination,
Speaker 2: and it's really like I'm just concentrating on this sentence
Speaker 2: to make it better, almost like if you were, I
Speaker 2: suppose a plumber or a rock climber. You're just concentrating
Speaker 2: on the thing, so your monkey mind gets quiet, and
Speaker 2: that's good.
Speaker 1: Well, so I want to get into what is the
Speaker 1: result of a three hour dive that you've had before
Speaker 1: I do that mentioned earlier, how this was your first
Speaker 1: collection of nine years. In the interviewing time, you've said,
Speaker 1: I've come to think that these days we judge too
Speaker 1: harshly and too quickly. Now, one of the things fiction
Speaker 1: can do for us is impose on us, as we read,
Speaker 1: a sort of enforced suspension of judgment. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that enforced suspension of judgment?
Speaker 2: Okay, So in the simple form, I say, once upon
Speaker 2: a time there was an incredibly graceful man, and then
Speaker 2: you go okay, and then two minutes later he stumbles. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: I still accept the first name, and he's incredibly graceful.
Speaker 2: Andy stumbled. That's already a more interesting guy than the
Speaker 2: one who never stumbled. So your judgment said, oh wow,
Speaker 2: incredibly graceful. That's awesome, you know. And then I said, however,
Speaker 2: and introduce the second thing. So we talked last time,
Speaker 2: I think maybe about the story of Gooseberry's at Chekhov's story,
Speaker 2: and in there, you know, he has a guy makes
Speaker 2: this beautiful speech about how the urge to make yourself
Speaker 2: happy is kind of decadent, especially when so many people
Speaker 2: are unhappy, and also when your happiness might be built
Speaker 2: on the necessity of their unhappiness, and so as a
Speaker 2: reader you're like, oh god, that's so true, that's original.
Speaker 2: I've had that thought. But also yeah, wow. Then Chekhov
Speaker 2: runs around and shows that same guy in a state
Speaker 2: of complete self absorbed happiness when he's swimming in this pond.
Speaker 2: And so Chekhov just lets those two things sit there.
Speaker 2: So you're immediately wondering about your judgment. Am I supposed
Speaker 2: to believe A or B? My contention is that that
Speaker 2: right there is the gold when you go, oh, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Again, I'm in this thing of talking about
Speaker 2: the roller coaster designer, But if you get off a
Speaker 2: roller coaster in that first minute, you're not going, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, that second hill seem to be at the
Speaker 2: same angle as the pyramid of chiops. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: just like fuck. And so that little three second stunned
Speaker 2: period is actually why you're there. And now you might
Speaker 2: talk about it on the way to the car. You
Speaker 2: might say, oh, that was really But I like the
Speaker 2: idea that you're trying to stun yourself in the writing
Speaker 2: and the reader into something like, man, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's a falling away of something. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: what that's a moment of astonishment. Yeah, that's it. It's
Speaker 2: funny when you start talking about stuff, it's kind of
Speaker 2: hard to make the case for the value of astonishment.
Speaker 2: But you couldn't live a day without.
Speaker 1: It, really, well you hoped live a day without it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you do. But I think you know, then
Speaker 2: you can kind of break down the concept of astonishment,
Speaker 2: which is to me, it has something to do with
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, this loss of judgment, which is
Speaker 2: also maybe it's like all those selves that you are
Speaker 2: kind of pulled back and go ooh, you know just first,
Speaker 2: but second, what keeps me coming back to reading is
Speaker 2: that then you have the memory of that person. You're
Speaker 2: not always that person who in the moment that you
Speaker 2: finish something, but you have the memory that that person exists.
Speaker 2: So it's sort of like when we were kids and
Speaker 2: I was a Catholic kid, and some really cool shit
Speaker 2: would happen in church, you know, like for me internally,
Speaker 2: and then when I would come out, I would remember
Speaker 2: later that it was powerful, you know, so even if
Speaker 2: you were not in that mode, you could remember that
Speaker 2: such a state was possible. Also, some other things that
Speaker 2: I think we're probably somewhat like writing because sitting there
Speaker 2: for hours on end, and then it got real quiet,
Speaker 2: and outside and inside real quiet, and then there'd be
Speaker 2: a little narration from the priest about this or that,
Speaker 2: and then your mind would start working on it. So
Speaker 2: I can see you're skeptical. I can see it from
Speaker 2: across the room.
Speaker 1: You're right, My Catholic experience was, let's say lackluster. Let's
Speaker 1: try to practice that suspension of judgment for a second
Speaker 1: and dive into the titular story of this new book,
Speaker 1: Liberation Day. To set the scene. Inside this world you've created,
Speaker 1: there exists a three story high speaking wall where humans
Speaker 1: are opinion against their will and directed by a hobbyist
Speaker 1: to perform historical reenactments. With this passage, one of the
Speaker 1: opinion people is explaining his devotion to this craft, the
Speaker 1: dramaturgy that goes into it. Am I missing anything?
Speaker 2: No? That was perfect what I have found. The more
Speaker 2: I live in my mind beforehand, within my topic, the
Speaker 2: better my flow will be once I begin. Mister Hugh
Speaker 2: calls it priming the pump all day. I prime my
Speaker 2: pump getting to know my city better by thinking about it.
Speaker 2: It is a sad city, yes, for that is in
Speaker 2: the settings. But I imagine a livelier quarter of the city,
Speaker 2: where all the city's celebration occurs over there, on a
Speaker 2: small island that may only be reached to be a canoe.
Speaker 2: A small fleet waits at a common pier. What color
Speaker 2: are the canoes? Have they drivers? What is the direction
Speaker 2: of the current? As the drivers propel their canoes across
Speaker 2: the bays? At the isle of celebration? Are there fireworks
Speaker 2: which light up the faces of the shop keepers and
Speaker 2: workers who have scrimped and saved to celebrate there, so
Speaker 2: that they may, for at least this one night, leave
Speaker 2: their sadness behind. The fireworks, must, I imagine, be reflected
Speaker 2: a rippling in the shallow water lapping in the narrow
Speaker 2: inlets that punctuate the island, along which orange brown cafes
Speaker 2: are nestled, strung with tiny lights, lights that bob with
Speaker 2: any slight breeze. They're in the cafes that nightly ring
Speaker 2: with the sound of the laughter of those relieved to
Speaker 2: find themselves made briefly joyful in this way. All day,
Speaker 2: while Lauren and Craig nap I prime my pump. Lauren
Speaker 2: wakes gives me a look as in Jeremy Waite, are
Speaker 2: you priming or pump? My look in return says I
Speaker 2: am is that an issue? Laurena and Craig feel that
Speaker 2: I am strange, too sensitive. I fall under the sway
Speaker 2: of the settings, It is true, with greater alacrity than
Speaker 2: they always have. Well, I love my work. I aspire
Speaker 2: to always be feeling more, thus speaking with more gusto,
Speaker 2: thus evoking greater emotion and engagement in my listeners. This
Speaker 2: is what I feel makes me unique among the three
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 1: You look up at me after you're done reading with
Speaker 1: a sort of like, is it okay that I do
Speaker 1: it right? And I keep.
Speaker 2: Thinking he's not doing it right.
Speaker 1: No, it's the opposite. But I can't compliment you too much. No,
Speaker 1: I'm blown away. This idea of priming your pump. Well,
Speaker 1: for one, it sounds extremely sexual. Are you aware of this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I mean he's not what I.
Speaker 1: Was okay, But the actual idea of it is to
Speaker 1: pour over the material in the mind before performance. And
Speaker 1: I wonder could this description double for your own writing process?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. I'm always priming my pump. But
Speaker 2: in that actually, in that part I read, that's I'm
Speaker 2: sort of demonstrating it because in this world, at least
Speaker 2: at this stage in the story, it's almost like he
Speaker 2: gets a little boost in his verbal abilities, but from
Speaker 2: this this thing that they've done in his brain. So
Speaker 2: if you tell him your topic is city, he can
Speaker 2: kind of riff basically at a pretty high register. And
Speaker 2: what he's found is if he prepares a little bit
Speaker 2: and he kind of rewrites basically, then when he riffs,
Speaker 2: he's going to have more to say. So that is
Speaker 2: exactly like what you're doing in revision, you know. So
Speaker 2: when I wrote that, I remember thinking, okay, city, I'm
Speaker 2: going to sort of demonstrate in this paragraph what he does,
Speaker 2: which is by adding clauses and specificity, he's going to
Speaker 2: build a city out in his mind. And once he
Speaker 2: builds it, then later that night when he has to
Speaker 2: perform it, he sort of has that. So it's totally, yeah,
Speaker 2: totally analogous.
Speaker 1: You know, right before he read that story, he said,
Speaker 1: I can say you're skeptical about the church. It wasn't skepticism.
Speaker 1: I was smiling because that image of you as a
Speaker 1: young boy sitting in the church silently taking in the
Speaker 1: vastness that is around you. It reminded me of this
Speaker 1: passage of having to quietly build the story in your
Speaker 1: mind before performing it, and that was what my smile was.
Speaker 2: Na, that's beautiful, that's fair. And actually as you were,
Speaker 2: as we were joking about that, I remembered that what
Speaker 2: and maybe this has to do with me turn into
Speaker 2: you after the reading. My first gig was I was
Speaker 2: a reader at the Catholic church in our town. First,
Speaker 2: so we got to get out of class early. This
Speaker 2: was for the weekday mass. You were sort of ritually excused,
Speaker 2: and it was kind of like, oh, well, I'll have
Speaker 2: to go to church business, you know, And you get
Speaker 2: up and left, and then you met the priest and
Speaker 2: he would make kind of a big deal of there's
Speaker 2: there was this big, huge Bible with a lot of
Speaker 2: beautiful colored like place markers and stuff, and he would
Speaker 2: show you what you were to read, and I think
Speaker 2: you had to sort of read it once to make
Speaker 2: sure you could pronounce it. And then you got to
Speaker 2: go up to the mic, and it was a pretty
Speaker 2: nice mic and it was a podium and that feeling
Speaker 2: of reading in that reverberating room and then reading a
Speaker 2: really good text, I mean, those are well written you know,
Speaker 2: And I remember that feeling of like when you would
Speaker 2: get it right, even the bad kids would kind of like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, So that was that was a pretty in retrospect,
Speaker 2: a pretty formative thing to say, these words have power,
Speaker 2: they can come through me, and they can they can
Speaker 2: actually make a ripple.
Speaker 1: And that was at what age eleven twelve? It was
Speaker 1: the first book reading you did.
Speaker 2: Truly, and I laugh sometimes I didn't. I never thought
Speaker 2: of it a couple of years ago, and it's exactly
Speaker 2: the same feeling.
Speaker 1: Putting a pause on the conversation, we're right back with
Speaker 1: author George Saunders in regards to this priming the pump
Speaker 1: way of working. I'm not even gonna make the joke
Speaker 1: this time. Why don't we talk about this story of
Speaker 1: yours called Elliott Spencer, which exists in a kind of
Speaker 1: dystopia that I think the last piece also did. Here,
Speaker 1: our eighty nine year old protagonist finds himself brainwashed, his
Speaker 1: memory scrapped, a victim of a scheme in which poor,
Speaker 1: vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. Before
Speaker 1: we read a path from it, where did this emerge from?
Speaker 2: I'm sort of like a little bit embarrassed to admit about.
Speaker 2: For me, when I'm like, don't have a story, I'm
Speaker 2: always just like, well, is there any voice you'd like
Speaker 2: to do? Is there? Just like almost it's like at
Speaker 2: the back of your throat or in your chest, like
Speaker 2: I feel like saying something. It's almost like if somebody
Speaker 2: you know puts you in front of an empty out
Speaker 2: a horn with a microphone, would you like to sound
Speaker 2: like sort of right? You know? And the goal I
Speaker 2: think is to find something that's a little bit well onen,
Speaker 2: it's got to be kind of a deep well you
Speaker 2: have to be able to do it for a while.
Speaker 2: Two With me, it's that you're not quite sure where
Speaker 2: it's coming from, so you have an overdeterminate in that way,
Speaker 2: and can you do it? Can you do it day
Speaker 2: after day? You know? And then behind that there's a
Speaker 2: little hope that as you're doing it day after day,
Speaker 2: it might have a little room to develop, you know,
Speaker 2: it might get a little richer. And at the time
Speaker 2: I was also I think related to meditation. I was thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, like, well, so is the goal to have
Speaker 2: zero thoughts? Which is sometimes here and I think that's
Speaker 2: not actually the goal, but sometimes there are times when
Speaker 2: I thought it was so when you're meditating, you get
Speaker 2: your thoughts to zero, and that's always seem like a
Speaker 2: positive goal. But then I thought, well, if you literally
Speaker 2: could do that, if you could take the operating system
Speaker 2: does your brain and leave it functional, but take out
Speaker 2: all the data. And I think I was thinking, well,
Speaker 2: you'd also take out you know, the words and the concepts,
Speaker 2: but also the habits. So if I'm a slightly whatever,
Speaker 2: fearful person, also whatever causes that is going to get
Speaker 2: plucked out. Then if you turn the system on again
Speaker 2: and let the person be in the world, would they
Speaker 2: become what they were? Or does the you know, the
Speaker 2: operating system somehow do something different, revert back to factories
Speaker 2: right exactly. Yeah, So that was just a thought, and
Speaker 2: then I thought, oh, that would be fun to try
Speaker 2: to sound like that guy, sound like the guy who's
Speaker 2: just been returned to factory settings. And then it's like, well, actually,
Speaker 2: I have no idea because he wouldn't have language, Okay,
Speaker 2: so let's give him somebody who's teaching him language. So
Speaker 2: at that point she's like, oh, that'd be fun. I
Speaker 2: don't really know how he would sound, but he wouldn't
Speaker 2: sound boring, So let's try it.
Speaker 1: Well, Why don't we take a listen for a second. Sure,
Speaker 1: This is the scene towards the end of the story
Speaker 1: in which Elliot is about to be reset, so to speak,
Speaker 1: and the pieces of his life begin to come back
Speaker 1: to him and flashes.
Speaker 2: Ma holding picnic basket, rushes over wax me with basket.
Speaker 2: I laugh and laugh, and Ruth is there, Ruth. I
Speaker 2: recall you, Oh pretty Ruth lies at base of tree.
Speaker 2: I just have amblotto, have just knocked Ruth right. Ruth
Speaker 2: on ground, holding stuffed bear. I gave her. You break
Speaker 2: my heart, Elliot. I wouldn't marry you if you were
Speaker 2: the last. Ma. Ell sweet Jesus, you drink and drink
Speaker 2: and do such crazy grab bear from Ruth, throw bear
Speaker 2: on grill, bear burning ring I bought Ruth still taped
Speaker 2: to Paul. Look at you, idiot, MA says, is that
Speaker 2: who you are? Gimme all's goddamn keys, go out gate
Speaker 2: to my electra, brand new electra. Ma drops gray heads
Speaker 2: so sad helps Ruth up, blink little sick, recalling that no,
Speaker 2: if I could go back in yard, would take bear
Speaker 2: from fire, pul ring off bear, give ring to Ruth, saying, Ruth, sorry,
Speaker 2: let us love each other forever. But Ruth married Philip
Speaker 2: moved far away. I recall, I now recall. If Ruth
Speaker 2: not gone, Ma, not death, I would say, Ruth, Ma,
Speaker 2: the me I was then is not the only me
Speaker 2: I may. Ever, there is a me under that me
Speaker 2: who yet wishes to do lovely in this magnificent Watch Ruth,
Speaker 2: watch Ma, this knew me. In what time he has left,
Speaker 2: We'll try. I go through gate using both hands. I'm
Speaker 2: out of yard into hah. I now recall it, lot, vacant, lot.
Speaker 2: Never have I been so alone with myself while outside,
Speaker 2: knees hurt, no spring chicken. When will I death? Might
Speaker 2: I death alone? Probably? Yes? A little scared about that,
Speaker 2: I must say, But I am not death yet, not
Speaker 2: dead yet, not yet, and not yet. World lays out
Speaker 2: before me knew with each click of step and swish
Speaker 2: of aspen leaves above. For that, I say thanks. For
Speaker 2: as long as world is shiny new, there is no death,
Speaker 2: And what lovely may I not yet do? Here is
Speaker 2: cactus word I know from long ago cartoons. Watch with Ma.
Speaker 2: These West trees I know, like snap, are not my
Speaker 2: old East trees that I knew by heart, sycamore, dogwood, beach.
Speaker 2: I do not as yet no west trees names, Western
Speaker 2: trees names, but will will soon. Can learn. Am learning
Speaker 2: all the time. No night, star moon, no walk, no hide,
Speaker 2: no path, and a little bit smiling. Take it.
Speaker 1: There's so many parts of what you just read that
Speaker 1: I found fascinating. But as I was preparing for this conversation,
Speaker 1: pouring over those last few paragraphs specifically, I noticed in
Speaker 1: the version I received over the summer that the ending
Speaker 1: is different. The last paragraph you just read is actually
Speaker 1: the third to last paragraph in my version, And I
Speaker 1: was thinking about that revision process as I have it
Speaker 1: here in sort of real time.
Speaker 2: There was just a place late in the game where
Speaker 2: I was reading the manuscript and something just you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes like when you get really in touch with it,
Speaker 2: you just feel like, I don't know, it's okay, I
Speaker 2: can't do anything better. That's good enough, but you just
Speaker 2: feel a little bit of potential for something better.
Speaker 1: What do you think it does?
Speaker 2: You know? I actually I have to kind of remember
Speaker 2: what it was before. Yeah, let's see. No, No, that's
Speaker 2: exactly right, I thought. No, Okay, actually this ending that
Speaker 2: I just read is more like the New York ranting
Speaker 2: because it ends with that ticket, which I really liked.
Speaker 2: And so when I read this in manuscript after the
Speaker 2: galley went out, somehow this ending felt a little mushier somehow,
Speaker 2: So I moved this up, and I kind of inverted
Speaker 2: the two things. I think.
Speaker 1: Can you read that last paragraph on my version?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Not dead yet? Not yet? Not yet? And not
Speaker 2: yet world still lays out before me. Knew with each
Speaker 2: click of step and swish of aspen leaves above, And
Speaker 2: for that I say thanks. For as long as this
Speaker 2: world is shiny new, there is no death, and what
Speaker 2: lovely may I not yet do?
Speaker 1: It's a more sentimental ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. And you know it's
Speaker 2: funny how just I didn't cut it. I moved it up.
Speaker 2: So that's his first pass at it, and then the
Speaker 2: second passes the other thing. Yeah, that's interesting. I love
Speaker 2: those kind of micro decisions because they're like who knows.
Speaker 1: And yet, however micro it seems in the moment, it
Speaker 1: completely changes that feeling you walk away with at the end.
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful thing, because you know that's the real
Speaker 2: article of faces, that those kind of changes matter. And
Speaker 2: sometimes when you're working. It's hard to believe, but I
Speaker 2: think that's that's really true, you know, and I think
Speaker 2: you're exactly right. It felt a little bit like an
Speaker 2: uplift at the end. It wasn't quite in keeping with
Speaker 2: where he's going. Actually, maybe something like that, so sentimental.
Speaker 1: As we get to the end of you and I talking,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about endings, and I can't shake the last
Speaker 1: story in the book now as I understand it, this
Speaker 1: piece was sent to the publisher after you had already
Speaker 1: finished the book. You sent it as a hey, here's
Speaker 1: one more I've been working on. What do you think
Speaker 1: kind of thing? Is that? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. When I got the stories in about
Speaker 2: the right order and you read through them, there's just
Speaker 2: a feeling like one of your feet is still up
Speaker 2: in the air, like ah, yeah, So it was going
Speaker 2: to end on that Elliott Spencer. It's not bad, but
Speaker 2: something I just felt like there was one more little,
Speaker 2: you know, breath in it. And so I've been kind
Speaker 2: of carrying that idea around or the seed of it
Speaker 2: for a long time. I thought, what the hell, you know,
Speaker 2: you're you're sixty three, Maybe you can do it quick.
Speaker 2: So I did it in about five days, and it
Speaker 2: felt really like it was just almost like reading the
Speaker 2: book had wound up my subconscious and then it said
Speaker 2: I got one more thing, and it just kind of
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 1: The energy of the other eight stories had produced this
Speaker 1: final one exactly. So what was the seed?
Speaker 2: During the pandemic? We ran out a house up in
Speaker 2: Cherry Valley, New York, which is near Cooperstown and outside
Speaker 2: of town. There was this big yellow house that looked
Speaker 2: like it was maybe built in the early part of
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century, like really sprawling, you know, beautiful something
Speaker 2: that was like, yeah, that's why I should get old there.
Speaker 2: That would be cool. All the grandkids could run around
Speaker 2: on the lawn. It was just very kind of palatial,
Speaker 2: you know. So in that I was driving some and
Speaker 2: I just thought of buying that house basically, and kind
Speaker 2: of like what a weird moment that is when you're
Speaker 2: buying a house from somebody and it's like kind of
Speaker 2: like you're exchanging this really intimate thing and you're supposed
Speaker 2: to kind of pretend that you don't care. But in
Speaker 2: this story, both men really loved this house. And then
Speaker 2: I just imagine this thing going wrong as it does
Speaker 2: in the story. So I just held that for about
Speaker 2: a year in my mind, like, yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 2: that's kind of Chekhov in that little misunderstanding that they have.
Speaker 2: And then when I decided to write this last story,
Speaker 2: I said, okay, just quickly put that in a matrix
Speaker 2: of some stuff.
Speaker 1: So one man, the homeowner, has had this place for
Speaker 1: a long time, his wife has recently grown ill, they're
Speaker 1: in need of money, and it's always put it on
Speaker 1: the market. It's been on the market for about two years.
Speaker 1: This other man is the first potential buyer that he's considered.
Speaker 1: Said buyer goes to the old home. They have a
Speaker 1: cordial exchange that then grows into something actually more familial, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we could be friends maybe in another lifetime. Then towards
Speaker 1: the end of their discussion there's a breaking point where
Speaker 1: homeowner at least says to himself, I'm not selling it
Speaker 1: to this fucking guy. In turn, which is where we're
Speaker 1: gonna enter. Potential buyer has written a series of letters
Speaker 1: to homeowner and they start very nice, then they become
Speaker 1: increasingly unkind. Why don't we start with the fourth one?
Speaker 2: A fourth letter, You'll die, I'll get the house. Trust me.
Speaker 2: Why not sell now, use the money to live a
Speaker 2: better life than the tormented one. It would appear you
Speaker 2: are living sitting up there, lonely and bitter, letting that
Speaker 2: beautiful place, a place you loved, a place to two
Speaker 2: of you loved, go to seed. Shame on you. I
Speaker 2: hope you're enjoying the fruits of your arrogance, you stubborn,
Speaker 2: mean spirited old bastard. That one, to my credit, I
Speaker 2: ever since I wadded it up, burned it over the
Speaker 2: stove I had fallen ill. I am ill. Now my
Speaker 2: time is short. I burned that letter to prepare myself
Speaker 2: to face what is coming. With as pure a heart
Speaker 2: as I can manage, I need to write another. Of
Speaker 2: course I know that, if only for my own benefit.
Speaker 2: I am truly sorry. It will begin. Sorry for my
Speaker 2: pardon this. What did you deny me? Really? After all,
Speaker 2: a beautiful year or so in a lovely place they
Speaker 2: would have made me happy. But what is it? A
Speaker 2: year in the grand scheme? Nothing? What are ten years?
Speaker 2: One hundred a thousand? I am going, friend, I am
Speaker 2: all but gone. I believe you prideful and wrong, but
Speaker 2: I have no desire now to cure you your wrongness
Speaker 2: was an idea I had. I am all but gone.
Speaker 2: My idea of your wrongness will go with me. Your
Speaker 2: rightness is an idea you are having. It will go
Speaker 2: with you. For all of that. I hope you live forever.
Speaker 2: And if the place falls down around you, as it
Speaker 2: seems to be doing, I hope even that brings you joy.
Speaker 2: It was always falling down around you. Everything has always
Speaker 2: been down around us, only we were too alive to notice.
Speaker 2: I feel the truth of this in my body now.
Speaker 2: I'm trying not to be terrified, but I am sometimes
Speaker 2: in the night. If you are a praying man, pray
Speaker 2: for me, friend, friend who might have been, friend who
Speaker 2: should have been. That letter exists in my mind, but
Speaker 2: I'm too tired to write it. Well, that's not true.
Speaker 2: I'm not too tired. I'm just not ready. The surge
Speaker 2: of pride in life and self is still too strong
Speaker 2: in me. But I will get there. I will. I
Speaker 2: will write it yet, only I must not wait too long. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at this story for me, it was fun because it's
Speaker 2: a little bit chekhovy, and it's just five pages, and
Speaker 2: it's only you know, a lot of times, my tendency
Speaker 2: is to have an explosion at the end, or a
Speaker 2: death or something like that. And this is just a
Speaker 2: little tiny thing, you know that it's almost funny what
Speaker 2: these two guys go through, you know, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of inexplicable, but I'm kind of interested in the idea
Speaker 2: that you could illustrate those failure years of compassion in
Speaker 2: kind of small ways. It doesn't have to be, you know, grandiose.
Speaker 2: But that story took a turn there at the end.
Speaker 2: I carried that nugget around for all that time, but
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to get out of the story.
Speaker 2: And so one day I'm just looking at what I've
Speaker 2: done so far, and it's kind of corny, but something
Speaker 2: just happened, something takes over. That to me is the
Speaker 2: biggest thrill when you don't know way that I see
Speaker 2: that kind of ending coming, and then it came very naturally.
Speaker 2: It was fun, And when I stepped back the first
Speaker 2: time I read it, I was really moved by it
Speaker 2: and thought, that's pretty much what I believe, you know.
Speaker 2: But it was a blurt, you know, I blurted that out.
Speaker 2: So that's really why I keep doing it. It's just
Speaker 2: so fun, you know, to be temporarily briefly smarter than
Speaker 2: you are, and to get a look into your own
Speaker 2: heart by blurting something out is really great.
Speaker 1: It was always falling down around you. You're right, everything
Speaker 1: has always been falling down around us, only we were
Speaker 1: too alive to notice. It's funny we started this conversation
Speaker 1: by talking about the sort of precarious ground that we're
Speaker 1: standing on right now, and these sort of large assumptions
Speaker 1: that we made about our place in the world democracy,
Speaker 1: whether the world will even be around fifty years from now,
Speaker 1: And to read that line, only we were too alive
Speaker 1: to notice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this book. I kind of felt like there
Speaker 2: was some kind of connection between the immediate, which is, Okay,
Speaker 2: things are falling apart, how kind of sad that is,
Speaker 2: and you know, and then also that even if we
Speaker 2: backed up to whenever we thought it wasn't falling apart,
Speaker 2: it actually was. So you know, in that sense, this
Speaker 2: may be a little bit polyannisy. I felt this in
Speaker 2: the early days of the pandemic. It's kind of a
Speaker 2: gift to have your ass kicked a little bit by
Speaker 2: the world, because the world is just saying you are
Speaker 2: totally temporary. Everything you believe in is temporary, and it's
Speaker 2: saying it now so emphatically that we can't deny it,
Speaker 2: you know, and for me, I hope that. I mean,
Speaker 2: if it does go back to quote unquote normal, you know,
Speaker 2: I'd like to think I retained some of that, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was just you know, the world came alive and
Speaker 2: had a wrathful aspect to it for a few years.
Speaker 2: But it always does. Actually, you know, it always has
Speaker 2: a wrathful aspect and a joyful aspect, and we shouldn't
Speaker 2: fool ourselves into thinking that it's ever going to be
Speaker 2: just one or the other.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, I was preparing for this, and
Speaker 1: I thought, reading from that last chapter is the natural
Speaker 1: point to end our conversation. But then kind of in
Speaker 1: the spirit of revision, I changed a couple things around,
Speaker 1: and I feel like there's one last place we have
Speaker 1: to go before we stop talking. In a recent sub
Speaker 1: stack of yours, you wrote, I'm at a point in
Speaker 1: life where I'm finding I really value a story that
Speaker 1: authentically praises the good. I feel this to be somehow
Speaker 1: a higher order artistic accomplishment. The French writer de Montulant
Speaker 1: claimed that Happiness Rights and Whiting on a white page.
Speaker 1: And if we could, I thought we would read from
Speaker 1: a passage written maybe in white ink on a white page,
Speaker 1: from the titular story Liberation Day. This book, of course,
Speaker 1: is dedicated to your wife, Paula, who you've been with
Speaker 1: ever since that creative writing program at Syracuse back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. And as I read this passage, I thought,
Speaker 1: I wonder what she thought of this.
Speaker 2: Every man, I whisper, is born with a certain store
Speaker 2: of desire. It is a treasure he has been bequeathed
Speaker 2: that he must spend wisely. Over the course of his life,
Speaker 2: one moves through the world, finding objects on which to
Speaker 2: expend it. Blessed is he who finds a worthy object,
Speaker 2: shaped by God, provided fortuitously unto him, that elicits his
Speaker 2: longing so strongly that all else briefly receiveds, and he
Speaker 2: becomes pure desire. Then, wonder of wonders, that which he
Speaker 2: desires embodied may become pure desires herself desiring him. Here
Speaker 2: is what I wish to say, dearest wan Trap, as
Speaker 2: I am on this desolate, godless hillside, surrounded by demons
Speaker 2: who wished to destroy me, Because I have known such
Speaker 2: a moment with you, the firelight playing across the walls,
Speaker 2: the dog asleep against the door, the bed shifting beneath us,
Speaker 2: as if making a proving commentary in his own unique language.
Speaker 2: I may die now if I must die, knowing I
Speaker 2: have truly lived.
Speaker 1: Your Pastard, that's the highest praise. When you finished tenth
Speaker 1: of December, the first person you gave it to was Paula.
Speaker 1: You asked her for some feedback. As you asked her,
Speaker 1: you had to go out for some reason or another.
Speaker 1: Then you came back home. And when you came back home,
Speaker 1: there was a note on the book and it said,
Speaker 1: from her tears, send it out. And as you read
Speaker 1: that last bit, I couldn't help but think about the
Speaker 1: love you two have have had nineteen eighty six and
Speaker 1: what it evokes in you reading it now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean it's it's really deep. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like all the things that they make you say
Speaker 2: at the alter, that's actually what it is. It's sickness
Speaker 2: and health and better and worse and all that. And
Speaker 2: there's something about for us, you know, to just endure,
Speaker 2: enduring or you know, or kind of sticking with abiding.
Speaker 2: You know, it opens up a lot of doors that
Speaker 2: you learn so much about the person and you know,
Speaker 2: so I'm grateful and I think, really, the funny thing
Speaker 2: is it just when we first met it we got
Speaker 2: engaged in three weeks, which is kind of a record
Speaker 2: for the Syracuse MFA program, I think so far. And
Speaker 2: it was just interesting. I was so interested in her,
Speaker 2: couldn't quite figure her out. And that has just that's
Speaker 2: been true to this day, no matter what, whether it
Speaker 2: is I'm interested in what she has to say, and
Speaker 2: the idea of writing something she'll like is still a
Speaker 2: really really big motivator for me.
Speaker 1: What did she say about that?
Speaker 2: She hasn't read it yet. Actually, it's kind of a
Speaker 2: running joke because she's working on a beautiful book of
Speaker 2: her own, so I'm like, yeah, don't read, don't worry.
Speaker 2: So it's almost like I'm waiting for her to read
Speaker 2: that passage. So I'll let you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, call me up. Yeah, honey, I have to call Sam.
Speaker 1: We've only met once, but he needs to know your reaction.
Speaker 2: You know, It's a great thing being married to a
Speaker 2: writer because they get it. She saved me so many
Speaker 2: times because her way of reading a story is like
Speaker 2: my deepest way, which is you read it, and if
Speaker 2: it moves you, it's good, and if it doesn't, you
Speaker 2: get to figure it out. She's incredibly honest person, so
Speaker 2: if it doesn't move her, she can't. She has no
Speaker 2: interest in faking it. And then you just go back
Speaker 2: to the drawing board, muttering, you know, but knowing that
Speaker 2: she's right.
Speaker 1: My last question, it's kind of an epilogue on the
Speaker 1: subject of writing. I was going to ask you at
Speaker 1: sixty three, what compels you to keep doing this? To
Speaker 1: sit there, painfully, sit there, try to produce something on
Speaker 1: a blank page. And then I remembered that you and
Speaker 1: I discussed this very thing at the beginning of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. So why don't we take a.
Speaker 2: Listen when you really get down to it, and ask
Speaker 2: why would someone read a short story or right one?
Speaker 2: It's all about the micro fluctuations of the mind. You know.
Speaker 2: You start a story with nothing in mind. You pick
Speaker 2: it up and suddenly there's Scrooge or whoever you know.
Speaker 2: And then when you come out, when you get spit
Speaker 2: out the other end of a good story, you're in
Speaker 2: a different state, you know, And the same is true
Speaker 2: of a song or whatever. You're in a different state
Speaker 2: if you think that different state is preferable, then that's
Speaker 2: proof of concept. You know, it doesn't last forever. It lasts,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe what half an hour's I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's I kind of feel like, at this stage
Speaker 2: of my life, I'm like, well, that's better than nothing,
Speaker 2: you know, it's better than not. Yeah, I like that
Speaker 2: idea of alteration. You come in in one state and
Speaker 2: go out in another. It occurs to me that the
Speaker 2: reason I'm still interested in it is that to have
Speaker 2: written a book and surprise yourself in the process, that's
Speaker 2: so fun, you know, to say, oh, I wasn't done,
Speaker 2: after all, there's still other selves to come forward. When
Speaker 2: I was younger, I think there was a more complicated
Speaker 2: matrix of motivation. There was you know, ambition for sure,
Speaker 2: earning a living, a lot, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And now it's more like the form is really I
Speaker 2: wouldn't say it's taunting me, but I realized how little
Speaker 2: I've done it and how vast it is. So I'm
Speaker 2: kind of like, oh, God, you've got a little bit
Speaker 2: of talent, you were slow to start using it, and
Speaker 2: now you've got some number of years left, so hurry up,
Speaker 2: because there's new places to go. Just the idea of
Speaker 2: spending the next year popping out new kinds of stories
Speaker 2: that really makes me happy?
Speaker 1: Is that what you say when you look ahead?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean on one level, that's kind of good
Speaker 2: and kind of bad because okay, then just fast forward.
Speaker 2: I'm ninety six, Hey had eighteen more stories. Boops, he's dead.
Speaker 2: Not the greatest, you know, So there's another level for me,
Speaker 2: which has to do with also has to do with
Speaker 2: alteration and can I actually become a more relaxed, generous,
Speaker 2: loving person. Those are kind of the three things. I
Speaker 2: always had this idea that someday I'll do a big
Speaker 2: retreat or I'll get back to meditating more regularly, but
Speaker 2: I tend to not. You know, since the last time
Speaker 2: we talked, that hasn't that strangely hasn't happened, So I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's on my mind. You know that, left
Speaker 2: to my own devices, I'm a pretty productive, pretty anxious,
Speaker 2: semi loving person, and that's not probably going to be
Speaker 2: good enough. You know at some point that that's gonna work. Then,
Speaker 2: So that's on my list.
Speaker 1: You're all these people at once.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A certain person is dominating in a given moment,
Speaker 2: and I mean to me, it's a thrilling idea that
Speaker 2: you could change, that you could somehow do certain things
Speaker 2: and then a different aspect of yourself would be dominant.
Speaker 2: And the weird thing is just thinking back on, like,
Speaker 2: for example, the time I was the biggest mess versus
Speaker 2: the time I felt the very, very best. The weird
Speaker 2: thing is the world changes around that person. And because
Speaker 2: that's the state of your mind that's different, the world
Speaker 2: coming in is actually process differently. So it's an incredible opportunity.
Speaker 2: And I kind of kick myself because I don't know
Speaker 2: why I don't feel that more urgently.
Speaker 1: More urgently now that you're sixty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty old. You know you should by then
Speaker 2: you should have the fire lit under your ass, which
Speaker 2: I kind of do. But it's just, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of interesting.
Speaker 1: At the end of that clip, you talked about the
Speaker 1: power of art being that if it works, you leave
Speaker 1: it on the other side just slightly different. You enter
Speaker 1: a different kind of state. And I had to say,
Speaker 1: having read every page of this book, I left it
Speaker 1: feeling just like that in a different state.
Speaker 2: How would you characterize a different state?
Speaker 1: I'd characterize it in the exact same way we characterized
Speaker 1: it earlier, which was when something horrible happens, like a death,
Speaker 1: or something great happens, like a job promotion. These big
Speaker 1: things sort of snap you out of the quotidian like
Speaker 1: a snow but whatever, it jostles you around a little bit,
Speaker 1: and it makes you actually look around with the fresh
Speaker 1: set of eyes, the same way you do walking out
Speaker 1: of a movie theater when the movie is good. You
Speaker 1: ever notice that, like you go into the theater in
Speaker 1: a certain way, you walk out and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're like, wow, even the not so interesting restaurant
Speaker 1: that is in front of me has a glimmer to it.
Speaker 2: I always kind of think like, oh gosh, you know,
Speaker 2: after a good work of art, the birds matter more.
Speaker 2: Those are kind of like story birds or something. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Everything else that's not me, everything else that's not the
Speaker 1: neurotic person that you are that I obviously am. That
Speaker 1: falls away, you know, and then it doesn't, but you know.
Speaker 2: It can that's yeah, Oh thanks for that. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I have felt the same way in this conversation. Now
Speaker 1: as we have to leave it.
Speaker 2: So we have to stay another couple hours, and now
Speaker 2: I really love being with you. You've got an incredible mind.
Speaker 1: George Sanders. The pleasure has been all mine.
Speaker 2: It has not, but thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Much love, and that's our show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy today's episode, be sure to leave us
Speaker 1: five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you do your listening.
Speaker 1: I want to give a special thanks this week to
Speaker 1: Aaron Richards, Penguin, Random House, and of course our guest
Speaker 1: George Saunders. His latest short story collection, Liberation Day, is
Speaker 1: now available on paperback. You can find that and more
Speaker 1: on our website at talk easypod dot com. To hear
Speaker 1: other conversations with some of my favorite writers, I check
Speaker 1: out our talks with Zadie Smith, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan,
Speaker 1: Ocean Wong, Jump Lahiri, and Nick Offerman to hear those
Speaker 1: and more. Pushkin Podcasts listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
Speaker 1: wherever you like to listen. If you want to purchase
Speaker 1: one of our mugs they Come and Cream or Navy,
Speaker 1: or our vinyl record with writer fran Leeboitz, you can
Speaker 1: do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop Talk
Speaker 1: Easy is produced by care Oline Reebok. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jeni sa Brava. Our associate producer is Caitlyn Dryden.
Speaker 1: Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's Talk
Speaker 1: was edited by Caitlyn Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola.
Speaker 1: It was engineered by Tim Moore out of York, Recording
Speaker 1: here in Los Angeles, California. Our music is by Dylan Peck.
Speaker 1: Our illustrations are by Christian Chanoy. Photographs are by Julius Chue.
Speaker 1: Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones
Speaker 1: and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julie Barton, John Schnar's, Kerry Brody,
Speaker 1: David Glover, Heather Feane, Eric Sandler, Jordan McMillan, Cure, Posy Paramachado,
Speaker 1: Maya Cannic, Jason Gambrel, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weisberg. I'm
Speaker 1: Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll
Speaker 1: see you back here next week with a new episode.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay safe and so long a