This Is America with George Saunders

George Saunders has long been hailed as one of the great short story writers of our time. Of his 1996 debut CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Zadie Smith called Saunders “a prophecy and the voice of the American berserk.” Thirty years later, Saunders is still turning to the page in search of answers. Watch this conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcpUVBt3aEc on YouTube. We sit today to discuss his latest novel, Vigil (6:25), why he felt drawn to this story circling the afterlife (9:55), and his own brush with death in the early 2000s (12:40). Then, Saunders reflects on a life-changing moment in Singapore (20:45), his instinct toward peacemaking (25:00), and what he makes of this fraught moment in America (27:00). On the back-half, we talk about his 2016 reporting for The New Yorker (40:00), the formation of Saunders’ signature literary style (43:00), and the idea of inevitable occurrences (52:00). To close, Saunders revisits his 2020 short story “Love Letter” (1:11:00), looks toward the future (1:15:00), and shares a tribute to his wife, Paula (1:17:00). Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:32Sam Fragoso?

  Today, George Saunders. Time Magazine has called him the best short story writer in the English language. He's also the author of the Booker Prize winning novel Lincoln and the Bardot, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, and a tenured professor at Syracuse, whose lessons in creative writing have been collected in books like A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and his excellent Substack Story Club with George Saunders. He's also been a guest on this program twice before. His latest book, Vigil, takes place at the bedside of KJ Boone, an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life, where he's visited by a cast of characters, real and imagined, including, most notably, Jill

• 1:15Sam Fragoso?

  Doll Blaine, who's been sent to usher the oil baron into the afterlife, as she has for many others. The book's clever construction, essentially a Christmas carol for the climate age, affords Saunders the room to examine the issues of the day: the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress, you know, all the hits. When Saunders was recently awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, he was introduced in part as, quote, "the ultimate teacher of kindness and of craft." This has something to do, I suspect, with the viral convocation speech he gave in 2013 at Syracuse, where he spoke beautifully about erring in the

• 1:57Sam Fragoso?

  direction of kindness. Quote, "Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place," he said. "Believe it exists. Come to know it better. Nurture it. Share its fruits." Tirelessly. I remember watching that speech as a senior in high school because of course, that's how I spent my senior year in high school. I probably bought a copy of 10th December shortly thereafter, proceeded to go to college, where I'm sure I pretended to have read it. But when I revisited the speech this past week, there was a line in it that I hadn't noticed before and felt newly relevant. Quote, "Do those things that incline you toward the big questions and avoid the things that would reduce you and

• 2:39Sam Fragoso?

  make you trivial." And that that last part, "Avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial," which in my view is precisely what various publications and podcasts have attempted to do to Saunders and his work. And it's exactly why I wanted to sit with George for a third time on this show, to hold and consider the work itself and to ask and try to answer the big questions that I haven't been able to shake this year. I also wanted to discuss the 30th anniversary of his debut short story collection, Civil War Land and Bad Decline, which Zadie Smith has called "A Prophecy and the Voice of the

• 3:20Sam Fragoso?

  American Berserk." So with that, here is George Saunders in 2026.

• 3:40Sam Fragoso?

  George Saunders, welcome back to the show.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  It's always great to be here. It's the only reason I write books anymore, so I can come visit you.

• 3:46Sam Fragoso?

  Is that true?

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of. Kind of. When I'm writing, I always, no, I just like the finish line. Like, I get to go to Sam. Truly.

• 3:52Sam Fragoso?

  That's the kindest thing you could say.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  No, because you have a way of, no, not no pressure, but you have a way of, you know, we do this right after I've just finished a book and it's out and you have a way of making me kind of see it fresh. So that's really a blessing.

• 4:04Sam Fragoso?

  Did you say no pressure?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  No pressure.

• 4:06Sam Fragoso?

  Feels like a tremendous amount of pressure. You said recently in the New York Times, "I've slacked off in the last two or three years. And it's been interesting to see the old neuroses come back, feelings and thought patterns from adolescent, like the forest encroaching." So tell me what's been going on the last couple of years.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think that was in reference to like an intense meditation practice,

• 4:28Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  which I haven't been doing. And that's been kind of maybe since I saw you last, you know, every two or three days I'll do something. But it used to be much more rigorous.

• 4:37Sam Fragoso?

  And are you blaming me for this?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, it was just, after I was with you, I felt I didn't need it anymore. No, no, no, so I, it's just been a sort of an unconscious, just, I was never a terrific practitioner, but trying to make it meditative practice to notice what happens to my mind when I've stopped. And it is literally like a forest encroaching of.

• 4:56Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me about that.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I'm, obviously I've got a monkey mind like crazy that shows up in my work. And I have also, I'm finding out, which I kind of had forgotten about, a sort of a self blaming mind. It's like always finding fault with what I've just said or done or something. And that, that's definitely come back. But I think it's just that, that quality of having a lot of internal monologue. And when I was meditating more, that got real quiet, as you know, and it was interesting just to say, oh, that's not me. That's just a feature of this particular brain I've been blessed cursed with. So that was kind of cool, you know, to say, well, that nonstop sort of discussion in my head isn't anything really. It's just a soundtrack that somebody assigned to me back there in heaven.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Again, this is also, I mean, it's not like a two pronounced, but when that monkey mind soundtrack gets quieter, I find that there's something else under there that's a little more buoyant and positive than my kind of normal stance towards life. So when I was writing Lincoln and the Bartle, that was a high meditation time. And I would find that at a certain point in writing, the reflex was to do this thing that might be a little, you know, kind of hipster, defensive, snarky, like, you know, protective. But with the meditation, I just went, oh yeah, I just got pulled in that direction a bit. I don't have to do that though. And wait a second, and you might find another path that's a little more interesting. And you, I can actually write from either position.

• 6:18Sam Fragoso?

  Amidagras.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Well, you can, because whatever is, whatever is, you know, manifesting, you can perfect it in prose and that becomes a position.

• 6:25Sam Fragoso?

  So where does this new book spring from? What side of the equation?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so for example, there are parts where I'm manifesting this main character. He's not the greatest guy in the world. Then I could sort of, you sort of send a dog that is a mind hunting in that field of somebody who's a little defensive and pissed off and cranky and manly, you know, and I go, okay. And then that voice filters in, I put it down and use it. Other times, when I was trying to do the character named Jill, who's kind of an ultra sweetheart, I would just kind of look around for that part. Like, okay, where's the part of me that isn't quite so, it's sweet, you know, so the part of me that is nostalgic and content and so on. So that's the fun of having a monkey mind is you have some choices.

• 7:06Sam Fragoso?

  So for those who haven't read the book, how would you explain the basic premise?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  That's the hardest part.

• 7:12Sam Fragoso?

  I'll help you out as you go along.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  I mean, basically, it's kind of like, there's a, there's a really questionable guy who's done a lot of bad things in his life, and now he's old, in his eighties, and he's dying. It's the last, maybe, three or four hours of his life. And he's visited by this woman who died in 1976. And she's decided that her role in an afterlife is to go around to people who are dying, and as she puts it, comfort them. So she sets to work on this guy, and weirdness results.

• 7:37Sam Fragoso?

  So this guy is named KJ Boone. He's an oil tycoon who basically spent a lifetime covering up scientific evidence for climate change, has made a fortune by doing it. He's then on the deathbed in his 11th hour. Who is he visited by?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Well, her name is Jill, and Doll is her nickname, Blaine. And she just died at 22 in 1976, just married, pretty happily married. I kind of felt her as coming from my childhood in Chicago.

• 8:05Sam Fragoso?

  South Side?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, South Side, although she's from Indiana, but, you know. And I felt her as being pretty much imprinted by the patriarchy of that time, but cheerfully so, like, okay, you know.

• 8:16Sam Fragoso?

  Even her death, she blows up in a car bombing that wasn't intended for her. And she goes, oh, you know.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:22Sam Fragoso?

  These things happen.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Again, you know, you write a book, and then you reread it, and you go, oh, that's interesting. One of the things is that she, at the moment of her death, she goes shooting out of her body, and for reasons that aren't stated in the book, she goes right towards the guy who did it. That was the one place where she kind of came out of passivity, and I don't think she even decided to do that, but something in that traumatic nature of that and the unacceptable nature of her death made her go towards the person that did it.

• 8:47Sam Fragoso?

  So some of the other characters that come visit KJ Boone, without spoiling too much, are colleagues of his from the oil company that have all amassed a fortune because of their collective work. Tell me about this Frenchman who comes in and for people who haven't read the book, the kind of B side of that character.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Right, right. So Jill, the main character, her thing is, whatever you did, it's understandable. You couldn't have been anybody other than who you are. All is forgiven. Go on to bliss.

• 9:15Sam Fragoso?

  You call it in the book, an inevitable occurrence.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Right, right. Whoever you are, that's an inevitable occurrence.

• 9:20Sam Fragoso?

  It reads like a mantra.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so the Frenchman is kind of like her nemesis. Like, wait a minute. No, no, no. That's not the way it works. If you, you know, our actions matter down here. So he was basically the ghost of a guy who invented the internal combustion engine, of course. So, so he's a Frenchman and he, at the moment of his death, he kind of had this, might say, a moment of like projective omniscience where it's like, oh shit, I invented the car, you know?

• 9:44Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  And this is going to be a problem.

• 9:45Sam Fragoso?

  And from the car destruction.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Right. So his whole role in life, or in death, rather, is to go around and try to convert people like this guy on his deathbed. It all sounds so complicated.

• 9:55Sam Fragoso?

  The logline of the book, of all the books you have written, I think is the easiest to explain.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:00Sam Fragoso?

  Man who's made tons of money doing things that you would hope he'd feel a little bit guilty about, having ruined the planet with oil, is on the deathbed, almost like that scene from Magnolia, and is now being faced with the ghosts of his entire past.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very, it's got a Scrooge vibe. And also, there's two stories from Tolstoy that I had in mind, which is, I always have them in mind, Death of Ivan Elitch and Master and Man. And both of those are similar. It's a guy who's not lived the right way. And towards the end of his life, he gets a moment, maybe, to sort of, I always think of it as coming out of denial. Like, most of us are probably in some level of denial. And these guys are in super denial, which makes them aggressive and violent. So, yeah, it's kind of in that tradition.

• 10:44Sam Fragoso?

  You know, there was a book that came out a few years back called Opening Heaven's Door by the journalist Patricia Pearson.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I love that book.

• 10:50Sam Fragoso?

  And I wondered if some of that book and what she found and discovered after she experienced loss, informed bits and pieces of vigil.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  For sure. Because one of the things that she talks about in that book is this phenomenon in which dying people, suddenly their perception goes open and they are seeing people that we wouldn't see.

• 11:10Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me about that.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what happened was her, um, Patricia Pearson's sister had cancer and was very worried about it. And she had this beautiful dream in which her father, who was very healthy at the time, came and reassured her that everything would be fine with her kids and everything. And she woke up kind of overjoyed. Well, then she found out that that night, her perfectly healthy father had passed away unexpectedly. So she understood that it was just weird, you know, that for this to happen and him to come to her in a vivid dream. So Pearson decided to use her skills as a journalist to investigate all these different near death or after death experiences. It's a really wonderful book because it's very cold. It's not, she's not being, you know, at all.

• 11:47Sam Fragoso?

  Woo woo.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  No, woo woo, right.

• 11:48Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, no, no, no. She takes a journalistic approach and she found study after study that said 50% of the bereaved, quote, sense the presence of lost loved ones either in the moment of death or sometimes later. Some psychiatrists call these grief hallucinations.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  I've heard this story one time about a guy who was a football coach his whole life. And when he got to the end, he was understanding everything as prep for a big game. I'm sure that was in my mind writing the book. The idea that the border gets a little permeable at the end, you know? And I don't think, I mean, hallucination is correct, except in the case from Pearson's book, the hallucination wasn't pure mental phenomenon. It was also a communication of a verifiable fact, which is really weird.

• 12:28Sam Fragoso?

  Have you dealt with any of that in folks in your life?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  I was there when my father in law passed away and that was quite intense. And then I also had this, I know we've talked about this, but I was in a plane that had some issues and that was sort of seeing it from the other end.

• 12:41Sam Fragoso?

  So that you were on a flight from Chicago going to where?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  I think I was going back to Syracuse.

• 12:46Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:47Sam Fragoso?

  So what happened on the flight again?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so I was sitting there, I just finished an event, very relieved heading home and I had a, I think a Vanity Fair that I was reading and, you know.

• 12:56Sam Fragoso?

  Were you in it?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. Suddenly there was a, it felt like a minivan had hit the side of the plane. It lurched and it was loud, really loud. And the plane immediately dropped, people started screaming and no one was saying, there were no flight attendants and no one was saying, and it was just, and I know Chicago and we were going down quickly, not near O'Hare.

• 13:17Sam Fragoso?

  At the time, were you a spiritual person?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yes, I was meditating my ass off, you know, but apparently not too good.

• 13:24Sam Fragoso?

  What does that look like?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  At that time, I think a couple of hours a day or at least an hour at that point. But there was a feeling of, okay, wait a minute. Oh God, of course, this is how it feels when it happens. So I'm thinking, I gotta get out of this body and that seat back right there is what's gonna do it to me. And I think I always had the fantasy that at such a moment, I'd be sort of like, well, it's been a good run. Bless you all. But I just, I literally couldn't remember my name. It was just like, no, no, no, no, not yet, not yet. And that thing you do where you think, oh, please let time go backwards, you know, and it wasn't. Yeah. And it was no thought about anything, not, not, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say, not my family, certainly not my books. It was just an animal with his foot in a trap, you know, like that kind of feeling.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  And then at the height of this, there's a little 14 year old boy sitting next to me. And all of a sudden, he goes, sir, is this supposed to be happening? And I'm like, yes, yes. All those, you know, like the father came out at me.

• 14:19Sam Fragoso?

  Father Saunders.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or maybe the teacher a little bit, you know, like the

• 14:22Sam Fragoso?

  Professorial Saunders.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or just, you know, I knew how, I knew what I should say to calm him down.

• 14:26Sam Fragoso?

  The better version of Saunders.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Well, truly, that was, that was it. It was interesting because doing that brought me back to myself a little bit, calming down. And then, like I said, it turned out that was a, the engine had literally gone out. So the guy landed with one engine. And then, of course, you have an incredible three or four days after that. I'm alive. A stapler. Jesus, you know. So that was, that was good. But the interesting thing is with, of course, then that wears off. And, and by day six, you're like, ah, got some, got some work to do.

• 14:52Sam Fragoso?

  Was day six when you returned to normal schmuck, George?

• 14:55Speaker 01

  I would say it was day four, five or six. Yeah. Yeah. Because of course, it's, I mean, this is the interesting thing is I think I

• 15:01Sam Fragoso?

  I hate that.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  I think I would love to stay in that state, but I don't think, I don't think you can do it. I think it makes you an insane person. You're hugging the mailman and everything and

• 15:08Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I don't like doing that.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I do think there's something about it that is unsustainable in that form. I mean, my thought is that might be the goal of spiritual practice is to, um, to get closer to that stage, but not be a crazy person, you know, to be able to go, yeah.

• 15:22Sam Fragoso?

  So is writing the way to dip back into that?

• 15:24Speaker 01

  For me it is. Yeah. And I think a lot, I mean, everything we do that we enjoy, like, it's that moment when you're concentrating and the monkey mind goes a little quiet. That's, that's something I really crave. So, so writing is that.

• 15:35Sam Fragoso?

  This new book of yours, Bringing Us Back to KJ Boone, it seems to be driven, at least in my reading, by a kind of moral challenge on your part. Is that fair? And can you explain that?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, as I'm hearing it, what I would say is Thought, well, you think about, I'm gonna write a book about climate change. And part of you goes, don't do that. That is so fucking boring. Oh, no, it's so over determined in a certain way. You know, I it's what can it say except it's real and I'm against it. And I'm learning as I'm getting older, that's a great thing to go into. If there's an earnest feeling that I'd like to do it. And that voices, don't do it. It's too weird, too hard. I'm like, no, I have, that's why I have to do it. Same with the Lincoln book.

• 16:14Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so the earnest voice for this book was, I want to do climate change.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Kind of. It was, this is when Biden was still president and it looked like he would be president again. And I thought, okay, you're sixty five, whatever you are. What can you write about that would be guaranteed to push the walls out a little bit?

• 16:29Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  But okay, climate change. That's, I mean, there's nothing more important. That's, that's existential. So I thought, okay, let's, how do we, how might we do that? And then there was a period of, of four or five days where the weather news was just hilarious. Like it floods, everything, hurricanes, you know, everything.

• 16:45Sam Fragoso?

  But by hilarious, you mean tragic?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean hilarious and like unbelievably, almost comically, uh, comic proof of climate change. So put it that way. And then I thought, if you're somebody who spent the best years of your life refuting this, what do you feel now that it's, you know, it's being demonstrated? So that kind of led to the, the book. But I like, I love the idea of trying to do something that should be mostly ill advised, you know? Because then you're gonna have to give up the old tricks a little bit. And you're gonna have to steer into new water.

• 17:13Sam Fragoso?

  Can you read from a section of the book where, uh, we're with our character KJ Boom, who is finally describing his experience when he turns on the news?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  I've never, I've never tried to do his, his thing before, I miss you. Okay. The weather made him anxious. He felt blamed by it, which is absurd. But then the weather had started bleeding over into the real news. So he'd stop watching the news. Who needed it? Nothing new under the sun. Who needed to see, for example, the filthy storm surging Mississippi flooding a kid's birthday party? In which some photographer intent on hugging heartstrings had found, arranged more likely, a cluster of pink birthday hats on a little tabletop floating way down river. Not new, well, all right, kind of new, but he didn't need to see it. Or some African grandma in her scorched field of cassava or whatnot, toddling up to the camera with a dented cuff begging for something, anything.

• 18:04Sam Fragoso?

  So in this moral challenge where you're trying to understand KJ Boone, which comes out of, I assume, a fear and anxiety about the climate crisis. What are you trying to do in interrogating this person?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  It's actually a little lower than that. I mean, for me, it's mostly about making a sort of glittery surface or an exciting surface. So on my level, I don't care if it's climate change or rental properties or kangaroos. If I can make it, make the pros come alive and speak to you, that's the main job. So for me, it's more like, okay, let's put climate change over in this corner of the table and we'll try to get that in. But mainly, I'm trying to make some fireworks. So part of that is to go, okay, old oil guy, could I do that voice? I knew I could.

• 18:47Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Because I was a young oil guy and now I'm older. So.

• 18:50Sam Fragoso?

  I was thinking about that.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was in the oil fields for about a couple of years, but I knew a lot of people in that. And I also am real familiar with that kind of pro-oil mindset. A lot of times when we talk about books, we talk about themes and attention. But for me, if the surface doesn't glitter, you aren't sticking around and we don't have a book.

• 19:07Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, so for the sake of having the surface in this conversation, can you give voice to KJ Boone? What does the pro-oil man sound like?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Well, I can't really do it with my voice, but in my imagination, he's from Wyoming and he's been in Texas a while. But he's defensive and very powerful. So we know some of those people. And he's just basically always fighting you. He's ready to fight you. And he's sort of the through line of his argument is, as was the case in the 90s in the climate change and the high movement, do you want to bring the whole system to its knees? Is that what you want to do? What about the poor people? Who do you think is going to suffer most if we stop using oil? The poor, poor in the third world. Also, by the way, the science is incomplete, you know, that kind of thing.

• 19:47Sam Fragoso?

  Really strong practical moves.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. But it worked because instead of, he didn't burn on the system. He worked within the system to say, well, you know, of course, science, we love science, but science is always full of doubt.

• 19:57Sam Fragoso?

  Just sowed a little bit of doubt.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  That was a, I mean, that was, yeah, there's a great book called The Emergence of Doubt. It's the same people that did that for tobacco moved into oil. It's really sinister and it's part of his vibe too, for me, was having been in the oil business. I could kind of remember the. Kind of fun of that, you know, like I've worked in Asia in Sumatra and we would get helicoptered into these remote places where there were rainforests that nobody had set foot in ever, literally ever. And we would hire these local guys to make this stuff called rentus, which is like a narrow path through the woods. And so we'd walk five miles into the rainforest. And so it was very much a feeling of kind of Indiana Jones feeling, you know, we few, we brave few.

• 20:37Sam Fragoso?

  But wasn't it on that trip to Asia where you go on a walk, maybe you've had a few drinks and you have this kind of this lightbulb moment, don't you?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was in Singapore.

• 20:48Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me about that.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Well, I'd been kind of a vaguely sloppy Ayn Rand sort of

• 20:52Sam Fragoso?

  I remember that.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Individualist. And so

• 20:54Sam Fragoso?

  Voted for Reagan once?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Once, yeah, yeah. For my first time I voted.

• 20:58Sam Fragoso?

  Make sure we get that on the record.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you for that. Well, when the purge comes, I'll have that in my

• 21:02Sam Fragoso?

  That's good.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was walking in Singapore, had a few drinks and there was a big, there was a hotel being made. And so the foundation was being dug. And I looked over and then there's something was moving in the bottom of the thing. And I walked over and my eyes adjusted and it was about 150, I think Malaysian, Singaporean, old women.

• 21:21Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And their job was to manually move the rocks, move the rubble out. So they come in at nine o'clock at night, work all night, moving the rubble. And something in me, you know, my family is working class and we'd had some struggles.

• 21:33Sam Fragoso?

  Texas than Chicago.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we had some struggles with, we had a restaurant that burned down. So there's some lean years. And something in that moment, I just went, oh, I'm with them.

• 21:42Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I'd been hanging around with the, you know, the oil people and with the Westerners and the money and kind of trying to accommodate that with my Ayn Rand vision of things. You know, I'm a titan of industry. I'm, you know, whatever. I'm accruing wealth so the tide will rise or whatever.

• 21:59Sam Fragoso?

  Rationalize.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you see that and you go, wait a minute. And also in Ayn Rand, this way I read it, a lot of the thing was, if you're poor, You want that, you know, you've, you've made mistakes and you've chosen that. And to see that, you're like, wait a minute, that's some bullshit. So.

• 22:13Sam Fragoso?

  In thinking about a character like KJ Boone, but any of the oil titans, or how some of the elected officials we have, do you think we have a tendency to mistake good fortune for virtue?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I think every, I mean, I certainly do. Everyone does. The day that bad shit stops happening to you, you start thinking that the bad shit has been discontinued. So that's, and that's, you know, that's not just oil people. I mean, it's rich people. It's everybody.

• 22:37Sam Fragoso?

  Why, why do you think we do that?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Well, it's probably just some sort of, I mean, you're, you're always surveying the situation in your reality and then positing a universe based on that. So for six years, people have been bringing you presents and you've been getting richer and richer and better looking. You're like, oh, the world has shifted. So I think it's probably just a little bit of a glitch of the operating system.

• 22:58Sam Fragoso?

  You know, since Trump took the White House a decade ago, there's been a desire by some mostly liberal minded people, whether creatively or politically, to do exactly, I think, as you've done in this book, to understand the KJ Boones of the world, to imagine what made his rise and his role in our ruin possible, to recognize the humanity, the complexity, the pain of this man in ways we don't often in our politics. How are you thinking about that empathetic leap in this moment?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's funny because I think it's, first of all, he's an imaginary person that I made up. And then you're living with him for a couple of years and you're, in this book, I'm often in his point of view. So when you're in someone's point of view, that makes them automatically, possibly more sympathetic than they would be in real life. So that's a distortion field that happens. But it's okay because you can still, the reader can look in over the narration and go, oh God, that guy's doing some bad shit. So I think that was part of the moral challenge was can I narrate this guy in a way that's fair to him without glamorizing him? That's the hardest part. And the complication was, again, that the other characters only have partial understanding of what he's done.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  So there isn't really a voice in the book that's mine that says, you really screwed us over. You know, you're an evil person. Somehow the book wouldn't accommodate that.

• 24:21Sam Fragoso?

  Did you try it?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  I did. I had a, I had a character of a, an activist who comes over from the wedding. There's a wedding going on next door and he just stands there and gives my point of view, basically. So that's why it didn't work. It was like a cheat, you know? You bastard, you've ruined the world, you selfish, you know? And then, and that guy could actually list in great detail the specific sins that in the other narrations have to be just alluded to. But really the bottom just dropped out because I mean, I think part of the tension of the book is the reader kind, I mean, readers might know my politics, but they just might know science. So they know where the author stands on climate change. The fun of it, I think, is that kind of dance of not being able to say it directly, but letting the picture build up over time.

• 24:59Sam Fragoso?

  But your politics to me, and tell me if I'm wrong, they often feel like that of a peacemaker.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that's a pro, I mean, it's a, it's not a problem, but it's, it's a challenge because in this time particularly.

• 25:12Sam Fragoso?

  Is that the product of you being a writer or you being a Buddhist?

• 25:15Speaker 01

  It's just, I think it's almost disposition. I think I'm a writer and Buddhist because I had this disposition as a kid to just like people to be, well, it's conflict averse. I don't like conflict.

• 25:26Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And also raised Catholic and I really clicked on that part of Jesus that was like, I would say enlightened and could sit there across from you and go, I know you and I love you, you know, with no conditions. But that was because he knew you so well. I always thought he was like the ultimate novelist. He understood you from the inside. And so there was no judgment. It's just total absorption. So that was always appealing to me. But it's a complicated position because for me, when conflict is necessary, I sometimes am at a bit of a loss. I don't quite know how to, um, I have one other speed I can, because I'm from Chicago and I used to fight a lot when I was a kid, I can go the other direction.

• 26:03Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  And be, and just go, okay, the gloves are off.

• 26:06Sam Fragoso?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  I don't want to be that person either.

• 26:08Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I want to get to some of that person a little bit. You know, obviously I'm from Chicago, lapsed Catholic, this tendency to be a peacemaker, to see the best in people. You know, I've probably taken some of that from you and have been inspired by you and will also be forwarding you, you know, the receipt from my therapist because of it. But I have to say, to ground this conversation in the present, the start of the year, deportations, ICE agents terrorizing everyday people, one shooting a mother, and Renee Good in the face. I just can't do the peacemaker thing right now. And I wondered, for you, how have these events in the last few weeks, really, just where the hell are you at?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that, I mean, right. You've tapped into my inner monologue. Here's what I, I don't know, and I'm struggling a bit with that. But I think, basically, okay, if we say peacemaker, that can be misconstrued and misapplied. So in other words, you punch me in the face and I go, oh.

• 27:10Sam Fragoso?

  It's cool.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  That's, I don't think that's peacemaking. You just endured an act of violence and the person is now maybe more likely to do it again. That's not peacemaking. Peacemaking is not enabling. It's not understanding someone so well that you don't put your hands up to block the punch. I don't think that's it. What I'm thinking of is, my argument as a writer would be, the better you understand somebody from the inside, the more powerful you are. Now, you can decide to fight, you can decide to not fight. But if you understand somebody from the inside, and not as a cartoon, or not as a kind of a projection of yourself and some, then you, I say, you know better how to stop them and when to stop them. I don't think it impedes you in any way.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  But the problem is, we tend to misunderstand that, that process, as being forgiveness. If I try to understand you, I forgive you. That's not, that's not it. So this guy that shot Renee Good, do I want to understand him? I really do. Because whatever is about to happen in this country, and it's not good, his psyche is central to that. This guy that, I don't, I don't understand a person like that. So that's my, my bad, you know? And I don't think it's just one of them. There's a lot of them. And they're all dressed alike, you know? So I think for us to say, again, not in a mushy way, but to say, all right, what the fuck, let's get to the bottom of this. How can it be that on an American street, a guy felt inclined and empowered to do that? How can that be? I think literature done correctly can help us understand that.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  But as I said before, it's also tricky because writing itself tends to soften. So it takes a lot of alertness to do it. But even just mentally to say, okay, all right. How does that happen? How does Kristi Noem appear in the world? Hmm, interesting, you know, to me, that doesn't feel like I'm giving up power.

• 28:53Sam Fragoso?

  I understand.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:54Sam Fragoso?

  I get the distinction. But what sort of rupture do you think is going on right now?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, specifically, it's a signifier of the militarization of the police. That I think has been going on a long time. And I actually picked up on it years ago when I got pulled over up near Oneonta, New York. And this guy, I'd just done a minor thing, you know? And the guy came charging up with a very formal posture and a dog, a attack dog. And it was like, oh, I see. He thinks I'm a foreign adversary, you know? And it was really weird. It was a very strange kind of like, you know?

• 29:26Sam Fragoso?

  Did you tell him about the MacArthur?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  No, no, it didn't come up. It didn't, you know what I did really? I just apologized my ass off. And then, and it was funny because I said, you know what? He gave me this big aggressive speech. And something in me clicked and I just said, you know what? You're right. I apologize. And his whole posture was like, suddenly he was like 16 years old. Well, all right, then you, you know, you know. But it was amazing to see that in that simpler innocent time, that was enough to slow him down. I mean, I think there's a confluence of things, but the biggest one that I I'm sensing is that the information environment, the siloing has, and with this, you know, incredible technological things going on, has supersized and superspeeded the extent to which a person's projections are getting self reinforced.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  So you can have a whole corner of the world that is thinking about any kind of even peaceful protest as an insurrection. And they're getting constantly supported in that every day. Yes, that's true. Yes, that's true. So somebody at a protest passes wind and suddenly they're down on the ground for an insurrection. So I think a lot of it has to do with the information network. Also, I think it has to do with money. I think over the course of my lifetime, the money has gone up and it's it's just being held by a very few people. And meanwhile, the rest of the population is just suffering in the extreme conditionality of the economic life, which is very different from even when I was 20 or 30.

• 30:45Sam Fragoso?

  Now, how do you mean?

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Well, at that time, this is kind of like old fart reminiscing, but but I remember coming out of, we had our first daughter, coming out of school, got a job in six days, a good job, no problem, insurance, the whole thing. It was second nature. I had, I could have gotten two or three other jobs. We were able to buy a house. My dad, 30 years before, bought a house at 20 years old with no college degree, just because he had a good eight hour day job. So those kinds of things, the whole generation doesn't even remember that that was the case. And it pisses you off and it makes you anxious. So I think probably across the political spectrum, people are finding that this country isn't serving them at all anymore. And this makes you anxious. So, I mean, it, yeah, I don't know. The answer is, I don't know. But something's happening though, damn it.

• 31:28Sam Fragoso?

  My father, as you may remember, public school teacher in Chicago for 30 years, in a very Mexican neighborhood, almost all of his students are Mexican. Some of them have parents, of course, who are not citizens yet. And the amount of fear inside that school every day is just unbelievable. And at the end of every phone call, it ends in one of two ways. One, what episode of Mad Men are you on? Three ways, actually. Two, good luck this week in fantasy basketball. And three, and mostly this one, it's some version of my father saying, I just do not recognize this country anymore.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Amen to that. It's, it's, it's, it's an authoritarian government. I mean, like, I spent months trying to go, well, when this happens, it will be it. It's, it is it. That's what it is. And it's a minority government and it's an extremist government. And they won by six to four, and I think they won by 10 to zero. So that's a real problem. And what, you know, for me, as a peacekeeper or kind of, it takes a while for that to sink into me.

• 32:29Sam Fragoso?

  Did her getting shot in the face break through?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Oh, I was broken through long before that.

• 32:33Sam Fragoso?

  What did that?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  For me, it's, it's Trump, Vance, Rubio, Noem and Hex. That's the way that they speak and the way that they treat misfortune. Like when Rob Ryan was killed, Trump's response, what the, you know. So then you, I think for me, what kicks in is, oh, they really do mean it. Sometimes you think the first couple of years, like, oh, he's just clowning around. But you can see that at the core, there, it's a deeply incurious group. They really don't care what the other 40% of the country thinks or wants. They generally don't care. I think they might be a little bit incapable of it. Just by accumulation, you start to see, oh, okay, they really do mean. When Stephen Miller says power is all that matters, he means it. He really does mean it. So as somebody who, I tend to be sort of hopeful and kind of forgiving, it takes a while for these things to, to settle in.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  But at this point, there's, it's quite clear.

• 33:21Sam Fragoso?

  They've worn you down.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  They've worn me down. And so for me, the point is, okay, how does one resist this without losing yourself?

• 33:27Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  That's the question of the day. I don't have an answer for that. Except I think cleverness, you know, like in Portland with the, with the frogs, that's pretty good. But I don't know. I really don't know, you know.

• 33:38Sam Fragoso?

  You mentioned that the current administration doesn't seem to care about 40% of the country. And I was thinking about the KJ Boons of the world, to bring us back to the book a little bit. The oil tycoons, or the politicians, hell, the lobbyists, the people who voted for these people in office. I have never heard them say anything about empathizing with the other side. I've never heard them talking about meeting us where we are. I've never heard them talk about recognizing the shared humanity, our mutual pain. I've never heard them talk about any of this. So at some point, when we say we're trying to meet them where we are, are we really just trying to meet them where we hoped they would be?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't, actually, for me, I wouldn't use the phrase "meet them where they are," because I don't want to.

• 34:22Sam Fragoso?

  But you've heard this phrase.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  I've heard it, yeah.

• 34:23Sam Fragoso?

  And some could construe KJ Boone in this book as you doing that. You meeting them or meeting him where he is.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but he's invented.

• 34:32Sam Fragoso?

  I agree. But he's also, you know, there's about 20 KJ Boons in this world.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Well, what I would say is, I'm trying to understand his phenomenon. It's the basic thing I want to do in this life anyway. I don't care who the person is. But what we might want to say is that when the ruling party has lost all curiosity about the other side, it ceased to be democracy. Democracy always worked. You got six votes, I got four. Let's talk about how we can come together. But if at that point you say, "I got 10," you're out. Then democracy's over. So I think a lot of the frustration that I'm feeling is just that, you know, to be ignored in that way is like a fiction writing thing. When something is bugging you about your book, for example, that you're writing, the main thing is to acknowledge it.

• 35:18Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  That's a big thing. You know, if my shoulder hurts, and if you're saying, "No, it doesn't, no, it doesn't," it hurts worse. But if you say, "My shoulder, yeah, it really hurts," it feels a little better. So I think for me right now, I'm trying to say, "This is new, and it's terrible." So if you can say, "This is new, and it's terrible," God help me to rise to the occasion and not lose myself. I think that's the, you know, it's easy enough to come up with solutions where... You abandon all loyalty to compassion or fellow feeling or mercy. That's easy. Anyone knows how to do that. But we have to do that hard job of existing in that middle ground where we're mad and we're hurt and we're scared. And still, we still are gonna stand up for the things that we think make us different, which is love and patience and mercy. And this idea of trying to understand someone else's phenomenon, I don't think there's

• 36:03Speaker 01

  any, any harm in that. But I had somebody tell me once, you know, I was asking about enlightenment. This is a Buddhist teacher. And I said, well, how can it be that you're, can you ever live in this world without action or judging or preference? He said, look, if a baby was crawling towards an open light socket, a light fixture, and they're a foot away and their hands are wet, what do you do? You just grab the baby. You know, you're not trying to take time to explain the principle of electricity, you know, or you're not necessarily gonna be able to be gentle because it's, it's a crisis. So is that compassionate? God, of course. You just save the baby from getting electrocuted. So that, so I think there's a lot of ways of acting in a resistance type environment that are firm, but not, you know, not wimpy, not idiot compassion.

• 36:48Sam Fragoso?

  When we come back, why don't we talk about some of those ways?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:51Sam Fragoso?

  And how they appear both in Vigil and some of your early work. That's coming up next with George Saunders.

• 37:13Sam Fragoso?

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• 38:38Sam Fragoso?

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• 39:21Sam Fragoso?

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• 39:56Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back. In 2016, you had just finished a book. David Remnick had enlisted you to go on the Trump campaign trail. I believe you went to a bunch of rallies, spoke with droves of supporters, you know, did all the things one does as a traveling magazine writer, trying to cover it. The first draft of the story came in the form of a play. Is that right?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  A musical, actually.

• 40:18Sam Fragoso?

  A musical?

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:19Sam Fragoso?

  And David wrote back saying, "While I really admire your attempt at equanimity, we feel like you're avoiding the hard work of analysis."

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yes, and I was. I desperately was.

• 40:29Sam Fragoso?

  Is there something you believed back in 2016, when you were meeting all these people around the country? Something you believed in your heart then, that a decade removed, you no longer believe?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Well, I can give you an example from that piece. So at the end of it, I had a data kill. And I went to the polling place, this was for the primaries, an Arizona primaries. And I sat there for literally eight hours straight. I just took a seat and I just noticed people walking by and I listened to what they said. I didn't interview them, I just overheard them talk about what they were carrying, how they're dressed, and it made a really fun section in the piece. And I think that the gist of that was kind of Rockwellian, like, look at us, out there voting, you know, the people, the people ma, as Steinbeck said. Lately, I was thinking, well, yeah, but actually that Trump swept that primary. It was a Democrat or Republican combined, so all the people were voting in the same place. But so I would love to go back to that scene and rethink it,

• 41:22Speaker 01

  because all those swell, good-hearted people voting, they were, in my view, making a huge mistake, you know, a huge era-altering mistake. So there's something about my optimistic view that we valued freedom of speech and we valued fair play and we valued communication. And I actually think that we do. And yet somehow, those things are not being valued at all by the government. And I think some of the, some of the people that I saw that day are there. Some kind of sense of, maybe, maybe two different understandings of America. Mine is very Steinbeck, Aaron Copland, Henry Fonda, you know?

• 41:59Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, what is that?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Meaning I think it's what's the constitution says it's for everybody.

• 42:05Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And it's and it loves.

• 42:06Sam Fragoso?

  Twelve angry men in your lit your way.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And every, you know, no matter who you are, what you look like, you know, whatever you're, whatever you were, you're whatever you're included. Thank you. Welcome. You're, you know, you're here. You have all the rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Period. End of story. But then there's another view that I think was just beginning then. This, I think, stoked by writing media that says you're an American if, and there's a whole bunch of conditions, which are be getting stricter and stricter. So certainly it had to do with being white. They have to do with buying into certain, I would say authoritarian ideas, you know, don't talk back, don't stop your car on the street when I tell you not to get out of the fucking car when I tell you to that stuff. And so I didn't see, I didn't quite see the seeds of that in that movement yet. There were a couple of people

• 42:53Speaker 01

  who, I mean, who were in that mode, but I I've been really discouraged by the way in which the middle has moved so far right. That's the part that really is alarming and I can't quite get a beat on it.

• 43:03Sam Fragoso?

  In the introduction of Civil Warland in bad decline, I think it was a reissue of it. You wrote of of your writing style. I was developing a pro style that wasn't full of shit, given the life I was leading, a style that felt truly American, that took into the account the Hemingway, Copland, Steinbeck, Ives, America I loved, but also this new America in which I was becoming a full participant. This is back in 96. A place where paucity reduced a person. Fear of failure produced neuroses, where everyone became a freak via material obsession, where there were no artifacts of previous cultures, no ancient ruins, just expedients formed vistas. The old mill was now Starbucks. And when the Starbucks kids went out for a smoke,

• 43:48Sam Fragoso?

  they did so leaning against the fence of a pioneer graveyard, the shadow of a tall stone angel slicing across the parking stripes. I kept thinking about like, this is 96, the 30 year anniversary of it. Zadie Smith calling the book, this, this prophecy, the capturing of an American berserk. Do you see what you were getting at even back then? Do you see what we're experiencing now as the the extension of that?

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Well, I think that the connection I would make is if the culture has become inhospitable to you, the economy has become a constant irritant, you're not making enough money, you can't, you can't really see yourself valued by your own culture. Then, I always say it's like if you imagine a country spread out on a valley and a high mountain, and we think that money is like oxygen, and now all the oxygen goes up to the very top of the mountain. Well, then, everybody on the hillside in the valley is in anaerobic condition, and they start to panic. And I think that, I was feeling that then, you know, that I could go work 10, 12 hours a day and wasn't making much progress. There wasn't a lot of beauty around. It was kind of a, and it was just a first feeling

• 44:57Speaker 01

  that I'm a data point, you know, I'm a, so I think that, I think the general political anxiety, forget about left, right for a minute, that that has to do with what I was picking up on there. That you've got these, these kind of distant countries called corporations that have a high allegiance to shareholder value and so on, these abstractions. And then for the person who's actually on the phone or in the, in the job or whatever, that person's peace of mind or comfort is not really a thing. They're just there to, to ratchet up the shareholder value. So that's all kind of cliche liberal things, but, but that was what I was experiencing then. And I can see it even more so now, when you go out into the culture, people are busting their asses. I think without much hope that

• 45:40Speaker 01

  it's really going to lead to anything. And a million times a day in ways that are small and large and comical and tragic, the system is saying, don't embarrass yourself by being a human being with me.

• 45:51Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, this is kind of the silly thing, but you, your call is important to us. It isn't, because it is you fucking pick up. So, so these kind of things, and like I said, there's sometimes they're just silly. This, you remember Andy Rooney, you know, that, did he ever know? But I think it builds up and it makes a pattern. And the pattern is, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're a human being, but we don't have time for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have a family, you're not making ends meet. It's your fault, you know? And we can go down the list, but I think, and of course, AI plays into that and all this stuff. But, but I, I think I was picking up on the first trace of that, because we were not broke, and I did have a job. But every time we took a credit card out, there was a wince, you know? And I could see us getting to the point where if I didn't get going,

• 46:37Speaker 01

  the kids were going to suffer.

• 46:38Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, you wrote that book, Check to Check.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, for sure, at work. But so I, so I think that was something in the air that was like, you know, this, this America that we're always told exists, where chicken in every pot and your labors will be rewarded. That really wasn't true then, and it's even less true now.

• 46:55Sam Fragoso?

  While you were talking, I was reminded of that quote from Terry Eagleton, "The capitalism plunders the sensuality of the body." What does that mean if the future of work is increasingly automated?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't, I've never heard it answered what people are gonna do. You know, I don't, I don't know the answer to that. But I think that the plundering of the sensuality has to do, I think, with the disconnection between your efforts and your reward. So one of the things that made that time in Rochester sustainable and even joyful for me was whatever I was doing, and some of it was very silly, you know, tech writing stuff and making covers for documents that no one ever read and so on. But I knew that the direct correspondence was, I did that, I got a check, we kept our house, and I got to go home on the weekends and have a great time with this adorable little family. So that was, you know, that was a one-to-one correspondence, albeit a little bit, you know, the work itself wasn't meaningful, but the money was meaningful. I can just see a time where, you know, if we don't have, if you don't have meaningful work to do,

• 47:52Speaker 01

  that's, that's a loss. But I, I literally, maybe you know, I don't know what the profits of AI are claiming the system's gonna look like when they're done with it. I don't know what people are gonna be doing, right, you know?

• 48:02Sam Fragoso?

  So to bring us back to this book, does KJ Boone represent a current force of evil? Or is he something, or someone from a kind of distant?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  I think he's kind of early incarnation. There's, there's a great piece, maybe last week, but Ezra Klein and Masha Gaston talking about the difference between the kind of outrage that the Bush administration committed with, or in Iraq, and the current administration. And as I understood it, it's sort of like the, the Bush administration still made a show of believing in enlightenment values and the bigger system. So they did go to the UN about the war, and they did go to Congress and so on. But they did a lot of misleading within that context, but they, they didn't burn the house down. So the Trump administration is basically involved in burning the house down. Boone, I think, is an example of that earlier generation. You would never hear him say science wasn't real. You'd never hear him say that the environment wasn't important.

• 48:51Sam Fragoso?

  He just literally and figuratively muddied the waters.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, muddied the waters enough to do exactly what he wanted and to damage that, you know, both of those things. I was thinking of a guy I knew from my hometown. We got out of college and, uh, I went back to visit him and he was living in his parents' basement. And he had a good job and we were asking why. He said that he had had some really traumatic poverty experiences when he was a little kid. And he was like, I am never doing that again. So I'm not moving out of this basement until I make a million dollars. You know, so with Boone, I kept thinking of the ways in which these little traumas propel us to do sometimes great things, but certainly excessive things. So for him, he's had a couple of these poverty things that sort of struck him deeply. And so I understood part of his trajectory was to try to never have that happen again, you know, never to be out of power, never to be forced to do something.

• 49:40Sam Fragoso?

  What does that understanding give you?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, honestly, I think what it does is it has the potential to come alive on the page. Then you, my reader, lean into it and we have that shared experience. So for me, that's the it's the main moral charge of fiction, really, regardless of subject matter or anything like that. It's just that you and I connect over that. And really it's mutual respect because I'm saying to you, I'm going to try my best to revise this so it's as good as it can be. I trust that you'll get it. And if you do, boom, we have that little mind meld. I think that's probably for all the talking I do about the moral uses of fiction, that's probably the whole shebang, you know?

• 50:15Sam Fragoso?

  But but this idea of inevitable occurrences. One thing I kept coming back to in the book is how it just fundamentally, over and over again, reads to me like a book of prayer in some ways.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:28Sam Fragoso?

  You write in the book, "My charge had been borne him," charge being KJ Boone, "but I never chosen to be borne him. That had just happened to him. Then life had happened to that him exerting upon it certain deleterious effects, including, but not limited to, the powerful nature of his early desires, which had led him to strive, which in turn led him to accomplish. And in accomplishing, he had brought about harm." You have just pinpointed what I assume the Murdochs have done their whole life. Logan Roy in succession had done. I understand that. But I guess I want to know, like, the two of us sitting here for a third time on this show. Are we inevitable occurrences?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Okay, so this book for me was a real new adventure because when I first wrote, that part you read is Jill, this 22 year old ghost.

• 51:16Sam Fragoso?

  That's right.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  And she had an experience when she died of entering the person who killed her and having complete simpatico with him for a minute.

• 51:24Sam Fragoso?

  A man who was still alive?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:26Sam Fragoso?

  A man who was, I think, 90.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:28Sam Fragoso?

  And has rewritten the thing, which was him killing her, trying to kill her husband. He has rewritten the story to actually make him the victim of it.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's forgiven himself 100%.

• 51:39Sam Fragoso?

  Which people often do as a traumatic response.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 51:41Sam Fragoso?

  To reassign blame.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so she enters his mind and she had, and this has been my contention since I was a little Catholic kid, and this is what I thought Jesus was doing. If I could for five seconds go into your mind, like experience your qualia, as they call it.

• 51:54Sam Fragoso?

  I urge you not to.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Likewise, but I think it would be mind blowing. I think it would be something like, I don't know if it would be enlightenment, but it would be something very big because I would realize that all this stuff that I think is real is just my phenomenon and your phenomenon has a totally different taste. So she does that and she comes up with this idea that she calls elevation, this idea of the inevitable occurrence. When I first started the book and I wrote that section kind of spontaneously and went, yeah, I believe that. And then the rest of the book, it was sort of like pushing back, like, do you really? Isn't that a little bit too easy? Is everybody forgivable? So the book becomes kind of a debate between those two ideas and her and then the Frenchman is the main person who pushes back. So Chekhov has this thing, a work of art doesn't have to solve a problem, it just formulates it correctly.

• 52:40Sam Fragoso?

  100%.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was for me, the kind of liberating thing was to say, well, I don't have to know if I agree with her or not, but I have to make the book interrogate her at a high level.

• 52:49Sam Fragoso?

  But when you're done with the book and you're here with me, inevitable occurrences, it feels Buddhist like, am I off on that?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yes, but the Buddhist, again, I hate to speak for Buddhists because I don't, but,

• 53:00Sam Fragoso?

  Speak for George Saunders.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Okay, or philosophically, there's the idea of the absolute versus the relative.

• 53:04Sam Fragoso?

  Okay.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  So in an absolute sense, I think, you know, none of us in the womb filled out a checklist. I want to be intelligent, vivacious and neurotic. I want to be a good basketball player, you know, we didn't get to do that.

• 53:15Sam Fragoso?

  That one I did put down.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you come out and there you are. Now, we all know that's true in terms of like height or attractiveness, but I'm thinking it's the same for the second and third degree things. So in other words, let's say you are, your destiny is to be seven foot two. Ah, great, okay. But also, you're lazy as hell. I think the lazy as hell is as hardwired as the seven foot two. So you're probably not going to get on the basketball team because you don't work at it. So if you go down that list, I think you will find in this absolute way of thinking that nobody can really be blamed for anything and nobody can really take credit for anything. Now, that's an insane way to live. You know that's not right, you know? Go to the other side. Well, yeah, you know, you stole my bike. I blame you. I want you in jail. Yes, correct.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  So for me, the fun of the book is to let both of those ideas, which are, I think, undeniably true, both of them, they also directly contradict, let them just resonate in the person of the characters. I mean, I remember when I was a kid, there was a time when, maybe first or second grade, and we were just starting to read. And I was a good reader, just naturally, I could read like crazy. The nuns loved it and they praised me like crazy. And I liked that. And there was a friend of mine who wasn't as good of a reader, and they were really beating up on him. And he was really taken at heart, to the point of tears. And that, I remember that as one of the first times I had this thought, like, he didn't, did he decide to be a shitty reader? No. You know, could he, could anything within his power make him a good enough reader to not get in trouble? It doesn't seem like it, he's working hard over there, you know?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  So I think there's a universal truth in her idea. But again, you have to be intelligent in how you apply it. You know, it's like this, if you, okay, a bear. A bear is a collection of molecules, organic molecules, that over the many centuries of evolution has learned to survive and it's, it eats meat. That's wonderful. It's a beautiful thing, a beautiful part of nature. Okay, that's the absolute view. It's chasing you and it's got, it's a mouth around your ass and you've got seconds to live. That thing is evil. And you gotta fight it with all your strength. Which one of those is true? They're both true. It depends on where you're located and the thing. So that's kind of the, the sort of discovered spine of the book for me, but I don't really know that I, if I think she's right or not at this point.

• 55:30Sam Fragoso?

  I know the book is working because I kept reading it going, now this-

• 55:35Speaker 01

  But God, George, it's bullshit.

• 55:37Sam Fragoso?

  I know I have your phone number somewhere. I'm gonna call you. But that's also why it's so compelling is that you are, you know, it reminded me of my childhood. My mom's a lawyer and could easily take either side.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Well, one of the challenges that I'm finding as I'm writing more and more, enough to where I can be on your show three times, is that you develop a way of doing things. And maybe you do them well enough to get noticed, then you have to move on from that. So some of the earlier books, I think, even Lincoln in the Bardo, you come out of that one knowing how the author feels, I think. And the fun of it is that you feel the same way. And if I did my job, I've led you to that feeling and we've had it together. This one was different. And I think it makes a lot more sparks and a little more, it raises a question, but doesn't really answer it in a satisfying way. But I think the not answering it is what's intended to be satisfying.

• 56:25Sam Fragoso?

  In The Guardian recently, you called death, and it's very much in this book, but you called death a preoccupation. Has the time spent made you better prepared for it? Has writing this?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  I guess we'll find out, you know, but I think it's certainly, I believe in it more.

• 56:40Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Well, it feels like something that will actually happen. I mean, 15 years ago was a nice talking point. But now, you know, yeah, I can see that part of it is people that you love who are a little bit older, they go over that cliff. And that's happened to us, you know, over the last 10 years.

• 56:56Sam Fragoso?

  And what have you made of that?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Well, you know, when I was younger, I thought you get to be 125, you have a bad week, and you quietly pass away. But now I can see that you're healthy until you're not. You know, people I know who've gone in the last year, they were perfectly fine until suddenly, you know, the bill came due. And that's a scary thought, you know, that you're not necessarily going to be any less in love with life when that happens to you. And so I can see as I'm getting older, I look back and there are certain satisfactions of having done good work. And you feel like, okay, well, if and when it happens, at least I know that I did that much. That actually is a tangible thing, you know?

• 57:34Sam Fragoso?

  Your daughter interviewed you a couple of years back, and she was asking you about ambition as a young writer. And you said, I really wanted to be known for something. And I did a lot of thinking about what it would be like when I did publish a book. I always coveted the idea of having a physical book, and a lot of mental life was spent then imagining what it would be like when people liked me for my writing. There was a lot of narration of the future successes that I was making no attempt at the time to actually get done.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  One is always honest with one's daughter.

• 58:07Sam Fragoso?

  At least we know that you are as a father. Imagining what it would be like when people liked me for my writing. Well, you no longer have to imagine. You're a MacArthur winner. You've been on this show three times. Those two certainly not the same, but has it meant as much as you hoped it would?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  You know, I had a moment. I went to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden as an undergrad. And there was one year that was really tough. My cousin of mine that I love very much died and my school work was difficult. And, and at the same time, I was having the first rustings of like literary ambition. So I went back to mines to do an event earlier this year. And it just so happened that the sort of green room was, was in that house. It was, it was a frat house back in those days. And the room I was waiting in during this event was right next door to my former bedroom. So I had a chance at the end of the day, really fun day, met lots of cool people and got this attention that I had dreamed of when I was there. And I got to go back and literally stand at the place where my desk was and look out

• 59:06Speaker 01

  at this maple tree out in the front and just go, wow, man, you know, you're 67. That 19 year old, can you put those two in connection? And it was really deep and really sweet, you know? So in that way, yeah, it's, it's been more than fulfilling.

• 59:20Sam Fragoso?

  Could you put them in connection?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was funny. There was a kind of a feeling of, oh, you sweet little idiot. Cause I didn't know, you know, I hadn't started writing then. I didn't know anything about anything. I was a, you know, a bad boyfriend and kind of egomaniac and I was reading all the wrong stuff. But then I could look, oh, you know, there's something in that kid. He, he might do something. Also, almost like that kid going, oh, you're going to do it? You know, so it was, so as far as those things go, it was really nice. On the flip side, you know, you have, one of the blessings of having gotten so success is you can see the limits of it. Still going to die. Still have, you know, personality issues, still, still have anxiety, all that kind of stuff.

• 59:59Sam Fragoso?

  You thought the Booker Prize would?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I actually did. I thought, well, I think it was sort of like something to occupy myself with. And in seeking accomplishment, I didn't have to think about the rest. But again, along the way, writing has helped me think about the rest and writing has made my life bigger. Yeah, I think, I think what I say to my students is if you have some ambition, even if it's kind of crazy, you know, if you have some goal, just cherish it secretly and use it because you, to do anything like this, as you know, it takes all your energy. You're up at night, I'm sure, thinking about the show, you know, you're, it's an all-consuming thing. You don't get to do it for five hours a day. So in order for someone to make a dent in some kind of difficult endeavor, it takes all of your motivations, the ones that you

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  might bless and the ones you might feel a little embarrassed about. So for me, you know, as a young kid watching Dick Cavett, you know, and I just thought, I want to be in Dick Cavett someday, you know, that was, that was, so it's a little weird, but you know, at the same time, like, well, all right, if you have that impulse, go ahead and use it, while at the same time recognizing that the end of this thing is not going to be sufficient. I mean, no matter how, how successful you get, that's not it.

• 1:01:06Sam Fragoso?

  All right, we're gonna take one more break, and when we come back, the end of my conversation with writer George Saunders.

• 1:01:29Sam Fragoso?

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• 1:02:09Sam Fragoso?

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• 1:02:46Sam Fragoso?

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• 1:03:27Sam Fragoso?

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• 1:04:08Sam Fragoso?

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• 1:04:39Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back. When you played baseball as a kid, would you narrate the game to yourself?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  100%.

• 1:04:45Sam Fragoso?

  What did it sound like?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Saunders just made a very, very incredible diving grab, and also he's doing quite well in school, you know?

• 1:04:52Sam Fragoso?

  He was adding school?

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:55Sam Fragoso?

  Going outside the diamond. He was going into the classroom.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  I was on the Cubs in the eighth grade.

• 1:04:58Sam Fragoso?

  Adding some accomplishments.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, there was a lot. I mean, we used to do that. I don't know if you did, but with our friends, we would narrate the games we were playing in real time.

• 1:05:05Sam Fragoso?

  Yes. Well, no, I wasn't. I would narrate it from the dugout.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:09Sam Fragoso?

  You're telling me that you're up there, Saunders, three, two in the count.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Mentally. Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:05:13Sam Fragoso?

  What, what do you think that is?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:05:16Sam Fragoso?

  About, about you, this kind of future forecasting.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Well, it's the monkey mind, for one thing, because the mind is doing a lot.

• 1:05:22Sam Fragoso?

  It's a little self mythologizing.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:24Sam Fragoso?

  Even in the way that KJ Boone does.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure.

• 1:05:26Sam Fragoso?

  To better means.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, yeah, what story am I living in right now?

• 1:05:29Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  That glorifies me.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  That's the most important part. Yeah.

• 1:05:36Sam Fragoso?

  Is that besides the joke of it, which is, which is good and funny, and I enjoyed it, is it true? Is that what you're doing?

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, always. I think for, I mean, that's a, whatever narrative you're telling yourself, I'm the host of a great podcast. I'm a good father. I'm a good husband. I'm a, you know, I'm a crummy driver. I think we're building that story up all the time and literature is probably a formalization of that, but with imagined objects. Or sometimes people do it more autobiographically. But yeah, I think I'm, that's interesting because I just remember always, you know, even as a little kid, wanting to be thought well of and then later wanting to be thought well of for the right reasons, you know? And, you know, it's a little bit embarrassing, but like I said, that is so much who I was.

• 1:06:16Sam Fragoso?

  It was funny when, when we sat down in 2022, you said to this idea, it's thrilling, this idea that you could change, that you could somehow do certain things and then a different aspect of yourself would be dominant. And the weird thing is just thinking back on, for example, the time I was the biggest mess versus the time I felt the very best. The weird thing is the world changes around that person. And because that's the state of your mind that's different, the world coming in is actually processed differently. I, I want to know, when were you the biggest mess? And then in baseball broadcaster fashion, where are we at now?

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  At the bottom of the ninth. I'd say the biggest mess, I don't think I could identify a period necessarily. But me in the mess is the monkey mind is turning on me and it's making me neurotic. And it's deactivating me a little bit. Also somehow associated with that time in my life where. My anxiety, I think mostly, was putting up a scrim between me and other people. So, and this is especially in my twenties, a lot of that, where I just, I wanted to be a certain way and I would only accept certain outcomes. So there was, I, I think I was very, in a way, very lonely because I couldn't actually befriend you. I could have you as a friend as an accoutrement, or, or as a sidekick, or somebody who fed my, my ego.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  But in terms of actually listening to you and actually being honest, I hadn't learned that skill yet. So those were kind of dark times because I was a pretty good-hearted person with a lot of outer energy. But I don't think I was making connections. And then when I met Paula, that all, that all changed because she wasn't having it.

• 1:07:51Sam Fragoso?

  What, what do you mean?

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  She would just call me on it, like, you know, you're not listening, you know? Or she would, if we as a couple were drifting into something that wasn't satisfying to her, she would just say, no, no. And then I would have to wake up. So that, plus the affection I felt for her. And we, we had a pretty tumultuous early couple of years where we just had to keep rebonding with each other and, and saying no to other people and other things. That made me feel a deep sympathy for her and affection for her. So then all of a sudden, those, those things came down. So that's kind of the worst. The best is probably during those heavy meditation years where even in just a tiny way, I could see what, what it means to have a self-reduce a little bit. And it's all, it's all great.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  The interesting thing was, when you talk about the self, I, I always thought, oh no, I won't like baseball anymore, or whatever, you know? But of course you do, you do. But you just have a proper relation to that. Like, oh, look at this, this, um, this guy, this guy who appeared in 1958, he likes baseball. How sweet. He's on his way out the door, no problem. Those were good times. And I was writing Lincoln and the Barto, and I felt so unimpeded, unobstructed, you know? Whatever arose in my mind, I could figure out a way to use it in the book. And so that was probably the two extremes.

• 1:09:07Sam Fragoso?

  I'm sure you've noticed this trend, but it's increased since we last spoke, that people turn to you for all kinds of wisdom, solutions.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Loans.

• 1:09:17Sam Fragoso?

  Loans, um, which I will pay back soon, I promise.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  So I keep coming back.

• 1:09:23Sam Fragoso?

  In the new book, you write, "Comfort for all else is futility." Again, later quote, "to comfort whomever I could and whatever way I might." Later, again, quote, "At such moments, I especially cherish my task. I could comfort, I could." At the risk of going one for one with, with the character and, and the man sitting across from me, I have to say, it comes up a whole lot. And beyond me finding you very comforting, is that how you see your role in this moment?

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Well, that's her, that's her construction.

• 1:09:58Sam Fragoso?

  That's her construction.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  It's not entirely not my construction. I mean, you're right about that. But I, I think the, the role is-

• 1:10:04Sam Fragoso?

  This is what you start smiling at me, once I get a little close to something.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  No, no, but I think the role is, it's not, I, well, her error is to think that comfort is the highest outcome. For me, it's really just like, I feel like the connection between reader and writer, even if it's not comforting, even if it's percussive and obnoxious or, or confusing. If it's a real connection, that in itself is a gift. So what does it do? I don't know. And are there times where that would be pittance? Yeah. And you look at the Russian Revolution, you know, Chekhov existed, or his work existed anyway. You know, people might've been reading it, but then came the knock on the door and they went to the, to the camp. But even then, I'm guessing somebody in the camp must've been thinking about Chekhov and about those values. So I, so I don't-

• 1:10:49Sam Fragoso?

  I know comfort feels insufficient in this moment.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, but again, depends how you define it. If comfort is, I'm with you. Your perception that these are a bunch of autocrats is correct. I'm with you. You're not incorrect about that.

• 1:11:00Sam Fragoso?

  Maybe I just want to know how you're getting through each day. Is it, is it antidepressants?

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:11:05Sam Fragoso?

  Have you ever done that?

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  No, I haven't. I'd never been to therapy.

• 1:11:08Sam Fragoso?

  You've never been to therapy?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  I know. I mean, we've been to marriage counseling, but not therapy.

• 1:11:11Sam Fragoso?

  Okay. You've been to marriage counseling. I guess you've been to therapy three times here on this show.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:15Sam Fragoso?

  Besides that.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm getting through it just with a lot of discomfort. I mean, I, I think probably like a lot of people, this is, is just an undercurrent, constant irritation.

• 1:11:23Sam Fragoso?

  Yes.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  You know, like I drop a glass, I go, fucking Republicans. You know? So, so I mean, the fact that our country is being distorted out of all righteousness is a constant source of discouragement. It makes everything worse.

• 1:11:36Sam Fragoso?

  Isn't it funny how that works? Cause we all know these, these truths. And you go through and you walk and you run and you do your thing and you stub your toe on the edge of the bed. And all of the things that you had been keeping at bay, just at least for me, come rushing back. And I do say something stupid like that.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that's what's happening. And I think, and this goes back to the talk about literature. I think there's, it sounds a little insufficient, but to know that somebody else is feeling what you're feeling is kind of a big deal. And so politically, I think the more people talk to each other, I mean, and post and do it, or just even if it seems obvious, there's more of us, there really is. And there's more of us every day because I think the center right is finally getting the memo. So, you know, that's one thing, but in the literary sense, just to say, there's a bunch of cliches about this, but you're not alone. Well, you're not actually. And if I'm reading a book and the book speaks to me and I'm reminded that this is not an illusion that I'm feeling, you know, these, it's real. I think it's very comforting.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  I remember when it was right, it was after nine 11. Remember there was that real weird anti Muslim swerve that was taking place, kind of predictably after nine 11. And it was getting a little, it was getting a lot like now, actually, but in a baby version.

• 1:12:48Sam Fragoso?

  Since returned.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then somebody there on the same weekend, Tom Dashill, and maybe it was Al Gore, just had very bold statements about, this is not what we should do. It's completely inappropriate response, end of story. And I remember my, just feeling so uplifted by that, like, all right, I'm not insane, you know? So the problem, as I see it, is we have to kind of maybe circle back and say, there are consolations and reassurances that we can avail ourselves of. They don't seem sufficient because they're not, but they're a good starting place. I think there's a lot of people who feel as if they're going through this thing a little bit alone. It's hard not to feel that way, but to me, it's been helpful to say, it's real. This is actually happening. I'm actually against it.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Now, please, God or whoever, give me a chance to do something good in response that won't betray my principles. That's the kind of my mantra now. It hasn't arrived yet.

• 1:13:43Sam Fragoso?

  To close the loop, earlier this morning, ahead of us talking, I was rereading your story, Love Letter in The New Yorker. And we talked about it the first time you came on the show back in 2021. The piece itself was published in March of 2020. And felt very much about the time we were in, in March of 2020. For those who haven't read it, how would you describe the construct of the piece?

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Well, it's a grandfather who is writing to his grandson in kind of a sorrowful, mourning state of mind at first urging his grandson to stay out of the current political moment, which is that an autocratic movement has taken over and is going after its enemies. And for me, the thing that was interesting was over the course of the thing, as the grandfather urges his grandson to stay out of it, he kind of trips a little bit. And by the end of it, he's offering to send him some money. So, but it was also within it, it's kind of a lament for the America that is, that in the story world was gone and that in which so many things that we took for granted, you know, of course you can criticize the leadership, even harshly, even obscenely, of course you can, of course you can, you know, you can speak truth to power.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Of course. And in the story, some of the parts of it I liked best is when he's just going, wow, we didn't know what we lost. And he says to his grand, and I'm really sorry about it. I'm sorry we didn't defend it more, but we didn't think it could be lost.

• 1:15:03Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. Could you read some of that?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Sure. "Your grandmother and I, and many others, would have had to be more extreme people than we were during that critical period to have done whatever it was we should have been doing. And our lives had not prepared us for extremity, to mobilize or to be as focused and energized as I can see in retrospect we would have needed to be. We were not prepared to drop everything in defense of a system that was to us like oxygen, used constantly, never noted. We were spoiled, I think I'm trying to say. I wish with all my heart that we could have passed it on to you intact. I do. That is now not to be. That regret I will take to my grave. Wisdom now amounts to making such intelligent accommodations as we can."

• 1:15:49Sam Fragoso?

  It's hard hearing that.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:51Sam Fragoso?

  And also, it feels like parts of this conversation.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Sam Fragoso?

  Because we are of different generations.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm, you know, I mean, this is maybe the puppy dog part of myself, but I'm not that convinced that we're gonna lose. I think there's enough visceral memory of those things, your generation and mine, of just as simple as shit, freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, the right to not be insulted by lies all the time, you know, and Orwellian doublespeak from the White House. I think we, I think people, I would say, even into the center and even to the center right are, are gonna get sick of it because it's only getting worse. It's almost like they're testing the limits. So I, so that guy, he, he was a little defeated, but I do feel confused, you know, for sure.

• 1:16:33Sam Fragoso?

  If you were to write Love Letter in 2026, would it read differently?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Well, yes, because that, in the, the examples he cites are quite light. You know, he gets pulled over by a cop and the cop tells him not to write editorials. It's gone so far beyond that. So it would, it'd be a difficult story to write because I was imagining in 2020, what I thought would be the most authoritarian thing we would see if Trump won. I, I had no idea. So it would be, it would be a different story, but I think it actually might even be a better story because his attitude is, and I, you know, I don't know if you do, but I feel it now. It's one thing to imagine you were in Germany in 1939, but now here you are with your nice life and your beloved people. And as we saw, you can be shot in the head by somebody who's undisciplined and unscrupulous.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  That's my judgment, but you know, so that's, that's scary. I mean, it's one thing to say, you know, I would walk onto the black and white world and sabotage a German tank or whatever you would do, or make a speech that all my countrymen would understand, when you're actually in the, in the moment of it's really pretty tricky, you know? And so I think they might make it a better story because I think he would give the same advice, but it would seem more unbearable that he was, that he was doing that. But it would be a better story because in the end, he can't bear it. He's saying these sort of quisling type things to his grandson and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like that his grandson will think he's a coward.

• 1:17:53Sam Fragoso?

  So, so what happens in this next iteration?

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  I don't know, nothing happens in this one. He just, he gives, he basically just opens the door a little bit at the end. And in a sense, he kind of does it so his grandson will, so he can keep that connection with his grandson, but we don't know. I mean, it's kind of up to the grandson, I think, in the story, whether he's gonna. What he's gonna do next, you know, I mean, that's the beauty of stories that you can

• 1:18:14Sam Fragoso?

  Let it go.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  They take it up to the door and go, wow, interesting, isn't it?

• 1:18:18Sam Fragoso?

  And you, what does George Saunders do next?

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, honestly, I, I am so in love with writing more, even more. This book was hard for me and I went into a lot of things I didn't think I could do. Pretty happy with it. So for me, I'm just excited to keep carving off chunks of reality and trying to write about them. And then being a little change in the process and my life is shaped up that my teaching life is cool. You know, everything is, everything is good. And so just keep doing what I've been doing, honestly. Which is kind of, you know, it's kind of a funny thing because when you're young, you have the idea of the constantly expanding frontier. Like I'm gonna write a book and I'm gonna be in the movies and I'm gonna run for a senate. And then at this point, like, no, I'm not write books. That's what I'm gonna do. But the only frontiers are gonna get better and better. And within that, there's one aspiration, which is to somehow, well, two now.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  One is I've had for a long time, make a scale model with good and evil and get it right. So that if you did that, I think the labels, good and evil would go away and you see, oh, reality. That's one thing. The second one, kind of related to what we talked about earlier. I would really love to try to do a better job of representing bad people. Again, without apologizing for them or softening them. Cause that's really a tricky, a technical task, really tricky, you know, to stay in someone's head for 20 pages without the reader starting to identify with that person or even like them is really hard, actually, really hard. Maybe it might not even be possible. It might also be possible that certain mind states don't lend themselves to representation in prose. You know, like if you think of some of the things that our leaders have said,

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  there's such a level of, it might be denial, but it might be authentic of the repetition of falsities. How many pages of that can you read, you know? Is that what's really happening behind the curtain of their mind? That I don't know.

• 1:20:01Sam Fragoso?

  And is that good fiction? I don't know.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right.

• 1:20:03Sam Fragoso?

  The only question I have left for you, in the dedication, you write, for Paula, this one especially. I thought, okay, wait, hold on, let me go back to the other books. And I started flipping through the dedications of other books. And of course, you mentioned Paula sometimes, your kids, your students at Syracuse, Pat Pacino.

• 1:20:22Sam Fragoso?

  For Paula, this one especially. Why? Why this one especially?

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  I struggled with this one a lot and I was writing it during a time when there was a lot of trouble, like illness and extended family and just a lot of tumult. And also the subject matter and the point of view thing was really complicated. So I kind of like stumbled over the finish line, I thought, and had a version of it. And I'm like, I don't know, I'm so confused. And I gave it to her to read and she read it and was really moved and said some really wonderful things.

• 1:20:54Sam Fragoso?

  What did she say?

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  I can't tell you.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  But, you know, so on the last page, she drew a teardrop. So that's. But, but for us, that's it. We have a special language in that thing where like if she doesn't respond in that way, I'm not done. I mean, I was really in a state of doubt, which I don't usually, I usually write pass. I don't have doubt at the end.

• 1:21:14Sam Fragoso?

  Doubt that it would be good?

• 1:21:16Speaker 01

  Doubt of how it was working. I didn't know if anybody would be able to get it. I think at that point even, it was a little early in terms of this idea of having, you know, not solving a problem, but formulating it correctly. It was a little shaky, but she was able to see through that to the emotional thing. It was like somebody, you know, you're in a marathon and you're at 20, whatever it is, 25 miles. And somebody picks you up and shoves you, you know? So that, that's why the especially, because I don't know. She, she just literally added faith, the faith that I needed to finish it.

• 1:21:44Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I have to say, having had this conversation with you, I was, I was agitated before, anxious. I'm still both of those things.

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  You should be.

• 1:21:54Sam Fragoso?

  But maybe 2% less so.

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. I feel the same, actually.

• 1:21:59Sam Fragoso?

  Do you?

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like if we were in the studio and suddenly, and let's say it's a cottage in the woods instead. And outside we start hearing howling of wolves and they're scratching at the door and there's a lot of them. If we just go, oh, what should we have for lunch? You know, that's bullshit. And it's, and it makes it worse. It makes you more anxious because you can still hear them. But if you say, you know, if I say, Sam, I think there's wolves out there. And you, you know what? I was gonna say that too. Well, suddenly we're like, all right, we got wolves, you know? Uh, they might still get in, but just the acknowledging of the reality is a really powerful thing. It resituates you. And, um, apropos to this book, I think his big problem, KJ Boons, is that he's in such a high state of denial that he's not available to anything, to righteousness or to his family or to any.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  So to get rid of denial is a really important thing. You say, how do I feel? I feel sick about my country. Me too. All right. And what else? Then what? Then, well, it's not, I feel sick about my country. I'm gonna start crying. No, I feel sick about my country and I love my country and I want it to be the country I had in mind and that other people for many, many hundreds of years had in mind, let's do that.

• 1:23:05Sam Fragoso?

  And now what?

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  And now what? But with a hopeful little, and now what? And now what?

• 1:23:11Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, that's good. We'll go with that. We'll go with your ending. We opened the door just a little bit. It was not always easy.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  I always love talking with you for that reason. It's not always easy and we discover things together. So, thank you.

• 1:23:22Sam Fragoso?

  George Saunders. Until next time.

• 1:23:55Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode with George Saunders, be sure to share the program on social media, tag us at Talk Easy Pod. This really does help us continue making the program. It also helps new people find the show, which ensures that we can continue making the show. I want to give a special thanks to Aaron Richards and Peter Dwyer at Random House. I also want to thank our friend Nathan Heller and of course, our guest, George Saunders. You can find his new novel, Vigil, wherever you do For more episodes, I'd recommend Zadie Smith, Ocean Vuong, and Margaret Atwood. I'd also recommend our first two conversations with George, which you can find wherever you are listening to this right now, or on our website at talkeasypod.com.

• 1:24:38Sam Fragoso?

  If you'd like to watch the video version of the episode you just heard, it's now available on our YouTube page. Just type in "Talk Easy" with Sam Fragoso on YouTube, and it should pop right up. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok at Talk Easy Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy. Visit talkeasypod.com/shop. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janix Abraha. Today's talk was edited by Corey Etad and Finn Nalan. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola. It was engineered by Nick Hines out of Operation Podcasts in Santa Monica. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Illustrations, Chris Shannaway. Photographs today come from Simi Malik. Production assistance from Neil Mulaney.

• 1:25:22Sam Fragoso?

  Research assistance from Pierce Harvey and Kiki Giorgio. This episode was made in partnership with Higher Ground Media. And I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next Sunday with a brand new episode. Until then, stay safe and solo.

• 1:25:43Sam Fragoso?

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• 1:26:27Sam Fragoso?

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