Speaker 1: Hey there, it's Frick Morton. I'm currently hosting seven Am
Speaker 1: and this week at Schwartzmedia we're celebrating a very special
Speaker 1: first birthday. Our colleagues that Read This have been making
Speaker 1: their brilliant podcast for a year now, and every week
Speaker 1: host Michael Williams talks to the best writers in the
Speaker 1: world about their lives, their craft, and what keeps them going.
Speaker 1: Michael Williams is among the best interviewers working in Australia
Speaker 1: today and listening to him on the job is the
Speaker 1: kind of gentle therapy I like to think should be
Speaker 1: subsidized by Medicare. Today, we're going to play you an
Speaker 1: episode that we on the seven Am team really loved.
Speaker 1: It's with George Saunders, an extraordinarily generous writer himself who
Speaker 1: has written one of my favorite novels, Lincoln in the Bardo.
Speaker 1: But first I wanted to chat with Read This host
Speaker 1: Michael Williams. That's coming up. Michael, congratulations on a year
Speaker 1: of making Read This. It is a phenomenal product and
Speaker 1: you are an absolute mark at the craft of interviewing.
Speaker 2: How's it going, thanks, Rick, Look, it's going really well.
Speaker 2: It feels a bit surreal that we're a year in already,
Speaker 2: it feels like just yesterday. We were kind of kicking
Speaker 2: around ideas for formats and the shape of the thing,
Speaker 2: and would it be more like a book club or
Speaker 2: would it be interview based, and would we have panel
Speaker 2: discussions and all kinds of high concept ideas, And then
Speaker 2: somehow we settled into a groove because what we add
Speaker 2: the reminder of is that writers are really interesting people
Speaker 2: if you give them a chance to just talk about
Speaker 2: their stories, talk about their lives, talk about the ideas
Speaker 2: behind the books that they write. And so week one
Speaker 2: we visited Helen Garner's house, and since then it's just
Speaker 2: been go, go go.
Speaker 1: I think when you start with a visit to Helen
Speaker 1: Garner's house, you're probably on the right track. What have
Speaker 1: been your favorite moments throughout the series so far? I
Speaker 1: imagine you've got some wonderful nuggets collected away somewhere.
Speaker 2: One of the wild things about reaching an entire is
Speaker 2: looking at the role call of people we've spoken to.
Speaker 2: And actually, I'm hard pushed to think about an author
Speaker 2: whose work I've loved in the past couple of years,
Speaker 2: who we haven't had a chance to chat to on
Speaker 2: read this. You know, I got to go and visit
Speaker 2: Richard Flannagan at home in Tasmania and talk to him
Speaker 2: about question seven, which was wildly good. We spoke to
Speaker 2: Gabrielle Zevin about her book Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
Speaker 2: You know, Melissa Lukashenko was so generous and so funny
Speaker 2: and smart about the ways in which she writes trauma
Speaker 2: but also writes comedy at the same time, and the
Speaker 2: intersection between those two things is kind of wildly good.
Speaker 2: Even Mary Beard, the classicist and ancient Rome expert, came
Speaker 2: on the show, and that was kind of surreal to
Speaker 2: hear her talk about Emperor's past in ways that were
Speaker 2: both erudite and funny. It was a delight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. And of course George Thought is
Speaker 1: himself so generous. I have read A Swim in the
Speaker 1: Pond in the Rain and listened to his interviews over
Speaker 1: the years. He's a teacher of the craft, right, and
Speaker 1: then you get to chat to him and kind of
Speaker 1: be a little bit greedy, I guess, and pick up
Speaker 1: some tricks for yourself.
Speaker 2: Oh, one hundred percent. But George Saunder's generosity, I think
Speaker 2: is the main thing that characterizes him. He's one of
Speaker 2: those writers who other writers adore and revere because he
Speaker 2: does ask questions, he does give of himself. He does,
Speaker 2: as you say, partly as a teacher, but also partly
Speaker 2: I think that's the temperament of the man. One of
Speaker 2: the things I do when preparing for an interview with
Speaker 2: an author is I assiduously read and listen to other
Speaker 2: interviews they've done. And George Saunders is a legend. He's
Speaker 2: given so many interviews. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: really struck me about what he brought to read this
Speaker 2: was none of it I'd heard anywhere else before. He
Speaker 2: tells a personal story about a moment that's very influential
Speaker 2: in his own writing career. But he told it in
Speaker 2: a way that was genuinely fun. It wasn't him just
Speaker 2: repeating something wrote that he'd stood up in front of
Speaker 2: a classroom and done a million times before. It was
Speaker 2: an answer to a question, and it inspired what I
Speaker 2: think is a really wonderful chat.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: Michael, Thank you so much. You've done an extraordinary job.
Speaker 2: It's an absolute pleasure. I will keep doing it. And Rick,
Speaker 2: when your next book comes out, expect an invitation to
Speaker 2: be on the show. Forget said when I am come
Speaker 2: on read this.
Speaker 1: I don't think you should pre lock me in, but
Speaker 1: why not.
Speaker 2: It's fine If the book's no good, I'll ask hard
Speaker 2: hitting questions of you, I promise.
Speaker 1: Coming up in just a moment. The three words that
Speaker 1: made George Saunders a writer.
Speaker 3: For me, the way to think about it is, I
Speaker 3: have prepared beautifully. I've lived both stupidly and wisely. I've
Speaker 3: read good and bad. I've talked bunch of shit about writing.
Speaker 3: You know, all this stuff, but at the moment of truth,
Speaker 3: that's all back there. You know, behind this damn and
Speaker 3: your job is to be kind of a bouncer or
Speaker 3: kind of a controller, to say only what I need.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's the voice of George Saunders, maybe the definition of
Speaker 2: a writer's writer. He's a personal favorite and a favorite
Speaker 2: for many, a literary and cultural sensation. David Foster Waller
Speaker 2: said he was the most exciting writer in America. Zadie
Speaker 2: Smith said he'll be read long after these times had passed.
Speaker 2: Even famous comudgeon Jonathan Franzen had nothing but praise. He said,
Speaker 2: he makes the all but impossible look effortless. We're lucky
Speaker 2: to have him, but forget the accolades. The main thing
Speaker 2: to know is George Saunders writes funny, moving, electrifying fiction,
Speaker 2: and he's a true original. His big break came when
Speaker 2: he was selected to the creative writing program at Syracuse
Speaker 2: University in upstate New York, where he studied under the
Speaker 2: celebrated shorts story writer Tobias Wolf. Since then, he's become
Speaker 2: known both for his award winning writing and for his
Speaker 2: generosity as a literary figure, teaching a famous commencement speech, essays, articles,
Speaker 2: and I want to ask him what makes him tick.
Speaker 2: I want to know the phrase or the idea, the
Speaker 2: snippet of advice or frequently recalled quotation that helps him
Speaker 2: do what he does. I call this game life Sentences,
Speaker 2: and today I've asked George Saunders to play from Schwartz Media.
Speaker 2: I'm Michael Winniams, and this is Read This a show
Speaker 2: about the books we love and the stories behind them.
Speaker 2: George Saunders, what's your life sentence?
Speaker 3: Well, the one that came to mind when you wrote me, Michael,
Speaker 3: was from Joyce. It was Silence Exit Island. Cunning. It
Speaker 3: sounds very very literary of me to have that one,
Speaker 3: But I was actually came from a period when I
Speaker 3: was in my twenties in Chicago and I was kind
Speaker 3: of circling the drain a little bit. I was living
Speaker 3: with an aunt of mine and I'd just been laid
Speaker 3: off from a roofing job, and I, you know, I
Speaker 3: had the idea of being a writer, but I'd never
Speaker 3: done much of it, and it was just kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, one of those low moments when nothing was
Speaker 3: going right. So a couple of friends of mine from
Speaker 3: high school picked up on this, you know, mordant tone
Speaker 3: I was going into, and they took me to something
Speaker 3: called the Car Show. So we go to the car
Speaker 3: show and it was nice, and just the fact that
Speaker 3: they thought of doing it was kind of an uplift.
Speaker 3: And then we went to lunch afterwards at one of
Speaker 3: those kind of fake Irish pubs, which is now this
Speaker 3: is on the South Side Chicago. It's like mcquinley's or whatever,
Speaker 3: you know something. But as we were going in, there
Speaker 3: was a cardboard cutout of James Joyce, and coming out
Speaker 3: of a little cartoon bubble from his head was that phrase,
Speaker 3: which I think is from Portrait of the Arts, A Silence.
Speaker 3: Ex Island County but something about that phrase just riveted me,
Speaker 3: and I thought about it the whole lunch, and it
Speaker 3: really changed my trajectory, you know, in that period where
Speaker 3: you're going from I'd like to be a writer to
Speaker 3: I'm actually going to be one. So even now I'll
Speaker 3: get into a certain doubtful period about a book or
Speaker 3: about a story or just in general analytical silent se
Speaker 3: gland counting, and that still kind of speaks to me.
Speaker 2: You know, you go to a better class of fee
Speaker 2: Irish pub than I do if they have a Giants
Speaker 2: Joyce cut out by the door instead of e Liprocal
Speaker 2: and that's you were moving in exalted circles clearly.
Speaker 3: Well, it was amazing, really because this part of Chicago,
Speaker 3: the Southside, and I don't think it's a particularly a lot,
Speaker 3: not a literary hotbed, but somebody in that place knew
Speaker 3: who Joyce was, and I guess went through the book
Speaker 3: and pulled that baby out. And why it would be,
Speaker 3: why that would be a good thing to advise your
Speaker 3: pub customers of, I don't know, but I've always I
Speaker 3: thought that was so funny, because you're exactly right, it
Speaker 3: would be, you know, not not expected to see a
Speaker 3: Joyce cutout.
Speaker 2: Have you thought about what it is that so speaks
Speaker 2: to you? I mean, those three words and concepts pull
Speaker 2: against each other in interesting ways.
Speaker 3: Well, well, the thing that was weird about it was
Speaker 3: I just I knew exactly what he meant. And I
Speaker 3: hadn't done any writing at that point, you know, but
Speaker 3: I knew exactly at least what that meant to me.
Speaker 3: And the way I've taken a part in the past
Speaker 3: was the silence was shut up and do it. Like
Speaker 3: at that point, I was doing a lot of that
Speaker 3: kind of inner theorizing that artists do, like, well, what
Speaker 3: I'll do is I'll have a six book cycle about
Speaker 3: my childhood, you know, with featuring a talking raccoon or something.
Speaker 3: So that big theory, which is really your way of saying,
Speaker 3: I'm too afraid to try, you know, and I don't
Speaker 3: want to try until I totally know what I'm going
Speaker 3: to do. And I was also doing a lot of
Speaker 3: literal talking about it to friends and no when I
Speaker 3: write my book, and so one is just shut up.
Speaker 3: You know, even if you don't do anything, it's better
Speaker 3: for you to be quiet about it, you know, than
Speaker 3: to blab.
Speaker 2: On and on.
Speaker 3: So silence exile, I think for me at that time
Speaker 3: meant I kind of blundered my way into this crazy
Speaker 3: situation that living in my Ends basement on a ticking clock.
Speaker 3: I didn't have a job. I think at that point
Speaker 3: maybe I was working at a convenience store, you know,
Speaker 3: like that kind of thing just seemed to you that
Speaker 3: everything I did was making it worse. So I had
Speaker 3: this idea that I would soon an act of bolting
Speaker 3: out of there and going back to where my parents
Speaker 3: were in Texas and kind of giving myself a clean slate.
Speaker 3: So that was the exile part. Cunning is the part
Speaker 3: that really spoke to me, and I think it indicated
Speaker 3: a shift. Okay, so before that, I was thinking, if
Speaker 3: you only do certain things in your writing, you'll be great.
Speaker 3: So if you're just truthful, or if you just do
Speaker 3: that Hemingway esque one true sentence, you'll make it, or
Speaker 3: you know a whole of things that you only had
Speaker 3: to abide by these dictims and you would be good.
Speaker 3: And I think the cunning meant to me, No, you
Speaker 3: have to do whatever it is it gets you noticed.
Speaker 3: You have to figure it out. That's part of what
Speaker 3: your job is is to get into some writing and
Speaker 3: see if it's interesting or not. And if it's not,
Speaker 3: the end of world you can fix it. So in
Speaker 3: the same way that you might be cunning about a
Speaker 3: relationship or fixing a car, you know as well, you
Speaker 3: got to roll up your sleeves, get in there, mess
Speaker 3: it up, be stymied. That's when the aftual work begins.
Speaker 3: That's okay, that's not a sign of failure in coming.
Speaker 2: In particular, there's an idea of deliberateness. I think, instead
Speaker 2: of being kind of buffeted along by the tides and
Speaker 2: fortunes and whatever else is happening, the cunning person is
Speaker 2: choosing their path, which seems valuable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, especially because you know, I think everyone
Speaker 3: likes the idea that if you just enact a certain mindset,
Speaker 3: your art will be beautiful. That's great, that's but that's autopilot. Actually,
Speaker 3: you know, if I just live by this credo, I
Speaker 3: never have to think again, never have to struggle again.
Speaker 3: But I think what I felt in that moment was, well,
Speaker 3: every work of art is a struggle against itself, really,
Speaker 3: you know, you start out strong and then the thing
Speaker 3: becomes its own trap sort of.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So the cunning is to say, make it work, stupid,
Speaker 3: figure it out and make it work. And on one level,
Speaker 3: it's saying the reader is is someone you have to
Speaker 3: enact the cunning upon. But really, once you get into it,
Speaker 3: it means you have to be cunning in succeeding in
Speaker 3: charming that person. And then what I found out in
Speaker 3: the years to come is to charm a person, you
Speaker 3: can't condescend to that person, you know, So cunning in
Speaker 3: a certain way is to say to the reader, I
Speaker 3: let you in one hundred percent. I am going to
Speaker 3: try to charm you. But we understand that charm means
Speaker 3: respect at the ultimate level.
Speaker 2: So as a slightly down it heeled early twenty something,
Speaker 2: had you already identified that it was the creative age?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Was that what you were feeling thwarted by? Was that
Speaker 2: why you were derailed because you knew you wanted to
Speaker 2: write and you hadn't quite found a way or was
Speaker 2: it less well defined than that?
Speaker 3: No, that was it, And you know it was a
Speaker 3: little bit like I Irad Glass here has talked about
Speaker 3: this thing where your taste is highly developed but your
Speaker 3: abilities are lagging behind. So I could read joice and
Speaker 3: totally understand why he was a genius, and then I
Speaker 3: would fart out my little thing and go, oh god,
Speaker 3: that's not it, you know. So is that that frustration?
Speaker 3: But also for me there was in retrospect, I think
Speaker 3: it was a I would say it was a bit
Speaker 3: of a class thing where it was so dear to
Speaker 3: me this dream of being a writer that I was
Speaker 3: too scared to start, because in starting, you could reveal
Speaker 3: that you didn't have what it took and then you're done.
Speaker 3: So it took me a while to go, well, no,
Speaker 3: actually you try and fail you started, you know. But
Speaker 3: so I think with Joyce I felt something like that, like, okay,
Speaker 3: you can actually step into the boxing ring and see
Speaker 3: and if you get hit, that's just means the start
Speaker 3: you started, you know, as opposed to I'm a boxer
Speaker 3: forever if I never get in the ring because I've
Speaker 3: never lost.
Speaker 2: It's not that many years between that self described low
Speaker 2: moment in a Chicago pub and you being accepted the Syracuse,
Speaker 2: you know, getting the call from Tobias Wolf.
Speaker 3: It could have been less than a year, because that
Speaker 3: was the spring I went back to Texas, wrote three
Speaker 3: stories and the one story that got me in there,
Speaker 3: and then I was in by the next Christmas. Not
Speaker 3: kidding around that Joy's quote compelled me to go ahead
Speaker 3: and leave a relationship and go back to Texas and
Speaker 3: start over. And that was when I actually did start writing.
Speaker 3: It was actually real, a real turning.
Speaker 2: Point, George. I'm picturing listeners like rushing out to the
Speaker 2: nearest Irish pub seeking inspiration from every Guinness Ad they
Speaker 2: can get. And I hope that you know their fortunes
Speaker 2: will change well and if.
Speaker 3: Not, if not, you're in an Irish pub, so it's
Speaker 3: still kind of a win.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. It's funny hearing George Saunder's talk
Speaker 2: about early doubt when he's so synonymous with success at
Speaker 2: this point, not just his insanely ambitious, polyvocal ghost story
Speaker 2: Lincoln in the Bado, which won the book A prize,
Speaker 2: but also his collections of short stories. The phrase rock
Speaker 2: star short story writer seems unlikely, but Saunders wears it comfortably.
Speaker 2: He first made his name in that form. There was
Speaker 2: Pastoralia in Persuasion Nation. The most recent collection was called
Speaker 2: Liberation Day, and frankly, if you haven't read any of them,
Speaker 2: I'd start with tenth of December. It's a work of genius.
Speaker 2: But to hear Saunders describe it, finding his voice took
Speaker 2: some time, if I remember correctly, For you, early on,
Speaker 2: when you were playing around with your writing and your creativity,
Speaker 2: it wasn't automatically going to be pros songwriting comedy. You
Speaker 2: had these other kind of sirens calling you creatively. How
Speaker 2: did that narrow down to the singular kind of vision
Speaker 2: for yourself and your own writing?
Speaker 3: I think because I more clearly sucked at everything else.
Speaker 3: I tried songwriting, yeah, and all those things. I think
Speaker 3: I I could be sort of six out of ten,
Speaker 3: near five out of ten, you know, but at what
Speaker 3: I now understand is a critical moment in a work
Speaker 3: of art, I just didn't have that strong of you
Speaker 3: about it. Like I write a song, go yeah, that's
Speaker 3: got some chords, and you know, but that sort of
Speaker 3: killer instinct that makes you go, none shall pass, no way,
Speaker 3: you are not my fucking song. You're too pathetic. But
Speaker 3: with prose, I, even in that early period of writing,
Speaker 3: I had such obnoxiously strong opinions about it. You know,
Speaker 3: I'd write something go I cannot live with that. With prose.
Speaker 3: If I read something I wrote and then went and
Speaker 3: read Hemingley or read Joyce or read Grace Paley. Later on,
Speaker 3: I could really feel what was lacking in mind, you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes it was lacking in sincerity, sometimes it needed more rewriting.
Speaker 3: But there was never any question for me of you know,
Speaker 3: I could always discern quality in prose. That was really
Speaker 3: why I quit the other things. But anyway, you know,
Speaker 3: your taste will lead you, and in my case, it
Speaker 3: was like, well, if I have always nine point ninety
Speaker 3: nine level opinions about prose and six level opinions about songwriting,
Speaker 3: you know you got to choose the former.
Speaker 2: Sounds to me like you had incredible clarity of purpose
Speaker 2: about your own writing. But the shift to being read
Speaker 2: and what that told you about those opinions you had
Speaker 2: about prose and in particular your own pros will you
Speaker 2: write in your reading of your own work? Did other
Speaker 2: readers change the way you understood your work.
Speaker 3: There was a long period where I wasn't actually looking
Speaker 3: at my own opinion. I was kind of thinking, well,
Speaker 3: in a Hemingway story, this happens, or what I like
Speaker 3: about that joy sentence is this, and then sort of
Speaker 3: trying to artificially, like with pincers, take that quality and
Speaker 3: put it into my own work. That never worked. But
Speaker 3: as soon as I kind of started relying on this
Speaker 3: sort of inner sense of what was cool or fun
Speaker 3: funny was especially important early then then I got readers.
Speaker 3: And strangely, at that point I kind of didn't. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't say I didn't care about readers, but like when
Speaker 3: I was writing that first book, it was coming to
Speaker 3: me so strongly that sending it out was almost like
Speaker 3: an afterthought. I thought, well, they don't have to like it,
Speaker 3: but if they don't, they're wrong, you know, that kind
Speaker 3: of feeling, although of course it's a little bit like
Speaker 3: I hope they'll take it. But when I got right
Speaker 3: with my pros, when I started learning how to listen
Speaker 3: to my own opinions, then it started to go better.
Speaker 3: And even now, that's always the game, is like am
Speaker 3: I on a given day, am I in touch with
Speaker 3: that opinionated part of myself or not? Or the other
Speaker 3: thing is sometimes you just start poasting on truisms, you know,
Speaker 3: or because even on a day when I'm writing really badly,
Speaker 3: I'm still thinking all the correct truisms, but they just
Speaker 3: aren't really real to me, you know, So it's complicated.
Speaker 2: You mentioned sincerity there as being an important kind of
Speaker 2: market of whether something's working on, and I'm interested in
Speaker 2: that relationship between knowing the craft and thinking about, you know,
Speaker 2: all the things that you wanted to do and the
Speaker 2: kind of end outcome that you're striving for, and sincerity
Speaker 2: and finding that voice or that kernel that isn't instrumentalized immediately.
Speaker 3: For me, what I mean by sincerity in a prose
Speaker 3: sense is a lack of agenda. So in other words,
Speaker 3: you're you know, you're on page two point six and
Speaker 3: you've just made a nice moment. Part of you wants
Speaker 3: the moment to be like this or wants it to
Speaker 3: cause that that part of you is not to be
Speaker 3: trusted because it it's an agenda from without. So the
Speaker 3: sincerity means, Okay, what did I just do? What's the
Speaker 3: next thing that could happen? It's the best? You know,
Speaker 3: what's what's the next best sentence? And that you know,
Speaker 3: that's really tricky because it's that kind of intuition isn't
Speaker 3: always available purely, you know, And so for me, rewriting
Speaker 3: is sort of like giving myself a lot of chances
Speaker 3: to have a sincere reaction to what I just did
Speaker 3: as opposed to a contrived reaction. And I'm a pretty
Speaker 3: controlled person and so I have a lot of tendency
Speaker 3: to contrive. So for me, that is like, well, it's
Speaker 3: a long practice in learning to not contrive. Basically.
Speaker 2: The other element that you mentioned was humor and making
Speaker 2: jokes and making people laugh is almost the ultimate incontrivance
Speaker 2: in terms of there is an outcoming and objective and
Speaker 2: there's a kind of building momentum when you're doing it.
Speaker 3: That's so interesting because you're absolutely right, you know. I
Speaker 3: remember in high school I had this wonderful teacher named
Speaker 3: Miss Williams that we all adored, and she was so
Speaker 3: smart and was having us read really good stuff and
Speaker 3: I always wanted to impress her, and the only way
Speaker 3: I could really was to get a laugh. But she
Speaker 3: was very discerning. So if you made a joke in
Speaker 3: our class and it bombed, you were in a lot
Speaker 3: of trouble. Then you were just being a smart ass.
Speaker 3: If you hit it just right and the whole class,
Speaker 3: including her, cracked up, you were a bit of a
Speaker 3: hero for a minute. And what I learned from that
Speaker 3: was if there was the slightest again, we'll call it contrivance.
Speaker 3: If there was this thing where you go that would
Speaker 3: be a funny thing, should I say it, I shall,
Speaker 3: then it would bomb, Whereas if you just you know,
Speaker 3: just it occurred and you said it that So is
Speaker 3: that contrived? Well kind of in that I definitely wanted
Speaker 3: to get a laugh, But I would say it's also
Speaker 3: in a sense uncontrived because I didn't even have time
Speaker 3: to contrive it. You know. It's literally like somebody throws
Speaker 3: a frisbee and you catch it. So that's the kind
Speaker 3: of moment in a story. You know, you you get
Speaker 3: past your moment there, you're you're at the current moment
Speaker 3: of the story. You're praying to have some kind of
Speaker 3: a frisbee catching moment, you know, where you're responding to
Speaker 3: your own text in a way that ultimately I would
Speaker 3: say isn't contrived because you didn't see it coming.
Speaker 2: You know, sincerity is comedy minus time.
Speaker 3: Oh that's great, Oh my god, I got to write
Speaker 3: that one down. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: How useful is influenced to you? How useful is being
Speaker 2: the rata that you are?
Speaker 3: I think it's everything. But I just feel like, at
Speaker 3: the time of writing, you put a decide it's the
Speaker 3: same thing as what you had for dinner last night.
Speaker 3: Is it part of your writing? Yeah, you know, you
Speaker 3: might have had a lot of tackles in your little party. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's fine. But the idea is, whatever you've done with reading,
Speaker 3: with prep with living, it's all there in this sort
Speaker 3: of imaginary silo over your head. And it's all there,
Speaker 3: but none of it is useful except in the context
Speaker 3: of the actual moment that you're in in the story.
Speaker 3: You know, So if the story demands X and you say,
Speaker 3: oh I have why, I better force it in there?
Speaker 3: It doesn't like that. So I think for me that
Speaker 3: you know so much of the stuff, Michael, is just
Speaker 3: like psyching yourself out a little bit or trying to
Speaker 3: think about it in a way that will make you
Speaker 3: more productive. So for me, the way to think about
Speaker 3: it is I have prepared beautifully. I've lived both stupidly
Speaker 3: and wisely. I've read good and bad. I've talked a
Speaker 3: bunch of shit about writing. You know all this stuff,
Speaker 3: but at the moment of truth, that's all back there
Speaker 3: behind this dam And your job is to be kind
Speaker 3: of a bouncer or kind of a controller, to say,
Speaker 3: only what I need, thank you, you know, and then
Speaker 3: that kind of in a perfect day, that translates into
Speaker 3: just awareness of the pros that you've just read. So
Speaker 3: that way you don't have to worry about I don't
Speaker 3: I don't have to Now I can have all kinds
Speaker 3: of conceptual ideas away from the table, but there's a
Speaker 3: certain mental rearrangement that happens at the moment when it
Speaker 3: just gets blocked out, so that stuff behind you contributes
Speaker 3: but doesn't dominate, so and that you know, that's again,
Speaker 3: that's think A thing that's hard to talk about is
Speaker 3: just how do you how do you develop that mindset?
Speaker 3: But I think you know when you really get down
Speaker 3: to it, the difference for me between a good day
Speaker 3: and a bad day is how purely am I reacting
Speaker 3: to the pros on page two? When I get the
Speaker 3: page three. For me, if there's any trying in it,
Speaker 3: it gets messed up, like I'm if I'm walking and
Speaker 3: I need to have an ending for the story. Those
Speaker 3: ideas are a little bit too puppy, you know, they
Speaker 3: want to please too much and they don't fit. But
Speaker 3: the one thing is the task is you put it
Speaker 3: into the text in progress and you read it at speed,
Speaker 3: does it trip you up? Or does it make you happy?
Speaker 3: You know, everything asked to audition by those standards.
Speaker 2: You know, you are not only one of our greatest
Speaker 2: contemporary writers, you're a celebrated tature of creative writing. What
Speaker 2: do you get out of teaching?
Speaker 3: It's a living. I mean, it means that it gets
Speaker 3: me complete artistic freedom. It also gets me, you know,
Speaker 3: into the cage every day with the thing itself. Like
Speaker 3: these young writers are so hungry, and they're so good,
Speaker 3: and they will not tolerate phone ins because they're too good.
Speaker 3: And you know, the biggest thing is given me, Michael,
Speaker 3: is when I first started, I just wanted to show
Speaker 3: I wasn't stupid, you know. I wanted to provide value
Speaker 3: by scribbling all over their stuff and sort of asserting
Speaker 3: dominance in a certain way. I think it's kind of natural.
Speaker 3: But as I'm getting older and I'm doing it more,
Speaker 3: It's become really clear that the only reason to do
Speaker 3: it is supervise the benefit, real benefit. So it's one
Speaker 3: simple question. If I give a student an edit, does
Speaker 3: she have a next thing to do that's valuable or not?
Speaker 3: And that I mean as a credle for life. I
Speaker 3: mean that's pretty big.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: If you could just be helpful to everybody in a
Speaker 3: tiny way, that's pretty good, you know. So it's it's
Speaker 3: been a great training thing over the years. You know,
Speaker 3: you have a chance to interact with the brilliant young
Speaker 3: person who's a version of you when you were that age,
Speaker 3: who wants it just as much, you know. So it
Speaker 3: keeps getting more interesting actually as the years ago, by
Speaker 3: which it surprises me a little bit.
Speaker 2: Does silence exilent come and get harder with achia? Is
Speaker 2: it harder to calve out your own version of it? Yes?
Speaker 3: I think that's a great question. It does because silence
Speaker 3: would for me now would mean there's some shit you
Speaker 3: don't have to talk about, you know. I mean I
Speaker 3: talk so much about politics. I don't know anything about politics,
Speaker 3: but if someone asked me, I was just you know,
Speaker 3: like any middle or too late aged uncle, I'll just
Speaker 3: pipe right up. So silence is a friend exile that
Speaker 3: I'm pretty good at because what that means is no
Speaker 3: matter where I am, it's off limits and it's a
Speaker 3: safe space or you know, or like an intense and
Speaker 3: intense space. So that's okay. The cunning becomes, all right, buddy,
Speaker 3: you've written a number of things. Can you do something
Speaker 3: that's truly new, that isn't derivative. That's cunning because then
Speaker 3: you have to know what you've already done, and you
Speaker 3: have to know when you're coasting. You know, you also
Speaker 3: have to know when your life isn't active enough to
Speaker 3: be challenging you with new ideas.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: So the cunning is the part that I think is
Speaker 3: is because you know you're you're there's two things happening.
Speaker 3: One is you you've already said a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 3: You've already sent up some artistic balloons, and no one's
Speaker 3: talent is infinite, so you're kind of mining a seam
Speaker 3: that's been mined before. But second, you're changing and you're
Speaker 3: getting older, and that's a that's a really amazing experience
Speaker 3: because well, I I suppose what's happened to me is
Speaker 3: you become aware of just how vast things are. You know,
Speaker 3: you're not going to get it in a novel, maybe
Speaker 3: you can hint at it. So there's a pressure of
Speaker 3: getting older. You feel like you should be getting wiser,
Speaker 3: but actually you're getting dumber. So there's a lot of
Speaker 3: kind of coalescing things that make the cunning even more important,
Speaker 3: I think, and again defining cunning as how can I
Speaker 3: get that ball through the hoop? How can I actually
Speaker 3: write a book at this age and at this stage
Speaker 3: it still will speak to people's That's a big one.
Speaker 2: Does part of that capture the thought process going into
Speaker 2: Lincoln in about it? Where you'll make it work? Stupid
Speaker 2: to yourself? Was the novel that that was an explicit
Speaker 2: thing that you hadn't done, that you wanted to try.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I made that contract with myself. I said,
Speaker 3: you're a person on a moment where you're afraid because
Speaker 3: you're going to have to leave a lot of your
Speaker 3: familiar gifts at the door. Are you willing to do that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right? But and I said, okay, but I'm
Speaker 3: only gonna do it for six months and then if
Speaker 3: it's not working, I'm going to bail. Okay, Yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 3: you know, because no one will know, no one will
Speaker 3: notice that you've been working on it. I was feeling
Speaker 3: a bit cornered, I think, you know, but Tend to
Speaker 3: December had been successful, and I kind of knew what
Speaker 3: I had done in that book like tricks wise and
Speaker 3: you know, technically and stuff. And it was getting a
Speaker 3: little bit claustrophobic in there. You know, I couldn't quite
Speaker 3: turn anywhere without finding something I've already done. And so
Speaker 3: when that Lincoln book presented, I thought, Okay, on the
Speaker 3: on the plus side, you're gonna have to learn all
Speaker 3: new tricks, and on the negative side, you're gonna have
Speaker 3: to learn all new tricks. Uh. And so it was
Speaker 3: a really nice feeling to kind of say, all right,
Speaker 3: I'll take I'll be happy to take that risk, and
Speaker 3: if it blows up my career in a bad way,
Speaker 3: it was worth a try, better than solidifying or wilting.
Speaker 3: But then the pisser is that continues. It's a never
Speaker 3: ending challenge, but it's such a nice one at sixty
Speaker 3: four because there's not too many other areas of your
Speaker 3: life where you're an adolescent. You know, you've got bills
Speaker 3: to pay and you've got a routine and you know,
Speaker 3: but in this one area you really not only get
Speaker 3: to it. You have to try your best to see
Speaker 3: the world fresh. And you can, you actually can, but
Speaker 3: it's not easy.
Speaker 2: You know, do you have a current new frontier that
Speaker 2: you're trying to approach as an adolescent again. I'll just
Speaker 2: say I do exciting a soap opera.
Speaker 3: You say, yeah, yeah, well with sock puppets.
Speaker 2: I'm already impatient for it. Hurry up, just make it work.
Speaker 3: Well, first they have to make the sock puppets, which
Speaker 3: is a new skill for me. And you know, now
Speaker 3: it's always it's always fun and there's always you know,
Speaker 3: there's just it's life is so crazy, like the process
Speaker 3: of getting older is. I'm finding it kind of terrifying
Speaker 3: and thrilling. It It's like, wow, I did not realize,
Speaker 3: you know, I think I didn't realize when I was
Speaker 3: young that when old, I would be just as alive.
Speaker 3: You know, you think, well, by sixty four, you only
Speaker 3: are a quarter there anymore. But no, in fact you're
Speaker 3: there and you know, pretty interesting seats.
Speaker 2: I am very excited and feel very privileged You've been
Speaker 2: able to watch you test out those new seats at
Speaker 2: each stage, and I look forward to the next ones.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: George Saunder's latest collection of short stories is Liberation Day.
Speaker 2: That's out now.
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