Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Samforgo, so welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. This week after the holidays, we're returning to
Speaker 1: our episode with author George Saunders. He's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite American writers working today. You're likely familiar with some
Speaker 1: of his work, including The Tenth of December, Lincoln in
Speaker 1: the Bartow, and most recently, A Swim in the Pond
Speaker 1: in the Rain. This is one of my favorite episodes
Speaker 1: from the past twelve months and one of those conversations
Speaker 1: that I plan to carry with me into twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: We talk about empathy, masculinity, Ernest Hemingway, and how art
Speaker 1: can be a moral, ethical tool for self examination. Picking
Speaker 1: up where his new book left off, Saunders recently launched
Speaker 1: a sub stack called story Club. It's essentially a virtual
Speaker 1: writing course that includes two weekly pieces written by Saunders,
Speaker 1: guided readings, writing exercises, and a whole lot more. If
Speaker 1: you ever wanted George Saunders as your teacher, I definitely
Speaker 1: know I have. You can find a link to story
Speaker 1: Club in our show notes at Talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: As for today, if you haven't heard this episode, I
Speaker 1: really hope you enjoy it. If you have heard it,
Speaker 1: but are coming back for round two. Thank you for
Speaker 1: being here. We've done over two hundred and sixty episodes
Speaker 1: on this show, and yet it's still one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, I hope the holidays have treated you kindly.
Speaker 1: I hope that you're staying safe and healthy and COVID free.
Speaker 1: We'll be returning with new episodes later this month. For
Speaker 1: now here is the inimitable George Saunders. George Saunders, how
Speaker 1: are you doing. I'm doing all right. I'm doing alright.
Speaker 1: I'm staying busy with this new book and keeping one
Speaker 1: eye on the news and just trying to let it all,
Speaker 1: you know, filter in for later later arrangement. Does later
Speaker 1: arrangement mean later processing? Yeah, I mean that's kind of
Speaker 1: how it is for me. I just take everything in
Speaker 1: like a little goldfish, you know, and then later it
Speaker 1: sorts itself out artistically. I hope that's the theory. So
Speaker 1: it makes a kind of low stress because I don't
Speaker 1: really do a lot of deciding at the time. I'm
Speaker 1: just like, oh, this is crazy, and trying to get
Speaker 1: as much you know, factuality and as possible and hopefully
Speaker 1: it'll come out in some weird way. Six months from
Speaker 1: an hour, twenty years or whatever. Well, I think some
Speaker 1: of your processing of this country at least came out
Speaker 1: in the pages of The New Yorker last year. In
Speaker 1: this piece, you offered an explanation of the Trump era
Speaker 1: and the great harm that can be done by just
Speaker 1: a handful of powerful people, as long as they have
Speaker 1: the passive assistance of many, many other people who glance
Speaker 1: out of the windows of their secure homes and see
Speaker 1: a cloudless sky. Given the reckoning of these past few
Speaker 1: months in America, do you believe we're starting to look
Speaker 1: out those windows and, to use your term, really see
Speaker 1: that cloudy sky. It seems like it to me, Although
Speaker 1: it seemed like that for about four years. I've got
Speaker 1: kind of a hopeful you know, I'm a hopeful person.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what strikes me about this, sam is
Speaker 1: I'm talking about this book now about stories, and that's
Speaker 1: pretty much what I think about all the time, is
Speaker 1: the short story. And it occurs to me that if
Speaker 1: we ever had the idea that stories weren't important, this
Speaker 1: moment right now is proof that they are. Because when
Speaker 1: a shitty story is propagated and gets into a human mind,
Speaker 1: pretty soon the human body starts doing stupid stuff. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, in this time of ours where we've got
Speaker 1: these false narratives that are coming down this technological corporate
Speaker 1: pipeline into a bunch of heads that maybe aren't particularly
Speaker 1: sophisticated at processing story truth. I don't know. When I
Speaker 1: was watching that the films of the Capital thing, it
Speaker 1: reminded me of that whatever that Brad Pitt movie is
Speaker 1: with z in it, you know, the zombie movie. Just
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who were literally infected with something,
Speaker 1: in this case a stupid idea, and it's really tragic,
Speaker 1: you know, to see people who had they been encoded
Speaker 1: with more reliable, goodhearted information, they wouldn't have been there
Speaker 1: doing that stuff. So then that brings me to thinking
Speaker 1: about the short story and how that's an information conveys
Speaker 1: device of a different type, with a different agenda and
Speaker 1: a different delivery system that lands on an audience of
Speaker 1: people who've been better prepared to hear what it has
Speaker 1: to offer. You've been thinking about the short story for
Speaker 1: a long time, and in fact, for people who don't know,
Speaker 1: you have been teaching this course on the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: Russian short story at Syracuse for twenty years. But I
Speaker 1: think you know in this new book of yours, a
Speaker 1: swim in a pond in the rain, It's important to
Speaker 1: note the context that I think it arrives in, which is,
Speaker 1: as you write, we live, as you may have noticed,
Speaker 1: and a decreated era bombarded by fasil shallow agenda laced
Speaker 1: too rapidly disseminated information burst. Since this book is coming
Speaker 1: out now, do you think it exists in opposition to
Speaker 1: that degraded era? I don't know if the book does.
Speaker 1: But the stories, do you know, the stories in it
Speaker 1: definitely do. Why Well, if you think about the mindset
Speaker 1: of say Chekhov, you know, when he was writing his stories,
Speaker 1: I think he understood the story to be a moral,
Speaker 1: ethical investigation tool. And any writer, you know, you go
Speaker 1: into a story, part of your job is to surprise yourself,
Speaker 1: surprise the reader, and to be truthful, whatever that means
Speaker 1: to you. So in that mode, you know, you're kind
Speaker 1: of a human being at its best. You don't know
Speaker 1: the answer, you're hopefully asking a deep question, and you're
Speaker 1: kind of waiting in with all your senses open. You're
Speaker 1: you're in a spirit of intimate communication, intimate conversation with
Speaker 1: the reader. You're trying to connect with her at her
Speaker 1: highest level. You're trying to bring forth your best self,
Speaker 1: So that that is the opposite of what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about sole agenda laced conversation. There isn't really an agenda
Speaker 1: when you're writing a story except you know, you'd like
Speaker 1: to get it published. But for that to happen, you
Speaker 1: have to be there, you know, you have to really
Speaker 1: engage the reader in a loving way. So I think
Speaker 1: it is very different. You know, it's to my way
Speaker 1: of thinking. Of course, I'm biased, but I think that
Speaker 1: an eight or nine page story that I write and
Speaker 1: send to you is about the most mind meld you
Speaker 1: can get, you know, about the best mind meld we
Speaker 1: can accomplish because prose is so so powerful. So I'm
Speaker 1: a you know, obviously, I'm I'm kind of a fan
Speaker 1: of the story. But I think somehow our communication has
Speaker 1: gotten shrill and agitated and a cynical and it's it
Speaker 1: can't be unrelated to the means of delivery, you know,
Speaker 1: it can't be. How do you combat that cynicism? Honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, at this point in my life, at sixty two,
Speaker 1: I just feel like you do it a little bit
Speaker 1: every day for yourself at a time. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any big program that can fix it. It's just
Speaker 1: like everything else good in life, you know, like friendship
Speaker 1: or food or sports. You know, you are always mitigating
Speaker 1: against the evils in the world with whatever you know
Speaker 1: tools you have. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: it's an answer. I'm always a little bummed out by
Speaker 1: that because I have a Messiah complex and I'd like
Speaker 1: to do more. But really that's it, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: with everything in life, you don't get to press the
Speaker 1: button that says evil be gone. You have to press
Speaker 1: a bunch of little buttons, and evil goes around the
Speaker 1: corner and it comes back, you know. So, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the things I kind of discovered from the
Speaker 1: book was that when you're really when I really get
Speaker 1: down to it and ask why would someone read a
Speaker 1: short story or write one, it's all about the micro
Speaker 1: fluctuations of the mind. You know. You start a story
Speaker 1: with nothing in mind. You pick it up and suddenly
Speaker 1: there's Scrooge or whoever you know, And then when you
Speaker 1: come out, when you get spit out the other end
Speaker 1: of a good story, you're in a different state. You know,
Speaker 1: and the same is true of a song or whatever.
Speaker 1: You're in a different state. If you think that different
Speaker 1: state is preferable, then that's proof of concept. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't last forever. It lasts you know, maybe what
Speaker 1: half an hour. So I don't know, but I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like, at this stage in my life, I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's better than nothing, you know, it's better than not.
Speaker 1: Can we go to a moment in your life where
Speaker 1: you had that kind of transformative experience where you did
Speaker 1: pass into a different state that you were so impacted
Speaker 1: by the writing because this book includes Chekhov, and I
Speaker 1: think your love for his work began at the end
Speaker 1: of your first semester at the Syracuse Creative Writing Program.
Speaker 1: It was December of nineteen eighty six. Your professor and
Speaker 1: mentor and writer Tobias Wolf is doing a reading of
Speaker 1: Chekhov's About Love trilogy on stage. Do you remember that night?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it was. I think it was the
Speaker 1: first time we'd heard Toby, as we call him, a read,
Speaker 1: and so it was like we were all star struck,
Speaker 1: and I think he was a little under the weather.
Speaker 1: So he decided to read Chekhov's work instead of his
Speaker 1: own and as I remember it, you know, the first
Speaker 1: snow of this season started falling behind him in this
Speaker 1: big window, and it was just such an unbelievably entertaining reading.
Speaker 1: It was so funny and personable and lively. And I
Speaker 1: had never understood Chekov to be an entertainer before. I
Speaker 1: couldn't really get into him. But with Toby, it was
Speaker 1: really like Chekov himself had kind of dropped into the
Speaker 1: room and was doing stand up and then it would
Speaker 1: be funny, but also it'd be so deep and sad,
Speaker 1: and so for me, it was kind of this moment
Speaker 1: where I was like, Okay, that's what I'm doing with
Speaker 1: my life. I was pretty sure, but I had some doubts,
Speaker 1: you know, and it was seemed like the coolest thing
Speaker 1: you could ever do. So there was that feeling like, Okay,
Speaker 1: anything I ever wanted to accomplish artistically, this is this
Speaker 1: is a good way to do it. And then you
Speaker 1: know the related kind of sickening feeling, which is, holy shit,
Speaker 1: this is hard. This is what Chekhov and Toby just
Speaker 1: did that as not baby stuff, you know. So that
Speaker 1: was a big, really big deal, you know, very inspiring,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's not too often. I guess in
Speaker 1: your life that you get those moments where everything gets simplified,
Speaker 1: you know, and all your desires and aspirations get kind
Speaker 1: of come buying into one thing. And that was definitely
Speaker 1: that night night for me. You wrote that the stories
Speaker 1: in Toby's reading of them convey a notion new to me,
Speaker 1: or one which in the Somber Cathedral of Academia I'd forgotten.
Speaker 1: Literature is a form of fondness for life. It is
Speaker 1: love for life taking verbal form. Yeah, this idea that
Speaker 1: literature is a form of fondness for life seems to me.
Speaker 1: And again I could be wrong, because this is your life,
Speaker 1: not mine, but I think I think this began in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, where you're a freshman at Oak Forest
Speaker 1: High School in Illinois. There you had a teacher name
Speaker 1: Sherry Williams, and one afternoon, the class was studying Hawthorne
Speaker 1: and she started to go on about him, and she said,
Speaker 1: this is a person who is now dead, but when
Speaker 1: he was alive, he went out and looked at the
Speaker 1: world with wide open eyes and in the process changed it.
Speaker 1: How did her words that afternoon change you at that age?
Speaker 1: Can I just say parenthetically, you're a monster researcher. That's
Speaker 1: amazing what you just found there. Yeah, well, okay, So
Speaker 1: so Sherry Williams was very beautiful and very smart and
Speaker 1: very funny, and we all admired her. And she had
Speaker 1: a way of talking about teaching writing that I know
Speaker 1: I've adapted, which is to say, these were people. They
Speaker 1: weren't you know, saints, they weren't statutes. They were actually
Speaker 1: human beings like you, guys. And even though you guys
Speaker 1: are from oak Forth, Illinois, in this nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: and you're all ted nugent fans, you are still capable
Speaker 1: of getting it behind the story and feeling it. You are,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to show you how to do it,
Speaker 1: you know. So with her personal charm and her intelligence,
Speaker 1: she made it seem that we were smart enough to
Speaker 1: handle this stuff. Ever since, I just I kind of
Speaker 1: always think of her when I go into the classroom,
Speaker 1: because it's not your job to show off or to preach,
Speaker 1: or to discipline. Even your job is to engage, you know.
Speaker 1: And the way you engage with us a class is
Speaker 1: to like them, you know, and to have faith in them.
Speaker 1: I had another colleague once tell me that the way
Speaker 1: to connect with the difficult class is to imagine them
Speaker 1: all as the future forty year olds that they'll become,
Speaker 1: you know, with mortgages and hemorrhoids and self doubt and everything.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of talking past that confident nineteen year
Speaker 1: old who doesn't give a shit to the forty year
Speaker 1: old who maybe at some point will go, what am
Speaker 1: I doing here? You know, and they might maybe if
Speaker 1: you do your job. Remember that literature is something they
Speaker 1: can pick up. But but Sherry and her husband, Joe,
Speaker 1: they weren't married at the time, but he was my
Speaker 1: geology teacher, and he did equally wonderful things from me,
Speaker 1: got me into college, and so we're still friends. And
Speaker 1: I look back at that time with such wonder because,
Speaker 1: you know, they were busy and I was just a
Speaker 1: dumb ass. You know, really, I had nothing to recommend
Speaker 1: me at that point, but they both took the time
Speaker 1: to see me, you know, and to give me a
Speaker 1: little special attention. That completely changed that course of my life.
Speaker 1: I want to better understand the dumbass version of yourself. No,
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I lived in a place called
Speaker 1: Oak Fourth, which is on the south side of Chicago.
Speaker 1: And I didn't not too many of my family members
Speaker 1: had gone to college, and that wasn't really an aspiration.
Speaker 1: I was a guitar player, kind of a budding right winger.
Speaker 1: Actually I was a big a Rand fan, and I
Speaker 1: think really the big problems I was arrogant, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't I was kind of smart and I like
Speaker 1: to read, but I didn't have whatever that quality is
Speaker 1: that I see in my students were embarking on a
Speaker 1: long career or a long mentorship. They humbled themselves and
Speaker 1: they say, I don't know anything, let me read everything.
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, yeah, all that previous history
Speaker 1: is cool, but I'm here now, so I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about it. So I got a really late
Speaker 1: start in writing because I think secretly I was really
Speaker 1: terrified that I would read something that I felt was
Speaker 1: beyond me and that would be the end of it.
Speaker 1: So I kind of had this unspoken program that I
Speaker 1: didn't read anybody who was still alive. I was. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a like a what I call like a
Speaker 1: young old man. I was very superior. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of I didn't drink, I didn't smoke pot, I
Speaker 1: didn't do anything. I had a lot of judgment, so
Speaker 1: I think I was just I think now I was
Speaker 1: scramling to get to someplace where nobody could judge me,
Speaker 1: you know, which means you have to start judging everybody else.
Speaker 1: So in the end, I was I was moving ahead,
Speaker 1: trying to move forward and you know, go to college
Speaker 1: and all that kind of thing. Sixty years ago, in
Speaker 1: an interview for The New York Times magazine, you described
Speaker 1: your approach to literature in high school as this, I
Speaker 1: think I understood literature to be about how to live
Speaker 1: correctly rather than life. It's complicated. You had, as you
Speaker 1: just said, this kind of purity streak in you. Do
Speaker 1: you remember an incident or a moment where, for the
Speaker 1: first time in your young adulthood life started to get complicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there was a whole period when I was
Speaker 1: in college where my dad had a restaurant and it
Speaker 1: burned down and for some reason, the insurance wasn't covering it.
Speaker 1: So it was a real, real struggle and we had
Speaker 1: to kind of start over from nothing. And then from
Speaker 1: there I went to Asia and there was a moment
Speaker 1: that I always remember, which was I was still kind
Speaker 1: of a little bit trying out an an Rand mindset,
Speaker 1: you know, and without drinking one night, it went past
Speaker 1: this hotel where they had dug out this excavation, and
Speaker 1: I'm standing there are kind of buzz and I looked
Speaker 1: down and I see some motion and I stood her
Speaker 1: a while longer, and it was all these really old
Speaker 1: Malaysian ladies clearing out the site by hand. They literally
Speaker 1: were carrying boulders on their shoulders to put them in
Speaker 1: a pile somewhere. And something in that, combined with the
Speaker 1: difficulties that our family had been going through, it kind
Speaker 1: of switched the polarity in my brain, you know, instead
Speaker 1: of maybe this vague idea I'd had from an Rand
Speaker 1: that if you were suffering, it was your problem, is
Speaker 1: your fall? You know something in your behavior? Did it
Speaker 1: something switched? I might No, No, everybody's suffering, and it is.
Speaker 1: There's no correlation between virtue and suffering or not suffering.
Speaker 1: It was almost like that once, you know how sometimes
Speaker 1: when a polarity switches in your brain, you find out
Speaker 1: that there's actually a lot of support for the new
Speaker 1: idea that's been there all along. And for me, it
Speaker 1: had to do mostly with Steinbeck. Actually, you know, I've
Speaker 1: read Steinbeck, and oh yeah, of course that's why socialism.
Speaker 1: You know how Also, when you get an idea that's
Speaker 1: a good one, and you start looking at the world
Speaker 1: through that lens, you go, oh yeah, that's right. Suddenly
Speaker 1: the data starts pouring in to support that that new viewpoint.
Speaker 1: You know, didn't your love of Steinbeck start in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven as you were an engineering student in college
Speaker 1: and then coming back home one summer you were working
Speaker 1: in the oil fields as what you called a jug hustler,
Speaker 1: which I still don't entirely know what the hell that is.
Speaker 1: I don't either. It was we were on a geophysical crew,
Speaker 1: so they what you do is you somebody makes a
Speaker 1: big deep hole, puts some dynamite down there, blows it off,
Speaker 1: and then the vibrations come up and these jugs, these
Speaker 1: little geophones, are on the surface and they kind of
Speaker 1: collect the vibrational data. As you do that, you can
Speaker 1: figure out what the earth looks like beneath and where
Speaker 1: to drill for a while. So my job was I
Speaker 1: take those those jugs, which on a big string, and
Speaker 1: just walk out into the desert for like three hundred
Speaker 1: feet planning these in the ground and then go back
Speaker 1: and get another one. And it was it was a
Speaker 1: really hot summer, and the crew was made up of
Speaker 1: a bunch of pretty gnarly scary X cons and stuff.
Speaker 1: And at night I was sleeping in an RV that
Speaker 1: my parents had in their driveway and was reading The
Speaker 1: Grapes of Wrath so the first time, and I just
Speaker 1: you know, made the connection between the life I was
Speaker 1: living where I was starting to really kind of feel
Speaker 1: like I wasn't doing very well and somehow I didn't
Speaker 1: have any power, and with these guys I was working
Speaker 1: with who were even worse off, connecting all of us
Speaker 1: with the people in the Grapes of Wrath. And that
Speaker 1: was maybe the first time that it ever happened where
Speaker 1: my life and the life of a book had intersected
Speaker 1: like that, and it made me feel kind of part
Speaker 1: of a you know, a tradition, I guess. Or why
Speaker 1: were you in the old RV in the driveway of
Speaker 1: your parents house? And Amarilla, I think I like the look.
Speaker 1: You know, I had a perfectly nice room inside, but
Speaker 1: I think I like that, Yeah, I'm a young writer.
Speaker 1: I'm living in an RV and then parenthetically, in my parents' driveway.
Speaker 1: This This is why I asked. Yeah, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: wondering because I was like, I imagine, there is a
Speaker 1: room inside this house, very nice room, and you are choosing, yeah,
Speaker 1: to live in the RV. I did a lot of
Speaker 1: that kind of crap. I worked a lot of jobs
Speaker 1: that were you know, I probably could have found a
Speaker 1: better one, but this one was more suited to a
Speaker 1: future writer, and that kind of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Were you conscious of that back then? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I was. You know, it's a kind of almost a
Speaker 1: triple consciousness, like you don't have to be in the RV,
Speaker 1: but I want to be in the RV. Someday I'll
Speaker 1: say I was in the RV, you know. But then also,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of these things, like a few
Speaker 1: years later, I worked in a slaughterhouse at Iowa beef
Speaker 1: An Emerald, and on the one level, I thought, that's
Speaker 1: a cool job to have on your writerly resume, but
Speaker 1: also I didn't have a better job, and I had
Speaker 1: no money, and that was the best paying job in town.
Speaker 1: And now, in hindsight, it was a great inflection point
Speaker 1: to have been in there. So it's all those things
Speaker 1: at once, you know, do you see your kind of
Speaker 1: early rumblings and young adulthood. Did you process events as
Speaker 1: being only worthwhile if they could later be resurfaced as
Speaker 1: material for writing. I would say yes, And my idea
Speaker 1: of what would be usable later was totally wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: because another thing it was like, well, this is sort
Speaker 1: of like what Hemingway might write about, you know, so yes,
Speaker 1: and I'm assuming you must have done the same me. No, No,
Speaker 1: of course you know. No, No, I've lived a perfectly
Speaker 1: flawless existence. I'm glad to have finally found you. It's
Speaker 1: very astute that you point that back at me, because
Speaker 1: of course I'm asking this for myself. How much experience
Speaker 1: has lived in, genuinely lived in, and not some sort
Speaker 1: of larger artistic calculation for future material that may or
Speaker 1: may not ever manifest, And how much that does to
Speaker 1: your day to day enjoyment of being alive. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great point, you know. But the other thing I
Speaker 1: notice is, as somebody who teaches a lot of young writers,
Speaker 1: everybody does that, you know, everybody does that. Everybody has
Speaker 1: the same also anxieties about how to do an ending.
Speaker 1: Everybody tries to construct the mythology for themselves everybody imitates
Speaker 1: somebody else for a long time and then repents of it.
Speaker 1: So I think you're right, there's I look back at
Speaker 1: those years, I'm like, why were you trying to Why
Speaker 1: were you living in amoralod Texas, playing in a bar band,
Speaker 1: living in an RV. Occasionally it's your at your discretion
Speaker 1: and trying to recast at all as a Hemingway story.
Speaker 1: It's it's such a it's almost like an active denial
Speaker 1: of your own reality, you know, but on maybe a
Speaker 1: slightly larger scale, that was my reality, you know. The
Speaker 1: denial was part of the moment. So I think what
Speaker 1: I tell my students is, don't be ashamed of any
Speaker 1: of this stuff, but but recognize it as sort of
Speaker 1: coming out of your essential working energy. You know. If
Speaker 1: you if you are someone who not like either of us,
Speaker 1: of course sits around having a fantasy about being famous.
Speaker 1: You can do two things. You can deny it, you know,
Speaker 1: or you can go yeah, that's weird, you know, and
Speaker 1: you can sort of use that energy to propel you forward.
Speaker 1: And I'm a big advocate of the second. I don't think,
Speaker 1: you know, writing any artistic pursuit. It's so freaking hard.
Speaker 1: It takes so much insane doggedness, you know that. I
Speaker 1: think you have to enlist any energy that you have,
Speaker 1: any authentic energy, even if it's a little bit unholy.
Speaker 1: I think you've got to sort of tie it to
Speaker 1: the sled and let it, let it pull, and in time,
Speaker 1: I think it can become pure. You know, Like at
Speaker 1: this point in my life, having really been kind of
Speaker 1: I would say fame hungry my whole life sense I
Speaker 1: was a little kid. I remember as a little kid
Speaker 1: watching the Beatles, going oh, that's cool. Over the years,
Speaker 1: I think that desire has kind of getting purified where
Speaker 1: I just really want to do good work now. But
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have got there without utilizing that kind of
Speaker 1: a dirty energy. I guess in twenty fourteen you said,
Speaker 1: when you're young, you think the world revolves around you
Speaker 1: and it's been waiting for you to show up. Then
Speaker 1: as you get older and you have experiences, that falls away.
Speaker 1: I'm just here and I'll be gone. Yeah. I wish
Speaker 1: that I have to revise that because I still I
Speaker 1: still think that way. I still I still I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's the that's the dilemma, is we're somehow
Speaker 1: we're set up neurologically to posit ourselves as being at
Speaker 1: the center of everything and you know, the star of
Speaker 1: every scene and permanent and all that, and clearly it's
Speaker 1: not true, but it did, you know, the notion person
Speaker 1: in us, probably for like Darwinian reasons. I know that
Speaker 1: the goal is to refute that. But you know, this
Speaker 1: is how many years later and I still that's I still,
Speaker 1: you know, still trapped, you know in self, that's works
Speaker 1: in progress. Yeah, yeah, What do you think this fascination
Speaker 1: is with men and Hemmingway? Because you know, you and
Speaker 1: I have been talking for thirty minutes. We had an
Speaker 1: hour a couple of days ago prepping tech. I've been
Speaker 1: reading your writing for years. You are about as far
Speaker 1: away emotionally from Hemmingway as you can be in a man, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's a compliment. Oh yes, thank you.
Speaker 1: In my view, why do you think there is this
Speaker 1: constant mythologizing of the young male writer roving in the world,
Speaker 1: the masculine, brutish, short prose, quick epigrammatic sentences. What is
Speaker 1: this fantasy? Yeah? I don't know. I think it's deadly
Speaker 1: for our country. Actually, it's somehow related to the Gunslinger myth.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, because the idea is you're totally independent,
Speaker 1: there's no community, because community is for weaklings and so on.
Speaker 1: For me, Hemingway, there are two things. The cheap thing
Speaker 1: was I loved his life. I loved his lifestyle. I
Speaker 1: thought that was what you did. You went and did
Speaker 1: really exotic things, you barely, you got a little wounded,
Speaker 1: but not too bad, and then you came back and
Speaker 1: everyone loved you, and then you just typed it up.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought. But the deeper reason is he's
Speaker 1: a really amazing writer. I think like that that book
Speaker 1: in Our Time is so beautiful, you know. So if
Speaker 1: you happen to be a young person who is inclined
Speaker 1: to adventure and knows how to tell a bad sentence
Speaker 1: from a good one, he's hard to beat, you know.
Speaker 1: And I knew a lot of in grad school, a
Speaker 1: lot of young women who were equally enthralled by the
Speaker 1: prose style. And then the tragedy is I think as
Speaker 1: he got older that I mean, he may have been
Speaker 1: one of the first people whom fame eight. You know.
Speaker 1: In a certain way, what I found myself with my
Speaker 1: students just trying to get them to read that first book,
Speaker 1: because by now he's been so thoroughly debunked, maybe too
Speaker 1: thoroughly debunked. In that book. You know, it's beautiful. I
Speaker 1: think it really, it really holds up and it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: But I have definitely been trying to look at the
Speaker 1: way life actually happens and feels and then hold it
Speaker 1: up against that myth and go, yeah, I know, actually
Speaker 1: you don't have to be that invulnerable. You know, it's
Speaker 1: there's nothing to it. It's there's no value in being
Speaker 1: that tough. You know. I can recall one moment where
Speaker 1: that mythology around being a man and a writer and
Speaker 1: a kind of renegade broke down in real time, and
Speaker 1: I want to go to that. As you mentioned, you've
Speaker 1: been teaching this course on Russian literature at Syracuse for
Speaker 1: twenty years. Before then, you were a student at the
Speaker 1: Syracuse Creative Writing Program. This is where you learn to write,
Speaker 1: But more importantly, I think it's where you fell in
Speaker 1: love with your now wife, Paula. You started dating in
Speaker 1: September of nineteen eighty six. Three weeks later you two
Speaker 1: were engaged. How you two accomplished this expedited engagement, I
Speaker 1: do not know but it is impressive. But with that
Speaker 1: in mind, I want to think about what happens about
Speaker 1: a month or two after your engagement. Your professor and mentor,
Speaker 1: Tobias Wolfe, who have been talking about, invites you and
Speaker 1: the rest of the grad students over to his house
Speaker 1: to watch a Knight of the opera. You instead watch
Speaker 1: how Tobias was with his family, how much he adored
Speaker 1: them and took pleasure in their company. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me that seeing an accomplished writer with his family
Speaker 1: completely shattered these grand mythologies around being a man and
Speaker 1: a writer in single and treating women and family a
Speaker 1: certain way. It sure did, and Toby could have kicked
Speaker 1: Hemingway's ass. Toby was the Special Forces, you know, So
Speaker 1: seeing this person who was certainly not sensitive because not tough,
Speaker 1: he was sensitive because tough. Also was a master craftsman,
Speaker 1: and he just had this easy confidence with his kids,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, of course you love your kids,
Speaker 1: you know, and of course you'd want to be forthcoming
Speaker 1: with your affection. So yeah, I mean, he was such
Speaker 1: a huge role model for so many of us because
Speaker 1: he could combine all the positive aspects of somebody like
Speaker 1: Hemingway you know, the the attention to craft and the courage,
Speaker 1: you know, and at the same time bringing this entirely
Speaker 1: new element of being comfortable with who you are, being
Speaker 1: to admit that sometimes you weren't perfect. Also an incredible
Speaker 1: knowledge of literature that wasn't hemingway, you know, so an
Speaker 1: equal admiration for Flaubert and told Story and Flannery O'Connor
Speaker 1: and whoever you wanted to name. So it was very
Speaker 1: it was very liberating for a young person from a
Speaker 1: fairly limited experience to see him was like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: allowed to do this thing that I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like doing, which is to be a mensch, you know,
Speaker 1: to be a person. How do you think that evening
Speaker 1: impacted how you love people? It just permitted it. I
Speaker 1: already I already loved them, you know, I just didn't
Speaker 1: know what to think of the fact that I love them.
Speaker 1: And so that eat me said, Yeah, that's right, that's
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do, dummy. You know, you've been
Speaker 1: doing it your whole life. So in the sense, what
Speaker 1: you're doing is you're saying, there's all this ambient tenderness
Speaker 1: and all of us really and I think somebody like
Speaker 1: Toby says very gently, of course you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: tender with each other people, and of course you're supposed
Speaker 1: to feel things fully, you know, whereas Hemingway seemed to
Speaker 1: be saying, I don't know what, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but he seemed to be saying that that was a
Speaker 1: form of weakness at certain times later in his life,
Speaker 1: that to lose is a form of weakness, you know,
Speaker 1: to be to make a mistake, to stumble, and so on.
Speaker 1: So I think that that tendency in American literature, that's
Speaker 1: tough guy tendency is in my opinion, what makes a
Speaker 1: lot of inferior to the Russians, because in toll story,
Speaker 1: in Chekhov and Go and all these guys, you absolutely
Speaker 1: understand that losing is part of life, that basically we're
Speaker 1: losing all the time. It's a it's an uphill battle,
Speaker 1: and we're losing. That's given as part of an adult sensibility.
Speaker 1: You know. The Russian writers would never say a man
Speaker 1: is somebody who has no fear. That's ridiculous. You know,
Speaker 1: they all have fear. So I think for me, Toby
Speaker 1: was maybe a permission giver to look beyond that kind
Speaker 1: of macho thing and turns out that leads to all
Speaker 1: of the rest of literature. You know, So that's a
Speaker 1: pretty big gift, that uphill battle you're talking about. It
Speaker 1: seemed like the steepest one came in nineteen ninety when
Speaker 1: you and Paul get married, you have two children, your
Speaker 1: dreams of creative writing are a little deferred, and you
Speaker 1: start working at a company called Radian as a tech
Speaker 1: writer to make ends meet. What didn't that job teach you? Well?
Speaker 1: And the closest thing I found to it, as Terry
Speaker 1: Terry Eagleton said, capitalism destroys the I don't remember the
Speaker 1: quote capitalism do you have it? Capitalism describes the I'm
Speaker 1: honored that at this point you would think I have it,
Speaker 1: and I may have it. You're like the repository. Now,
Speaker 1: it's capitalism degrades the sensuality of the body. That's what
Speaker 1: it is. Capitalism degrades the sensuality of the body. And
Speaker 1: that's what it felt like. You know, I'm a pretty
Speaker 1: young guy with a little family, and I come home
Speaker 1: and I'm just like out of energy. You know, forget
Speaker 1: about writing. I just even to sort of play with
Speaker 1: the kids. Takes an active will, and you know, that's
Speaker 1: such an obvious thing. And I grew up around men
Speaker 1: like that in Chicago, you know, people who were just
Speaker 1: beaten down by their work, you know, honorably trying to
Speaker 1: be both a worker and a father. And I put,
Speaker 1: I've never been on that end of it before. And
Speaker 1: you know, combined with how incredibly dear that little family was,
Speaker 1: which is also a revelation to me, I didn't I
Speaker 1: somehow didn't realize it. It was a real lesson. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a given that your work permits you to
Speaker 1: be your best self something like that, you know, So
Speaker 1: that was a big lesson. And then also when I
Speaker 1: was in the middle of that, to look up and
Speaker 1: think about Hemingway or Caro Whack, you know, who are
Speaker 1: other heroes of mine, and just go, you know, you
Speaker 1: guys aren't relevant to me right now. I don't know
Speaker 1: what you were thinking, but a life of adventure on
Speaker 1: the road is actually child's play compared to this life
Speaker 1: I'm in right now, where I'm riding my bike to
Speaker 1: work and you know, and doing technical reports and whatever
Speaker 1: moral ethical stuff is supposed to get into my stories,
Speaker 1: it clearly comes from this moment right here. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the this is the real archetype
Speaker 1: of American moment. You describe this period as a moment
Speaker 1: where I saw the peculiar way America creeps up on
Speaker 1: you if you don't have anything. It's never rude, it's
Speaker 1: just yes, you do have to work fourteen hours, and
Speaker 1: yes you do have to ride the bus home. You're
Speaker 1: now the father of two, and you will work in
Speaker 1: that cubicle or you will be dishonored. Suddenly the universe
Speaker 1: was laid in with moral import and I could intensely
Speaker 1: feel the limits of my own power. We didn't have
Speaker 1: the money, and I could see that in order for
Speaker 1: me to get this much money, I would have to
Speaker 1: work for this many more years. It was all laid
Speaker 1: out in front of me, and suddenly absurdism wasn't an
Speaker 1: intellectual abstraction, it was actually realism. You could see the
Speaker 1: way that wealth was beginning wealth, wealth was begetting comfort,
Speaker 1: and the cumulative effect of an absence of wealth was
Speaker 1: the erosion of grace. I agree with that guy. Thirty
Speaker 1: years later, how do you see that erosion of grace
Speaker 1: in the absence of wealth? Do you think it's grown
Speaker 1: more profound in this country. Yes, it's much worse. It's
Speaker 1: much worse on people of color, and it's much worse
Speaker 1: on the young. There's an incredible unfairness operative it started
Speaker 1: back It had started back then already, because for all
Speaker 1: of the difficulties that life, you know, I was a
Speaker 1: white guy of moderate intelligence with a degree, and I
Speaker 1: walked into a pretty easy job. Not totally easy, but
Speaker 1: you know, it was a job and I had insurance,
Speaker 1: and I could raise a little family in a little
Speaker 1: house that we soon owned, you know, So that was
Speaker 1: sort of a that's the American dream, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's happening as easily anymore. So that, to me
Speaker 1: is actually at the heart of the problem we're having
Speaker 1: right now, is that the income disparity. It takes all
Speaker 1: the oxygen out of the room. And what should be
Speaker 1: a life that confers dignity on a working person is
Speaker 1: not doing that. It's just taking everything they have and
Speaker 1: then mocking them in a certain way. And that pisses
Speaker 1: people off of every you know, every political persuasion. And
Speaker 1: so I got you know, I got a baby dosa
Speaker 1: that back then, really, you know, and that's maybe what
Speaker 1: a writer does, is it takes a baby dolsa of
Speaker 1: something and then extrapolates it to you know, the bigger world.
Speaker 1: How did you keep going in that moment? Well, it
Speaker 1: was beautiful, you know, it's so much fun. I mean
Speaker 1: that the kids. I would come home on the bus
Speaker 1: and the kids were so cute and they were so
Speaker 1: happy to see me, and Paula was beautiful. So in
Speaker 1: other words, it wasn't a life at all without joy
Speaker 1: in it. It was a lot more than it ever
Speaker 1: felt before. You know, before that I was I didn't
Speaker 1: really have anything to work for, you know, it just
Speaker 1: was me. It was just me and my little writer
Speaker 1: the dream, which is kind of pathetic. And then suddenly,
Speaker 1: like really quickly, paul and I were, um, you know,
Speaker 1: we were we were kind of like given these treasures,
Speaker 1: which are those kids, and the world said, okay, here
Speaker 1: you go, rise to the occasion. And you know, actually
Speaker 1: rising into the occasion is a beautiful vocation, you know,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. I didn't really find it a terrible experience.
Speaker 1: I found it actually, you know, to be honest, looking back,
Speaker 1: those were the richest years of my life because I
Speaker 1: was needed and all of the hardships could be contextualized
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm being a good person. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, like Cherry on the on the ice cream,
Speaker 1: I got to write every now and then, and I
Speaker 1: had that little sliver of a dream that if I
Speaker 1: did it right, I could get out of that hardest
Speaker 1: slug of a working life. As you were finding your
Speaker 1: voice in the late nineties, I know you'd have these
Speaker 1: conversations in New York with writers like David Foster Wallace
Speaker 1: and Jonathan Franzen. What did those dialogues do for you
Speaker 1: as a young writer. Well, they were always quick, you know,
Speaker 1: in passing at a party, or sometimes I went to
Speaker 1: do readings and you'll meet somebody. But the gist of it,
Speaker 1: at least from my point of view and my memory,
Speaker 1: was fiction seemed from me again to be a little
Speaker 1: bit trapped by its own insistence on edginess and cynicism,
Speaker 1: which are intelligent responses to the kind of capitalist trap
Speaker 1: that we talked about earlier. But because of the beauty
Speaker 1: that I was feeling within that trap, I felt like
Speaker 1: it wasn't sufficient. Somehow it didn't. It didn't really In
Speaker 1: my own work, I was I could pretty easily disparage
Speaker 1: capitalism and moan and make it funny, But then what
Speaker 1: was missing from that mosaic were the moments of real
Speaker 1: happiness that I had with our family, for example. So
Speaker 1: I just thought, well, that's a technical deficiency. If I
Speaker 1: can't get the possibility of winning into a story, then
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with my approach. And even in these Russians,
Speaker 1: you see that there's substantial joy in the stories, and
Speaker 1: certainly there's joy in the telling. So that's what I was.
Speaker 1: I was kind of picking the brains of these writers
Speaker 1: who were more successful than I to try to say, well,
Speaker 1: am I right about this? You know, am am I
Speaker 1: incorrect that part of the job of literature is to
Speaker 1: be joyful as well, to have that valance. And basically
Speaker 1: I remember it each one of those writers in some way,
Speaker 1: I know, to say, yeah, I know, I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. I'm struggling with that too. So it
Speaker 1: felt to me, from my limited advantage point, like kind
Speaker 1: of a generational desire to make a literature with a
Speaker 1: bigger doorway. You know that wasn't just kept shrinking the
Speaker 1: doorway and making us more and more of a cult.
Speaker 1: You know that actually somebody's aunt and uncle who hadn't
Speaker 1: been to grad school could read a novel and find sustenance,
Speaker 1: you know something. That's my interpretation anyway, You're right, what
Speaker 1: a reasonable person reading line for get a little jolt
Speaker 1: and go on to read line five. But this whole
Speaker 1: impulse is based on you kind of existing in this
Speaker 1: long tradition of entertainers like George Carlin or Richard Pryor
Speaker 1: trying to keep the audience engaged, very perceptive. You know,
Speaker 1: you can also often trace an artist's arc back to
Speaker 1: the first time they were stunned, you know, by somebody
Speaker 1: or something. And for me it was a music of course,
Speaker 1: but also watching Monty Python was my dad was a
Speaker 1: huge thing because he you know, he's a kind of
Speaker 1: a tough guy, a great sense of humor, but they
Speaker 1: those shows would reduce him to tears. He'd be falling
Speaker 1: off the couch. They were so funny. And you know,
Speaker 1: as a kid, you notice that your father giving it
Speaker 1: up for Monty Python. When I first started writing, I
Speaker 1: didn't really imagine that the writer had to entertain. He
Speaker 1: just had to edify, you know. He had to be
Speaker 1: the smartest guy in the room who traveled to the
Speaker 1: most places. And then there was kind of a breakthrough
Speaker 1: when I thought, oh, yeah, I know all of this
Speaker 1: admiration I had for Steve Martin and Richard Pryor and
Speaker 1: George Carlin and the movie Jaws and Monty Python, that
Speaker 1: that stuff is one hundred percent the same energy. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the same core energy of what you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: which is reach across the miles and engage the person
Speaker 1: on the other end. And the same thing with that
Speaker 1: reading with Toby of Chekhov that I felt one hundred
Speaker 1: percent that was that was an entertaining thing. So once
Speaker 1: I said that, it just became easier because I know,
Speaker 1: I kind of know how to do that. I grew
Speaker 1: up in a house that we were always you know,
Speaker 1: doing some form of improv. So then it became all right, now,
Speaker 1: so I have to entertain you let's think about the
Speaker 1: broadest definition possible of entertainment, and then you sort of see,
Speaker 1: like to entertain and edify can be one thing. There
Speaker 1: really isn't a difference when you're when you're in the
Speaker 1: realm of great art. I mean, you read war and Peace,
Speaker 1: you really want to know what happens, and also you're
Speaker 1: getting this incredible, you know, vista of the world from
Speaker 1: the point of view of Tolstoy. But inherent in that
Speaker 1: approach of entertaining is a desire to be liked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are you ever exhausted by that desire? Not so far?
Speaker 1: You know, no, I mean yes, yes, Actually the truth
Speaker 1: is yes. You know. There's so many things in this
Speaker 1: writing life you learn to, as we used to say
Speaker 1: in school, titraite, you know. So there are times when
Speaker 1: you're promoting a book where your desire to be liked
Speaker 1: is working so hard that you feel enervated by it.
Speaker 1: It's not healthy, you know. So one of the blessings
Speaker 1: of that life is you can then do an experiment.
Speaker 1: You can say, what if I turned that now a
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, Or what if instead of trying
Speaker 1: to be liked, I try to be intelligent, you know,
Speaker 1: Or instead of like, if you're in front of an audience,
Speaker 1: instead of trying to make them like you, you just
Speaker 1: adjust the goal a little bit and try to be
Speaker 1: in connection with them, you know. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: a channel of strong water you can redirect a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know, I did those two big tours for the
Speaker 1: last four or five years, and it gets really costly
Speaker 1: if that water is headed in the wrong direction. If
Speaker 1: you're trying too hard to make everybody like you, you
Speaker 1: won't have anything left. Do you think this desire to
Speaker 1: be entertaining and to be liked makes you a better writer?
Speaker 1: Not necessarily. Know, sometimes it's made me a worse writer,
Speaker 1: you know. If Sometimes there are some things, some humor
Speaker 1: pieces I've written that were just two They were trying
Speaker 1: too hard, you know, there were too shallow and chatty.
Speaker 1: You know. So what I see in my students too,
Speaker 1: is that if you have some tendency, like a desire
Speaker 1: to be liked or whatever, you're sort of primary artistic
Speaker 1: motivator is You're not going to be able to do
Speaker 1: much about that, but you can choose how to use it.
Speaker 1: Here's a real practical example. I know that I like
Speaker 1: a scall it attention from the world. I kind of
Speaker 1: like that. I always have since I was a little kid.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, I could get that by tweeting fifty
Speaker 1: times a day, you know. Also I could get it
Speaker 1: by writing a bunch of sort of occasional pieces of
Speaker 1: humor pieces and stuff. But I found is if I
Speaker 1: just don't do that, like I just shut that door,
Speaker 1: then that desire wells up and becomes something better, which
Speaker 1: is I want to get the world's attention for writing
Speaker 1: one beautiful story in six months. I think it just
Speaker 1: depends on the person you know it also, I guess,
Speaker 1: depends on how you understand the need to be liked.
Speaker 1: For me, I understand it is at its highest level.
Speaker 1: I want you and I to be in genuine connection
Speaker 1: where I'm really seeing you and really hearing you, and
Speaker 1: then rising to that occasion. If I do that, I
Speaker 1: think you'll like me. But that's almost incidental, that feeling
Speaker 1: of genuine connection. I mean, that's the power of your work,
Speaker 1: and it's definitely on display in your new book, A
Speaker 1: Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In the prologue
Speaker 1: of this book, you present these big Russian questions like
Speaker 1: how are we supposed to be living down here? What
Speaker 1: were we put here to accomplish? What should we value?
Speaker 1: And these philosophical questions remind me of this philosophy of yours,
Speaker 1: which you shared six years ago in the back of
Speaker 1: a bookstore in New York, sitting with my friend Max
Speaker 1: Lynsky on the Long Form podcast, And if it's all
Speaker 1: right with you, I'd like to play a clip from it.
Speaker 1: I remember it. I think I said, Max, give me
Speaker 1: my wallet back. You have no right to that. I
Speaker 1: think was that what? Yeah, yes, that's actually not what
Speaker 1: I have. Incidentally, but that was a close second. Why
Speaker 1: don't we take a listen. You know, when you're saying
Speaker 1: good by to somebody at the airport that you love,
Speaker 1: and you get all soft, You're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I didn't even hardly I hardly knew you, you know
Speaker 1: that kind of feeling. What if that's the truth, that
Speaker 1: that mode is the mode that times ten, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe is the mode that we should exist in all
Speaker 1: the time. Then they then another day you're just yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a big gap between those two people.
Speaker 1: So my regret would be how much time did I
Speaker 1: spend in that regular, old, stupid habitual mindset of taking
Speaker 1: everything for granted as opposed to this exalted state of
Speaker 1: being super tenderized to the people you care about? And
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that you know, if there's a heaven, it's
Speaker 1: that at the airport times ten or twenty a thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, So I think the regret would be that you,
Speaker 1: like a lunkhead, you spent so much time in that
Speaker 1: normal state. Well, I wonder what I'm gonna do today.
Speaker 1: Oh my book is selling, you know, how do I look? Oh?
Speaker 1: I'm going bold? But instead of that mode is habitual.
Speaker 1: But we know from the occasional four into it that
Speaker 1: the other mode is possible. So then the speech basically says,
Speaker 1: hurry up, take my advice, hurry up. Try to get
Speaker 1: into the higher state while you can. How do you
Speaker 1: do it? I don't know. I'm stupid. I'm like a latecomer.
Speaker 1: But there see thousands of years of spiritual traditions. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't be a bad place to start. That guy talks fast.
Speaker 1: I got the slowed down version, the thirty three rpm version.
Speaker 1: What does that make you think about? I agree with that,
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, it's kind of after some years
Speaker 1: of living, we can all look back at our lives
Speaker 1: and realize that we have been different people at different moments.
Speaker 1: You know, the moment after somebody or something you love
Speaker 1: has died. There you are and the world seems a
Speaker 1: certain way. A moment six months later, when that's faded
Speaker 1: and you're deeply involved in your business concerns, the mind
Speaker 1: is working differently. It's literally a different lens through which
Speaker 1: you're seeing the world. Okay, so that's great, And then
Speaker 1: I guess what I was trying to say there was
Speaker 1: that I would actually I think, I think I would
Speaker 1: prefer to be in the first state all the time.
Speaker 1: And if you could be in the first state all
Speaker 1: the time, that the state you're in after somebody died,
Speaker 1: for example, I think you're seeing the world more accurately.
Speaker 1: Why because the scene we call the self has actually
Speaker 1: dropped away, and the self, the way I understand it,
Speaker 1: is the thing that you make with your thoughts, your
Speaker 1: your conceptual planning, locating mind is working to make you
Speaker 1: central to the narrative. And although that's intelligent in at
Speaker 1: Darwinian sense, it actually isn't intelligent in an ultimate sense.
Speaker 1: So when that mind is working, you're actually kind of
Speaker 1: full of shit. You know, you're you're you're wrong about
Speaker 1: about the truth of things. When that mind recedes, which
Speaker 1: it does in a time of loss or say, or
Speaker 1: if you're a good meditator, it recedes, then I think
Speaker 1: I just prefer that state, that that state is closer
Speaker 1: to truth. I think, you know, but the ego and
Speaker 1: the conceptual mind is so incredibly strong that it's only
Speaker 1: rarely that we get into that state, and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: art is one of the ways that we simulate or
Speaker 1: stimulate ourselves into that state briefly, and the value of
Speaker 1: it then would just be, you know, it's reminding us
Speaker 1: as such a transformation as possible. Just every couple of
Speaker 1: days you listen to a piece of music, you get
Speaker 1: a little tiny glimpse of that better self. It's just
Speaker 1: like a little post it note on your soul. You
Speaker 1: know that you could be this. There's a real sense
Speaker 1: of urgency in your worldview that I think comes across
Speaker 1: on the page, and it is in part why I
Speaker 1: wanted to have you on as we started this year,
Speaker 1: because you know, if three hundred and fifty thousand people
Speaker 1: and counting in this country, and for every horrible thing
Speaker 1: that has happened in the past year, it is some
Speaker 1: hope that I have, and I think we share this
Speaker 1: hope that it has woken people up to this sense
Speaker 1: of urgency and something you do not know, but people
Speaker 1: listening may know, which is that I have been quoting
Speaker 1: a passage from Love Letter all throughout twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: if you wouldn't mind, I would love for you to
Speaker 1: read a part of it. You have a beautiful soul. Sam.
Speaker 1: By the way, in case you didn't know that, I
Speaker 1: love talking to you. You're incredible. I should have said,
Speaker 1: you can also respond to I realize I'm talking too much,
Speaker 1: so oh no, not at all, not at all. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the best I can do is
Speaker 1: we have to conclude that we're getting an extra dose
Speaker 1: of what's true all the time. We're getting all these
Speaker 1: reminders of stuff that's always been true. And you know,
Speaker 1: for example, when someone you love passes away, you get
Speaker 1: that dose of what's you know, this is it? There's
Speaker 1: no the universe actually doesn't care how you feel. The
Speaker 1: universe actually isn't designed to protect you at all. It
Speaker 1: really isn't. And we're just we're getting a you know,
Speaker 1: an international reminder of that in spades. I guess my
Speaker 1: kind of working class impulse is to go, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to accept it as fast as
Speaker 1: I can so I don't end up paralyzed by it.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to try to dedicate all this incoming
Speaker 1: sorrow to truth, you know, and I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to let it come in and take the lesson. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like Scrooge, you know, he's praised. Let's this
Speaker 1: lesson not be lost on me, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think that's about as far as I can go with it.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, we're just getting a sped up
Speaker 1: version of the normal trajectory of disaster. You know, here's
Speaker 1: something I'm I'm working on myself. Okay. I learned this
Speaker 1: through meditation, that my mind has a natural negative bent
Speaker 1: to it. Like if I go to a party, I
Speaker 1: always can figure out ways to kind of gently make
Speaker 1: fun of it, even if it's a beautiful party. I
Speaker 1: can my mind just inclined in that way. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a kind of a yucky tendency that I associate
Speaker 1: with growing up in the seventies in Chicago. But but
Speaker 1: but I notice it. I'm trying to work against that
Speaker 1: a little and say, wait a minute, that's that's just
Speaker 1: a preset. It's just a weird preset of your mind.
Speaker 1: It's not true. You know, you could actually reset your
Speaker 1: mind to be more recepted to positive phenomenon. So that's
Speaker 1: in the middle of this pandemic, I'm trying to say, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, now, let's don't forget to notice the heroism.
Speaker 1: You know, let's not notice the small acts of decency.
Speaker 1: Let's maybe also notice our fast old desire to make
Speaker 1: a big pronouncement about it. You know, people are good,
Speaker 1: people are bad. The universe is shitty, the universe is wonderful. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's sort of all those things at once, you know,
Speaker 1: which is hard for us to deal with. But so,
Speaker 1: in other words, I have no idea, which I think
Speaker 1: is a healthy thing to admit. I also have no
Speaker 1: fucking idea. But we do have this piece of writing
Speaker 1: of yours. Oh yeah, okay, oh yeah, these are words
Speaker 1: that you in fact wrote. Okay, we'll read them when yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is yeah, okay. When you reach a certain age,
Speaker 1: you see that time is all we have, by which
Speaker 1: I mean moments like those overhead geese this morning, and
Speaker 1: watching your mother be born, and sitting at the dining
Speaker 1: room table here waiting for the phone to ring and
Speaker 1: announce that a certain baby you had been born, Or
Speaker 1: that day when all of us hyped out at Point Lobos,
Speaker 1: those baby deer, the extremely loud seal, your sister's scarf
Speaker 1: drifting down down to that black, briny boulder, the replacement
Speaker 1: you so generously bought her in Monterey. How pleased you
Speaker 1: made her with your kindness. Those things were real. That
Speaker 1: is what that is all one gets. This other stuff
Speaker 1: is real only to the extent that it interferes with
Speaker 1: those moments, these small moments, and I say small only
Speaker 1: in that reregister them as small. That is all we have.
Speaker 1: And as we leave this, I feel we would be
Speaker 1: doing a disservice to the conversation if we did not
Speaker 1: end on a small moment in your life. For the
Speaker 1: phone rang In fact, February of nineteen eighty six, Tobias
Speaker 1: Wolf calls your parents' house in Amarillo, Texas. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you were in the house or in the RV.
Speaker 1: That doesn't matter. He leaves a message You've been admitted
Speaker 1: to the Syracuse Creative Writing Program. You call him back,
Speaker 1: holding his book back in the world in your hands,
Speaker 1: for what seems, as you write, in chagrin memory like
Speaker 1: eighteen hours. I tell him all of my ideas about
Speaker 1: art and list all the things that have been holding
Speaker 1: me back artistic, development wise, and possibly God yikes. Ask
Speaker 1: if he ever listens to music while he writes. He's
Speaker 1: kind and patient and doesn't make me feel like an idiot.
Speaker 1: I do that myself. Once I hang up. Can I
Speaker 1: ask you at sixty two, when you're looking back at
Speaker 1: that idiot, what do you think? Oh? I think he
Speaker 1: was kind of sweet, you know. I mean there was
Speaker 1: a time maybe not too long ago, when you know,
Speaker 1: remembering something like that or looking at old pictures you
Speaker 1: kind of cringe, like, Wow, why couldn't I have been cooler?
Speaker 1: You know. But then at this stage of if you
Speaker 1: kind of I think it's part of that process we
Speaker 1: talked about of trying to kind of disassociate from yourself
Speaker 1: a little bit. You just see your life as an occurrence.
Speaker 1: You know, there was this thing that came into being,
Speaker 1: and if you step out of it just a little bit,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. You know, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: It has tendencies, and it has habits, and it has desires,
Speaker 1: and then it goes through all these things and it
Speaker 1: has a mullet and it has a camaro, and you know,
Speaker 1: somehow there's a little bit of very sweet distance there
Speaker 1: where you say, well, of course he was an idiot
Speaker 1: that day, because everything before that had prepared him for
Speaker 1: that moment of idiocy. But he rebounded, you know, But
Speaker 1: it is amazing to look back at your life and
Speaker 1: see that there were critical inflection points where somebody cared
Speaker 1: enough to inflect you positively, and Toby did that, and
Speaker 1: the Limbles we mentioned earlier did that. And I guess
Speaker 1: from this end of the table, you know, you see
Speaker 1: that it could have been otherwise. A slightly less energetic
Speaker 1: Tobias Wolf might not have called me, you know, and
Speaker 1: I might have gone elsewhere, or a slightly less energetic
Speaker 1: Limblems might have said, yeah, there's something to that kid,
Speaker 1: but forget it. You know. So then that kind of
Speaker 1: charges each moment with a lot of meaning, because you know,
Speaker 1: it's possible that today you could have four such moments
Speaker 1: with somebody and where you could inflect them positively or
Speaker 1: not inflect them at all, or inflect them negatively, And
Speaker 1: even if you never know the outcome, that that's those
Speaker 1: small moments we're talking about, you know. So it's a
Speaker 1: kind of an act of faith to say, I hope
Speaker 1: I can get through this day in a state of
Speaker 1: mind that allows me, when possible, to make positive inflections.
Speaker 1: You know that that may be the biggest prayer I have.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I think you've made them during this conversation,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you for having with me. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you too, Sam. I look forward to to buying
Speaker 1: you a drink some time, or a meal or an
Speaker 1: RV if that's what it takes. Whatever, I just let
Speaker 1: you know I'm grateful for you in this world. I'll
Speaker 1: take the drink in the meal. George Saunders, thank you
Speaker 1: very much, really, thank you so much. And that's our
Speaker 1: show special thanks to the team at Random House and
Speaker 1: of course George Saunders. His latest book, A Swim in
Speaker 1: the Pond in the Rain, is available wherever you get
Speaker 1: your books. If you want to read more from George.
Speaker 1: He launched that new sub stack news letter I mentioned.
Speaker 1: It's called story Club. You can find more info about
Speaker 1: it in our show notes at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: There you can also find other conversations that I've had
Speaker 1: with fellow writers, including Elizabeth Gilbert, Michael Lewis, Claudia Rankin mcafferman,
Speaker 1: Richard Powers, Roxanne Gay, Malcolm Gladwell, fran Lebowitz, Jelani Cobb,
Speaker 1: and Jubbulah Hie. To find more Pushkin podcast listen on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Instagram at talk Easypod. If you want to purchase one
Speaker 1: of our mugs in cream or Navy, or our record
Speaker 1: with fran Lebowitz, you can do so at talk easypod
Speaker 1: dot com slash shop. Of course, the show would not
Speaker 1: be possible without our incredible team. Talk Easy is produced
Speaker 1: by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Jannick Sobravo. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by
Speaker 1: Joshua Siegel and mixed by Andre Lynn. Illustrations by Christian Chanoy,
Speaker 1: Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzak, Ian Jones
Speaker 1: and Ethan Seneca. Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Kaylin Ung,
Speaker 1: Shiloh Fagan, Nikki Spina, and Callie Syringis. I'd also like
Speaker 1: to thank the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: Mea LaBelle, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Maya Kanig, Carly Migliori,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. I'm San Fragoso.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I
Speaker 1: wish you and yours a safe and healthy start to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. I'll see you back here next week.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay safe and solo.