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Welcome to Wonder Cabinet.

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I'm Anne Strainchamps.

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And I'm Steve Paulson.

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Picture a dying man, a luxurious bedroom,

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and a visiting angel crash-landing in the nick of time.

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And here he was, a tiny crimped fellow in an immense mahogany bed.

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I was not too late.

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Before me lay a person who had not willed himself into this world

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and was now being taken out of it by force.

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Soon it would come.

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Accompanied by disbelief and panic,

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and he would find himself on the wrong side of a rapidly closing door.

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Everything he had ever known and loved out of reach.

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Over there.

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Beyond it.

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At such moments I especially cherish my task.

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I could comfort.

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I could.

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That's George Saunders reading from his new novel, Vigil.

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The story of a dying oil baron, the epitome of corporate greed and climate denial.

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And the question is whether he should repent before he dies.

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Except he doesn't think he did anything wrong.

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So the angel has her work cut out for her.

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And it is going to be a test of wills at this moment of final reckoning.

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Heaven seems very far away.

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This is Saunders' second novel in a row about the afterlife.

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Steve, don't take this the wrong way, but why did you want to have him on Wonder Cabinet?

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Well, I wanted to know why he keeps writing ghost stories.

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I mean, he is clearly fascinated by the big existential questions of what happens when we die.

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He's also a Buddhist, he grew up Catholic, and he has created entire metaphysical worlds filled with dead people.

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You read his earlier one, Lincoln in the Bardo, and that was teeming with ghosts.

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I mean, there were something like 166 different characters, most of them dead and definitely not happy about it.

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Especially the recently deceased who are stuck in the Bardo.

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So I wanted to know, is this just a literary device, you know, sort of a creative exercise that frees up his imagination?

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Or has Saunders had some personal experiences with any kind of otherworldly realms?

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And as you know, questions about the nature of consciousness are kind of my personal obsession.

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Oh, I know that well.

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Yes.

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And I think they have everything to do with wonder.

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Well, it can't hurt that he is very much in the tradition also of some of your other favorite authors, the great Russian writers.

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True.

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Saunders loves Tolstoy and Chekhov and Gogol.

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But I think the common thread is that he also really cares about the big moral questions.

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You know, how are we supposed to live?

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What is truth?

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And do we need to atone for our moral failings?

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So I felt like we could go pretty deep into some of these issues and the conversation got really personal for both of us.

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Let's listen.

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So I want to ask about this world of dead people that you have created.

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So most of your story is told by Jill Blaine, who is, I don't know if she's an angel or a ghost.

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She doesn't like labels.

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She's not mortal.

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I have to say she reminded me of Clarence, the angel in It's a Wonderful Life, you know, trying to get his wings.

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Because she has a mission, too.

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Yeah.

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And her mission is to comfort the dying.

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Can you tell me about her?

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Well, I mean, she died very young herself.

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And I think at the moment of her death, she had a kind of, I would think of it as like a denial experience where she couldn't believe that it was over.

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And in that moment, she kind of inhabited the person who was responsible for her death and had this kind of big philosophical insight that's sort of inspired her to stick around since 1976.

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So the book is kind of told from her point of view.

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And I think gradually we start to see that maybe she's not exactly a reliable narrator.

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She doesn't have a lot of self-awareness.

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But she's a sweetheart.

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And I kind of fell in love with her.

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So the dying man who she's trying to comfort is this guy named K.J. Boone, this old oil tycoon, very powerful guy, the villain of your story, I think it's fair to say.

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You would acknowledge he's the villain, right?

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He is.

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He doesn't think so.

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And we're mostly in his head.

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But, yeah, I think he's not a great guy.

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Right.

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I mean, he was the embodiment of corporate greed and the primary denier of climate change when it mattered.

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You know, back decades ago when there was debate about this and he was out front saying it's a hoax and he's proud of that.

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So the question, sort of the central question of the book is should he repent for his sins before he dies?

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Why was that a meaningful question for you?

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Well, I think because it's kind of every moment for everybody.

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I mean, he's a particularly bad guy and he's in a particularly rough fix because it's the last couple hours of his life.

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But I think in every moment I've come to feel that one of the big sins is denial.

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You know, are you in an honest relation to the moment you're in?

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And it's not as easy as it sounds, of course.

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So I think that was what interested me about him.

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And then also, you know, I write pretty intuitively.

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And so sometimes books get layered in ways I didn't expect.

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So in this one it was kind of interesting to see two things that I actually believe in my heart directly in contradiction.

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So one is Jill thinks that we should be infinitely merciful given the fact that, you know, none of us chose to be who we are in the womb.

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And even our ability to alter ourselves is somewhat predetermined.

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So I believe that.

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And I had some early experiences in Catholic grade school that made me think that.

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But also, you know, we're in this world.

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And so in a relative sense, if someone's misbehaving, you've got to correct them.

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And that's part of being a virtuous person.

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So it was fun to have those two ideas and embodied to him, this guy who's undeniably a bad dude.

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Yeah.

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So one of the questions that comes up, I mean, that Jill says on various occasions is that the reason she wants to comfort him is there's no point in him trying to repent for his sins.

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And she, I mean, there's this word inevitability that comes up, sort of the idea that once your character is formed, you're kind of, you're going to go that way.

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Which is sort of an excuse, essentially, for, you know, okay, Boone is, he was going to do what he was going to do.

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And there's no point in trying to get him to confess.

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There are other angels who think otherwise, who say he should confess.

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What was that tension for you?

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I mean, it seems like you were wrestling with the question.

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I still am.

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I mean, I think one of the things that I think I'm learning as a writer is you can put certain questions into play and not exactly weigh in with any kind of final judgment.

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So in a book like this, there's six or seven rhetorical presences all making their best case.

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And I just walk away while they're fighting.

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I mean, that, you know, that Chekhovian idea that you don't have to solve a problem.

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You just have to formulate it correctly.

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But for me, I think one thing that came up was, does it matter if he repents?

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Because he's, you know, he's minutes away from death.

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And I thought of this beautiful Tolstoy story called The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

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And in that one, there's a guy who is not quite as bad, but he's got an issue with, he's a very conformist person.

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His whole life, he's just tried to be like everybody else.

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And in the end, that meant that he didn't have much real connection with his family and people around him.

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And so, very moving because at the very end, he's in such pain.

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And Tolstoy based the story on a neighbor of his who supposedly screamed for the last three days of his life.

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And I think Tolstoy was wondering, well, what would do that?

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So there's a physical pain, but it's also the pain that he can't figure out what he should have done differently in his life.

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And at the very end, there's a moment where he says sort of to God, all right, okay, maybe I didn't live in the right way.

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And he sits with that for about a day.

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And then a day later, he says, but if I didn't live in the right way, there must be a right way.

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And so gradually, he gets some relief from his pain just by this reasoning.

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So with this guy, K.J. Boone, I thought, well, it actually does matter.

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Even if you're a terrible guy and in the very last moments of your life, you repent, I think it matters.

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It certainly matters to you.

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And I think in some larger sense, it's right, you know, to do so if you can.

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So I want to switch gears and talk about death because it's obviously a subject that you are very interested in.

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I mean, your last two novels are filled with people who were either dying or are dead, Lincoln in the Bardo and your new one, Vigil.

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And there's a story that I've heard that might explain some of this, that you were in a plane and you thought you were going to crash?

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Yeah, it was a plane coming out of Chicago and a seagull flew into the engine.

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But they didn't know that and they didn't tell us.

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So it was just a feeling of flying along, reading a magazine, and suddenly it was like a minivan had hit the side of the thing.

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And the plane started dropping and people were screaming.

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The flight attendants fell silent and it was just a terrifying thing.

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And I thought, oh, I've got to get out of this body.

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That was really the feeling of it.

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But you were thinking you have to get out of this body.

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Yes.

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That's an interesting response.

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No, I mean, it was a visceral thing.

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The seat back right there was the thing that was going to do it.

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And it was a very kind of humbling because I always thought I'd be the guy who would lead everyone in singing kumbaya or something.

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But I was not in any – I couldn't even remember my name, honestly.

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It was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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So that was a big deal.

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But actually my death thing was long before that.

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Even as a little kid, I would be in our grandparents' house and I'd hear them breathing from the next room and think, oh, my God.

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They were ancient.

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They were 40 or something.

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But this could end.

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This will end.

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So you've been sort of worried about death or maybe obsessed with death basically your whole life.

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I think so.

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I'm aware of it.

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And I actually think it's – I mean, as a Buddhist, I think it's kind of healthy because it's true.

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And it could happen.

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There's no promises.

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So it's kind of like if you were at a really great party and someone sidled up and said, you've got to get kicked out of here.

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But I can't tell you when.

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And I don't really think I'm obsessed with death.

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But maybe in my limitation as a writer, if I go there, I am more able to talk about life.

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Did that experience on the plane when you thought you were going to crash, did that change anything for you?

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For about a day.

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I mean, the next day was very, very sweet.

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No, I mean, it's kind of the same experience as when you go to a funeral of somebody you care about.

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For a couple of days, you're wide awake and you think, why am I sleepwalking through this life?

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But I think maybe we can't stay there full time.

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But the other thing was I was meditating like crazy at that time.

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And I still was terrified.

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So that made me think, oh, maybe you're not such a great meditator.

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I need to work on that a little harder.

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So I want to ask you about ghost stories.

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A few years ago, I was talking with Lorrie Moore, your fellow writer.

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And she happened to say that one of her favorite teaching assignments was to ask her students to write a ghost story.

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And so she said it because it opened up this imaginative space, you know, would take you to unexpected places.

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And I'm sort of asking her, you know, what she had in mind.

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And she said, well, have you ever had the experience of what felt like to have a visitation?

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And I have, actually.

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I've had a few where I've had these very powerful dreams where basically, you know, dead people, people who had been close to me came to me.

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And they felt very real to me.

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And it's sort of stayed with me ever since Lorrie said that.

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Does that resonate for you in any way, either as a writer as part of the creative act or because you've had some weird experiences that you can't explain?

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Yes, on both.

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On the writerly level, for me, it was a big milepost in my development when I could figure out how to disrupt my natural realist urge.

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So I was kind of a Hemingway imitator when I was young.

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And it was just, it wasn't enough.

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And as soon as I started setting the stories in theme parks or putting ghosts in them, it just made them automatically comic.

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You know, just as a, almost as a self-protective thing to say, okay, put a ghost in it.

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And I can see that if, you know, if you naturally gravitate towards more sort of realistic kinds of writing, it's going to knock you out of that, I would assume.

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As soon as you say, you know, you say, Jim and Margaret sat at the table on a cool autumn afternoon, her dead father drifted by.

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Suddenly, you've got to do something with that.

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You know, you can't be quotidian.

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But on the second point, I did have a visitation from my grandfather just after he died.

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And it's the only one in my life, which is why I kind of really believe in it.

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And it was just very profound, not scary.

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And it was just comfort.

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He was just saying, I'm good.

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Don't worry about it.

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And he also was kind of saying, you're going to be okay, you know, which is, and it was very, not flashy, very brief.

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The minimum amount of communication from a formalist kind of thing.

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But I remember even during it, I thought, am I asleep?

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And I'm not, you know.

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And it didn't, it wasn't entirely brief, you know.

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So have you read this book by Patricia Pearson?

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And I think, I'm going to get the title wrong, but I think it's called Opening Heaven's Gate, I think.

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No, I haven't.

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Well, she had a, her sister had a profound dream experience.

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Well, it was with her father who was alive, but he died during the night while she was having a dream.

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And he came to her and she had cancer and told her everything's going to be all right.

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Gave her a very long, beautiful vision of this.

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Then she woke up happy and found out that he had passed in the night.

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And so Patricia Pearson, the sister of this woman, said, that's amazing because my sister is not susceptible to that.

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Let me use my skills as a science writer to research this.

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And she found that 50% of people, when you interviewed them in a way that they would be frank about it, have had experiences, visitations from across that border.

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You know, so she said it's not, it's actually not supernatural.

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It's natural, but we are just a little embarrassed to admit it.

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Well, it might be supernatural.

217
00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:13,120
Yeah.

218
00:13:13,180 --> 00:13:14,520
I mean, if you want to try to explain.

219
00:13:14,520 --> 00:13:16,660
But if it's happening 50% of the time, it's natural.

220
00:13:16,860 --> 00:13:17,320
I mean, you know.

221
00:13:17,460 --> 00:13:17,660
That's true.

222
00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:25,680
Well, I mean, it's interesting that you say that for you, your experience was comforting because in these dreams that I had, they were all comforting in a way.

223
00:13:25,800 --> 00:13:34,160
And one was I'd been very close to my grandparents and my grandfather died a few years earlier and then my grandmother just died.

224
00:13:34,280 --> 00:13:37,540
And, you know, I was in their house, which I had spent a lot of time in.

225
00:13:37,860 --> 00:13:42,000
And my grandmother came and said, Scott, it's going to be okay.

226
00:13:42,000 --> 00:13:45,760
I mean, to her husband and like, I'm going to come and join you.

227
00:13:45,860 --> 00:13:46,880
And I was witnessing that.

228
00:13:46,880 --> 00:13:50,940
And it was like, and so it's just sort of, as I say, it felt so great.

229
00:13:51,000 --> 00:13:51,820
I can explain it away.

230
00:13:51,920 --> 00:13:52,320
It's a dream.

231
00:13:52,460 --> 00:13:52,600
Yeah.

232
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:58,900
But I think, you know, we make that division between mind and body and sense and supernatural.

233
00:13:59,120 --> 00:14:07,100
But in fact, if there was some dimension that we don't know about, how else would it tell us, you know, but in dreams or in visitations?

234
00:14:07,100 --> 00:14:12,600
And also, I was thinking, my grandmother came to me in a dream a few years after she passed away.

235
00:14:12,720 --> 00:14:14,200
And I was very close to her - lovely woman.

236
00:14:14,580 --> 00:14:16,660
I said, Grandma, I'm so sorry you passed away.

237
00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:17,660
She goes, that's okay.

238
00:14:17,680 --> 00:14:18,840
You're going to be dead within a year.

239
00:14:20,160 --> 00:14:20,480
Wow.

240
00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:21,980
So that was a pretty charged year.

241
00:14:22,040 --> 00:14:22,720
Oh, my God.

242
00:14:22,780 --> 00:14:24,180
I would be totally freaked out if I heard that.

243
00:14:24,180 --> 00:14:24,680
Yeah, I would.

244
00:14:24,900 --> 00:14:27,300
And then I just, I wrote down the date, you know.

245
00:14:27,820 --> 00:14:30,360
But so I thought, well, that was just an errant dream.

246
00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:33,820
But it was like, you better pay attention this year.

247
00:14:34,340 --> 00:14:35,160
And I did.

248
00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:36,500
I paid close attention that year.

249
00:14:37,000 --> 00:14:41,840
But, I mean, you know, for me, the books are kind of, I don't know what they are when I start.

250
00:14:41,940 --> 00:14:44,860
In other words, I never start because I'm fascinated with ghosts.

251
00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:46,060
You know, if a book.

252
00:14:46,280 --> 00:14:49,440
But it's striking that, I mean, your last two novels are about ghosts.

253
00:14:49,460 --> 00:14:49,820
Yeah, yeah.

254
00:14:49,820 --> 00:14:51,240
And a lot of my stories have them in there, too.

255
00:14:51,580 --> 00:14:57,800
So, I mean, on one level, it's just a way of shaking the table and going, don't fall into the habit of realism since you don't do that very well.

256
00:14:58,320 --> 00:15:02,600
But, of course, once you start talking about the dead, you're talking about the big, you know, the big question.

257
00:15:02,600 --> 00:15:06,220
And the finite nature of our time here is, to me, very beautiful.

258
00:15:06,480 --> 00:15:13,580
It's like, I mean, if you were here infinitely, suddenly the moral stakes go down and there's no real pressure.

259
00:15:13,900 --> 00:15:14,680
So, I am kind of interested.

260
00:15:14,680 --> 00:15:16,680
So, death kind of does give us meaning.

261
00:15:17,060 --> 00:15:17,840
I think so.

262
00:15:17,960 --> 00:15:18,560
I think, you know.

263
00:15:18,660 --> 00:15:20,340
I mean, it's certainly going to happen, they say.

264
00:15:20,460 --> 00:15:22,340
Not to us, but to most people.

265
00:15:24,300 --> 00:15:27,720
So, the name of our podcast is Wonder Cabinet.

266
00:15:27,720 --> 00:15:33,820
And I want to bring in sort of this idea of wonder to see if this is sort of meaningful in any way to you.

267
00:15:33,820 --> 00:15:37,120
And first, I'm interested in, you know, as a fiction writer.

268
00:15:37,200 --> 00:15:38,680
I mean, I'm not a fiction writer.

269
00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:44,360
I marvel at people who create imaginative stories, you know, wonder where do the characters come from?

270
00:15:44,460 --> 00:15:45,880
Where do sentences come from?

271
00:15:45,940 --> 00:15:47,900
Where do the ideas for the stories come from?

272
00:15:47,960 --> 00:15:55,240
It seems kind of like a magic trick to me and you especially because you are so wildly inventive in what you do.

273
00:15:55,240 --> 00:16:00,100
And so, is the experience of writing for you, is that an experience of wonder?

274
00:16:00,280 --> 00:16:01,040
Oh, every day.

275
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:02,500
Well, you're hoping so.

276
00:16:03,300 --> 00:16:07,160
Often, it starts in a pretty quotidian way, which is just reading what you read the day before.

277
00:16:07,600 --> 00:16:16,980
But for me, the wonder is you can be reading something and there's a certain mindset I try to get into, which is fairly quiet-minded and just attentive to the text.

278
00:16:17,120 --> 00:16:20,680
And there's a little bit of a hearing of it in your mind.

279
00:16:20,740 --> 00:16:22,100
I'm not saying it aloud, but I can hear it.

280
00:16:22,100 --> 00:16:28,840
But, okay, so you're scanning it that way and the wonder is suddenly something from somewhere corrects you.

281
00:16:29,460 --> 00:16:30,700
There's a phrase that needs to be cut.

282
00:16:31,320 --> 00:16:32,700
You just know it and you cut it.

283
00:16:33,020 --> 00:16:37,180
And then you keep reading and suddenly there's a little voice that utters a phrase that you need to put in.

284
00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:38,500
And you just put it in there.

285
00:16:38,780 --> 00:16:41,020
So, you're in relation to that, whatever that is.

286
00:16:41,120 --> 00:16:42,360
And it's a very delicate thing.

287
00:16:42,420 --> 00:16:43,540
You don't want to overpower it.

288
00:16:43,560 --> 00:16:45,940
You don't want to let it be unrestrained.

289
00:16:45,940 --> 00:16:49,880
So, that state of high attention is really, I crave it.

290
00:16:49,880 --> 00:16:57,980
But mostly because if I do that over and over and over, put the changes in, do it again, the thing starts to have a will of its own.

291
00:16:58,640 --> 00:17:02,880
And it's a more interesting being than I am, than this person is.

292
00:17:03,180 --> 00:17:10,819
So, over many, many iterations of a book, it starts to reveal some patterning and some truth that you didn't know you had in you.

293
00:17:10,819 --> 00:17:15,220
And that, for me, is wonder, you know, because I don't know really, I call it the subconscious.

294
00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:17,560
I don't know if that's correct, but it's reliable.

295
00:17:17,900 --> 00:17:25,140
And it's so hope-giving because it means that I'm not trapped in George, you know, the guy who gets up every day.

296
00:17:25,240 --> 00:17:32,940
But either I have in me or I have access to something that's much more everything, really, you know.

297
00:17:32,940 --> 00:17:36,440
So, I mean, the logical explanation is that it's somewhere in your subconscious.

298
00:17:36,880 --> 00:17:40,320
But it's interesting that you said maybe it's coming from somewhere else.

299
00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:42,800
I mean, even that you're entertaining that possibility.

300
00:17:43,140 --> 00:17:45,860
Well, I think in consciousness studies now, there's a couple of theories.

301
00:17:45,980 --> 00:17:48,480
One is that consciousness is what your brain makes.

302
00:17:48,680 --> 00:17:50,080
The other one is it's what it receives.

303
00:17:50,200 --> 00:17:50,360
Right.

304
00:17:50,460 --> 00:17:51,480
It's like a radio.

305
00:17:51,640 --> 00:17:51,840
Right.

306
00:17:51,940 --> 00:17:52,120
Right.

307
00:17:52,120 --> 00:17:55,480
Our brain is like a radio and, you know, we sort of can receive the signals.

308
00:17:55,780 --> 00:17:55,800
Yeah.

309
00:17:55,900 --> 00:18:00,680
The other feeling that I have sometimes had is that the story is perfect in one's mind.

310
00:18:01,100 --> 00:18:02,760
But when you go to tell it, it breaks.

311
00:18:02,860 --> 00:18:06,360
It falls out and it breaks on a table into 100 shards and or 1,000 shards.

312
00:18:06,680 --> 00:18:08,000
But then you forget all that.

313
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:14,520
And then the rewriting is finding little parts that fit together and through rewriting, reassembling this perfect thing.

314
00:18:14,880 --> 00:18:17,620
And sometimes there's a shard from another story and you put that over here.

315
00:18:18,180 --> 00:18:20,680
But that's a feeling I've had many times that how in the world,

316
00:18:20,680 --> 00:18:25,560
this paragraph that I cut three years ago is now perfect on page 80, you know.

317
00:18:25,920 --> 00:18:29,320
So I don't understand it, but it's a very beautiful feeling.

318
00:18:29,420 --> 00:18:34,940
And it gives me a sense of hope and wonder because it sort of defies limitations.

319
00:18:34,940 --> 00:18:39,720
You know, at 67, you're like, yeah, I pretty much know what I'm going to do in every situation, you know.

320
00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:41,040
Well, in this one, you don't.

321
00:18:41,140 --> 00:18:42,120
And that's kind of exciting.

322
00:18:42,400 --> 00:18:42,500
Yeah.

323
00:18:42,780 --> 00:18:45,220
So I want to ask about wonder in another context.

324
00:18:45,260 --> 00:18:49,620
And this is about death, which to me is the most mysterious experience.

325
00:18:49,620 --> 00:18:54,040
There can possibly be, you know, what happens when we die?

326
00:18:54,120 --> 00:18:55,920
What happens possibly after we die?

327
00:18:56,080 --> 00:18:58,380
And it seems like profoundly mysterious.

328
00:18:58,560 --> 00:19:00,340
The ultimate experience of wonder, I think.

329
00:19:00,700 --> 00:19:00,860
Yeah.

330
00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:01,320
Yeah.

331
00:19:01,860 --> 00:19:03,920
I, you know, have you heard anything?

332
00:19:04,080 --> 00:19:04,420
I don't know.

333
00:19:04,420 --> 00:19:16,200
I mean, the only thing I know is, you know, you, you, I think these spiritual traditions exist because there are people who in different ways can or have spanned that, you know, whether it's your near-death experiences or in the Tibetan tradition.

334
00:19:16,200 --> 00:19:19,600
There's something called a delog, somebody who actually goes there and comes back.

335
00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:27,620
But the only thing I feel like I know is that the cultivation of one's mind now is probably important, you know.

336
00:19:27,660 --> 00:19:35,200
So if you have a certain kind of anxiety or neurosis or negativity now, you'll probably have some version of that in the last moments.

337
00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:40,300
And I feel, even if only in that transitional state, there's some of your mind is involved in that.

338
00:19:40,360 --> 00:19:41,240
You don't just click off.

339
00:19:41,240 --> 00:19:44,420
So I think that's what I've gleaned from, certainly from Buddhist practice.

340
00:19:44,500 --> 00:19:46,840
And I think if you look at Catholicism, there's a lot of that too.

341
00:19:47,480 --> 00:19:47,920
So...

342
00:19:47,920 --> 00:19:50,000
Well, and you mentioned near-death experiences.

343
00:19:50,360 --> 00:19:57,300
And, I mean, it's striking that one of the subjects of your novel, Vigil, is it's sort of the sense of a life review.

344
00:19:57,560 --> 00:20:00,180
I mean, you're going back and you're thinking about, you know, your failings.

345
00:20:00,180 --> 00:20:06,740
And one of the very common experiences that people report in near-death experiences is they have this life review.

346
00:20:06,960 --> 00:20:09,980
In some cases, like, their whole lives flash before them.

347
00:20:09,980 --> 00:20:12,060
And we're talking a different sense of time here.

348
00:20:12,300 --> 00:20:17,820
So it's like, you know, all of your life can, you know, reveal itself in clock time, a very short period of time.

349
00:20:18,720 --> 00:20:24,580
And there's this sense of moral accountability in these experiences, which is absolutely...

350
00:20:24,580 --> 00:20:25,780
I find that absolutely fascinating.

351
00:20:25,980 --> 00:20:27,560
Like, where does that come from?

352
00:20:27,560 --> 00:20:32,420
I sometimes think of it as, you know, you've got your inner self all your life because how could you not be?

353
00:20:32,900 --> 00:20:39,500
And then maybe in that brief second, you get out from behind that smudged window that is self.

354
00:20:39,500 --> 00:20:41,080
And you see things as they are.

355
00:20:41,260 --> 00:20:47,180
And you just have that moment of juxtaposition like, oh, here's myself infused with total godliness.

356
00:20:47,500 --> 00:20:48,800
And here's what I actually did.

357
00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:51,320
And, you know, maybe that's your heaven and hell.

358
00:20:51,540 --> 00:20:53,400
If you did pretty well, you're, oh, that's good.

359
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,220
And if you didn't, you just much regret it.

360
00:20:55,220 --> 00:21:08,020
But I think the one thing I'm pretty sure of is, and this is in the Buddhist teachings, and it's in the near-death experiences, the idea that when you leave the body behind, you get a little bit unbounded, which can be good and probably could be bad as well.

361
00:21:08,060 --> 00:21:14,820
The Buddhists say that when you're in a body with your mind, then all the neurotic qualities of the mind are somewhat tamed by the physicality.

362
00:21:14,820 --> 00:21:17,700
So they say you're like a horse, a wild horse tied to a tree.

363
00:21:18,560 --> 00:21:20,260
Well, when you die, they cut the rope.

364
00:21:20,380 --> 00:21:21,740
And your mind is still wild.

365
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:24,960
And it's wild and the flavor was wild in life.

366
00:21:25,180 --> 00:21:26,300
But it's supersized.

367
00:21:26,500 --> 00:21:33,300
So that can be a little, you know, if you were a big Kardashians fan, suddenly the afterlife is populated with the Kardashians accusing you of things.

368
00:21:33,300 --> 00:21:38,060
I mean, it does kind of, it raises the question of the soul.

369
00:21:38,340 --> 00:21:44,720
If I'm trying to understand this idea that, you know, you have this life review, you know, your moral failings are flashing.

370
00:21:44,900 --> 00:21:50,240
I mean, it's just, I mean, we're talking, I mean, this is soul talk here, which is not a popular word anymore.

371
00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:55,260
I mean, if you're not a devoutly religious person, does the word soul sort of, does that mean?

372
00:21:55,260 --> 00:21:56,120
Not so much anymore.

373
00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:57,900
I think it's, for me, it's mind talk.

374
00:21:57,980 --> 00:22:00,400
Like the mind is a thing and it's a powerful thing.

375
00:22:00,440 --> 00:22:01,760
It's not just brain, I don't think.

376
00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:08,680
So my view is you're sort of, at birth, you get beautifully bound into this one particular body, this mental phenomenon.

377
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:11,900
And you're there all along and you just think that's the world, you know.

378
00:22:12,360 --> 00:22:17,940
And then at the end, you get out of that little jail and suddenly, I don't know what you see, but it's not that.

379
00:22:18,080 --> 00:22:26,280
And I know even from doing hallucinogens, like one of the experiences is, oh my God, I've got a particular set of visors on.

380
00:22:26,740 --> 00:22:29,400
I think that's a universe, but actually it's just my visors.

381
00:22:29,400 --> 00:22:33,680
And sometimes, like the one time I've done that, those things dropped away a little bit.

382
00:22:33,860 --> 00:22:36,460
And that was kind of beautiful, a little terrifying also.

383
00:22:36,700 --> 00:22:39,780
But I'm guessing something like that would happen, but I really, I don't know.

384
00:22:39,920 --> 00:22:40,840
I mean, I like that line about it.

385
00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:43,460
Well, speaking of my own hallucinogenic experiences.

386
00:22:43,800 --> 00:22:44,280
Yeah, yeah.

387
00:22:44,360 --> 00:22:45,460
I mean, yes.

388
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:47,940
I mean, sort of my sense of self has dropped away.

389
00:22:48,040 --> 00:22:50,580
And going back to what you said is the brain is a kind of receiver.

390
00:22:50,580 --> 00:22:55,740
That was Aldous Huxley's theory that, you know, it's like in our normal waking state, we have these filters on.

391
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:58,360
We don't have access to that other stuff.

392
00:22:58,660 --> 00:23:01,640
So, well, you mentioned sort of Buddhist metaphysics.

393
00:23:01,820 --> 00:23:04,060
Are you familiar with the phenomenon of Tukdom?

394
00:23:04,620 --> 00:23:05,340
I don't think so.

395
00:23:05,500 --> 00:23:05,660
Oh.

396
00:23:06,100 --> 00:23:09,440
So, very experienced lamas will die.

397
00:23:09,640 --> 00:23:16,340
I mean, they are clinically dead, but they can lie in state without any bodily decomposition.

398
00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:19,080
And people have been noticing, like, it can go on for weeks.

399
00:23:19,160 --> 00:23:20,800
Yeah, I've heard that called Delog Phenomenon.

400
00:23:21,060 --> 00:23:21,360
Oh, okay.

401
00:23:21,560 --> 00:23:22,600
A different word for it.

402
00:23:22,600 --> 00:23:22,840
Yeah, yeah.

403
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:28,160
Which is just so, I mean, if you're talking about sort of the mysteries of death, it's like, wow.

404
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:33,940
Well, I've read some of those accounts, and the thing that really interests me is that, okay, so we can say that death is a mental phenomenon.

405
00:23:33,940 --> 00:23:37,380
When you die, you have a private mental phenomenon, and it could be anything, okay?

406
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:46,220
But in these accounts, the travelers will meet the emanations of other dead people who will tell them things that they will then take back.

407
00:23:46,340 --> 00:23:47,560
And to real life and find is true.

408
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:48,700
So, that's different.

409
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:52,100
That's actually a commons area, you know, as opposed to a strictly private.

410
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:53,140
So, that's pretty interesting.

411
00:23:53,440 --> 00:23:54,880
So, it sounds like you're open.

412
00:23:55,060 --> 00:24:05,040
I mean, I know you kind of didn't go for the word supernatural here, but you're open to the idea that there is maybe consciousness that extends beyond just our individual brains.

413
00:24:05,040 --> 00:24:09,940
I think that, I mean, I think we're in a very limited, we're in jail.

414
00:24:10,180 --> 00:24:11,120
You know, the self is a jail.

415
00:24:11,420 --> 00:24:22,860
And so, and, you know, neuroscientists are now saying, I read something from Trungpa Rinpoche, and he said, every human experience, joy, happiness, resentment, a dinner, it's all a memory.

416
00:24:23,460 --> 00:24:25,500
Which neuroscientists are now finding is true.

417
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:30,240
It's just a construction that the senses make, an approximation, and we go, oh, it's a restaurant.

418
00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:39,220
So, that's kind of exciting, and I think it does mean that it would be shocking if, it would be shocking if the way we perceive the world was right.

419
00:24:39,460 --> 00:24:40,820
That would be really weird, you know.

420
00:24:40,940 --> 00:24:49,880
So, we struggle around here on Earth, and we have these crazy visors on, and I think that at the end we, you know, someone takes them off for us very kindly.

421
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:55,440
Does this way of thinking, does that feed into how you think about composing stories?

422
00:24:55,440 --> 00:25:01,360
It's like a, maybe a bigger fictional universe if you sort of acknowledge there's other stuff, you know.

423
00:25:01,360 --> 00:25:01,560
Yeah.

424
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,880
The consciousness is bigger than just our quotidian reality.

425
00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:05,080
Yeah.

426
00:25:05,220 --> 00:25:10,920
Well, I think, I mean, for me, that is the compositional process to try to tap into some little touch of that other thing.

427
00:25:11,340 --> 00:25:20,380
I kind of find myself longing for narratives that at least suggest that quotidian reality is sort of a sweet but kind of a joke, you know.

428
00:25:20,380 --> 00:25:27,900
So, there's, I keep a quote from Ed Ruscha on my desk, and it says something like, every artist dreams of opening the gates of heaven.

429
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:35,440
I kind of burned out on, you know, sort of Hemingway-esque realism when I was younger, and I still love Chekhov realism, but I can't do it.

430
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:47,500
So, I think for me, it's just to say, yeah, you know, let's try to, just almost like a book could be a love letter to my reader saying, let's just remind ourselves that the way things feel every day is only part of the story.

431
00:25:47,500 --> 00:26:00,000
Which is good news, because it means we could feel more love, we could feel more sympathy, and our natural inclinations to imagine ourselves as separate from other people and maybe in opposition to them is just a construct, and we could maybe get past it.

432
00:26:00,060 --> 00:26:02,040
I think fiction has a little tiny role to play in that.

433
00:26:02,700 --> 00:26:04,500
I'm talking with George Saunders.

434
00:26:04,900 --> 00:26:09,100
So, how can a novelist help us think about really complicated moral ideas?

435
00:26:09,780 --> 00:26:11,760
That's where we'll go next, after the break.

436
00:26:17,500 --> 00:26:47,480
Thank you.

437
00:26:48,480 --> 00:26:51,860
Hi, it's Anne. I am so glad you're joining us.

438
00:26:52,220 --> 00:26:56,740
We have some amazing guests lined up for the weeks ahead, and I'm really excited about them.

439
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:02,700
And here's a tip. Maybe you know this already, but if you follow Wonder Cabinet on Apple Podcasts,

440
00:27:02,940 --> 00:27:08,340
those new episodes will show up automatically, like a little weekly gift in your podcast feed.

441
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:09,640
I hope you like it.

442
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:18,840
This is Wonder Cabinet. I'm Steve Paulson, and we're back with George Saunders, talking

443
00:27:18,840 --> 00:27:23,760
about moral accountability in fiction, and what he makes of that Dwight Garner review.

444
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:29,960
So I want to come back to your story, Vigil, and come back to Boone, the villain in the

445
00:27:29,960 --> 00:27:35,360
story. And near the end of the book, he's being visited by various people, dead and

446
00:27:35,360 --> 00:27:39,120
living. One of them is his daughter. His daughter clearly loves him.

447
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:45,120
But is also thinking, maybe he needs to be held to account. And there's a passage in

448
00:27:45,120 --> 00:27:47,280
there that I'd love to have you read that gets at that.

449
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:56,520
Is it here? Yeah, so she goes to visit him. Daddy, she whispered, do you have any idea what

450
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:01,900
people are saying about you on TV and the internet and in so many articles and books and podcasts

451
00:28:01,900 --> 00:28:09,420
lately? Is it true? All of it? Any of it? If so, maybe you were a darker, trickier bastard

452
00:28:09,420 --> 00:28:19,520
than I ever, not bastard, guy, not darker, complicated, not trickier, secretive, a much

453
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:24,600
more complicated, secretive guy than I ever. If so, if you did know and did it anyway, which

454
00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:29,520
if I'm being frank, I feel was probably, yes, the case, it breaks my heart. And I have to

455
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:33,840
say, because I want, if we are really parting, for us to do so from a place of total honesty,

456
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:40,440
it disappoints me, Daddy. Disappoints me greatly. I just feel really let down by you. I always

457
00:28:40,440 --> 00:28:43,980
saw you as someone who tried to do what was right, no matter what. So this is a truly hard

458
00:28:43,980 --> 00:28:48,780
pill for me to... Pausing for a look down at my charge, she noted that his hair, badly

459
00:28:48,780 --> 00:28:53,440
in need of cutting, was just a little bit in the front there, shaking or quaking or whatever,

460
00:28:54,440 --> 00:29:00,040
just slightly moving with the motion of his frail old body. Now the shaking stopped and he

461
00:29:00,040 --> 00:29:04,580
went completely still and it occurred to her that, good Christ, she'd killed him with

462
00:29:04,580 --> 00:29:10,240
this selfish last minute bitch fest. Then his lips slightly moved as if he were trying

463
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:15,680
to moisten them. Oh, thank God. Lord, forget it. They could talk about it later. Or not?

464
00:29:18,620 --> 00:29:22,640
Now we should say, I mean, we're talking about sort of big, serious ideas. It's a very funny

465
00:29:22,640 --> 00:29:28,020
novel. And I have to say, Boone, your villain, he's a great character. I mean, he's vulgar.

466
00:29:28,020 --> 00:29:34,240
He's not going to take any shit from all these people who are trying to sort of set him on

467
00:29:34,240 --> 00:29:39,420
the right path. He's basically twitting people like you and me who are really pissed off at

468
00:29:39,420 --> 00:29:43,580
him because he was a big climate denier. Did you have fun writing that character?

469
00:29:43,580 --> 00:29:46,960
A lot of fun, yeah. I used to work in the oil business when I was young. And so there

470
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:53,580
was a lot of that kind of hidden energy. I worked in Asia in the oil fields in the 80s. And

471
00:29:53,580 --> 00:29:58,560
even then, there was a little bit of anti-oil sentiment. And I went to a place called the

472
00:29:58,560 --> 00:30:02,400
School of Mines in Colorado, which was very oil-based. So within that culture, there was

473
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:07,620
a lot of defensive kind of positions. And how did you get to the protest?

474
00:30:09,440 --> 00:30:13,540
And they used to say, one of the things, it was a popular bumper sticker was,

475
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:18,660
ban mining. Let the bastards freeze in the dark. So as a young guy, kind of an Ayn Rand

476
00:30:18,660 --> 00:30:22,600
guy, I was very proud to be in the oil fields. And it was an incredibly beautiful, exotic

477
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:27,420
experience. And it's not easy. There's lots of amazing people exerting themselves in incredible

478
00:30:27,420 --> 00:30:31,440
ways. So I could definitely channel that in him. I mean, I was working in tradition of

479
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:37,260
Christmas Carol and a couple of Tolstoy stories of repentance at the last minute. And of course,

480
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:41,200
as a writer, you're always thinking, well, does it ever go the other way? Are there ever

481
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:46,280
people who are so entrenched in their denial that they just stay there? And I'm like, of course,

482
00:30:46,280 --> 00:30:49,900
there have to be, you know, there have to be. So it was kind of fun to just sort of write

483
00:30:49,900 --> 00:30:52,120
for a couple of years and see which one he decided to be.

484
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:57,520
Yeah. Yeah. There's obviously a politics to all of this, you know, speaking of climate

485
00:30:57,520 --> 00:31:04,040
change and, you know, we're in this very fraught political moment right now. And this whole

486
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:10,500
question of whether people will speak out, will acknowledge their sins essentially. And to

487
00:31:10,500 --> 00:31:15,320
me, one of the great tragedies of our political culture, maybe it's every political culture is

488
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:20,980
that it so rarely happens when people in power do this. They have to know a lot of the time that

489
00:31:20,980 --> 00:31:26,360
what they're doing is wrong. And to me, the classic example is someone like Robert McNamara,

490
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:31,180
you know, one of the architects of the Vietnam War. Only later near the end of his life did he

491
00:31:31,180 --> 00:31:36,720
acknowledge it was a terrible blunder. And it's just like, it's so rare that someone, when they

492
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:42,120
still have power, when they still can do something, acknowledge that. And obviously, given our political

493
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:47,780
situation right now, you have to assume that a lot of people around Trump know that what they're

494
00:31:47,780 --> 00:31:51,600
doing is wrong. We know that they know that because they tell people off the record that

495
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:56,120
they feel that way. I don't know. I mean, for me, this book was interesting because that's exactly

496
00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:01,480
what I had to figure out for him. You could have a book where he's just a complete bastard. But I

497
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:06,420
don't think, I think people who do evil generally, you know, they're sociopaths, but I think they

498
00:32:06,420 --> 00:32:10,680
generally wake up in the morning thinking they're doing something good, or at least something

499
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:17,320
desirable. And that therein lies a trick. Because if you're this guy, you've spent your whole life

500
00:32:17,320 --> 00:32:22,000
in this position. Do you have the strength to get out of it at the very end? I don't know, you know.

501
00:32:22,180 --> 00:32:27,520
So I think the question of saying, let's put aside the kind of cliched, almost like movie villain,

502
00:32:27,940 --> 00:32:31,620
who's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love being evil. I've never met evil. I met some pretty

503
00:32:31,620 --> 00:32:35,880
rotten people. But I've never met someone who would say, I enjoy being evil. I know I'm evil

504
00:32:35,880 --> 00:32:41,900
up yours. I don't see that. I think people have systems of virtue that are insane. And they work

505
00:32:41,900 --> 00:32:47,500
within those systems of virtue. And maybe like McNamara at the end, it's interesting. I wonder

506
00:32:47,500 --> 00:32:51,720
what clicked in with him at that point. Because I think the habit is more to say, I didn't do anything

507
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:56,600
wrong. And the panic you would feel if somebody could convince you that you, it was totally wrong

508
00:32:56,600 --> 00:33:02,760
for you to be in radio. I mean, that would be, I was someone, actually, you know, on that plane,

509
00:33:03,020 --> 00:33:07,240
the incident we talked about, I didn't have the feeling that writing was bad. But I had zero,

510
00:33:07,440 --> 00:33:11,840
I didn't even think to take comfort in the fact that I'd written books, not even for a fraction

511
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:18,680
of a second. So that's a pretty terrifying thing to think. I mean, every day we get up and we have

512
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:24,220
some kind of comfort system that allows us to feel virtuous and therefore have a good day,

513
00:33:24,220 --> 00:33:29,400
you know. And it would be terrifying to me if at 80 years old, I saw abundant evidence that my

514
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:32,920
system had been wrong from the beginning. That would take an amazing amount of character to then

515
00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:38,740
say, like the Tolstoy character, maybe I have lived wrong. Okay. And what happens with him is

516
00:33:38,740 --> 00:33:44,280
breathtaking is he says, this little man who's never done anything original in his life says,

517
00:33:44,540 --> 00:33:50,140
all right then, if I was wrong, there must be a right. What is it? What is it? You know? And that,

518
00:33:50,140 --> 00:33:56,640
he, he opens up in the last probably 30 minutes of his life into almost this age. You know, he,

519
00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:01,140
he understands that his, like Jill, he understands that the only useful thing you can do is serve

520
00:34:01,140 --> 00:34:05,400
other people. And that's what he tries to do. But the tragedy is at that point, he's too far gone.

521
00:34:05,460 --> 00:34:09,840
He tries to say, forgive me, but he can't say it to his wife. He just says, fu ga.

522
00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:13,179
Tolstoy, that guy. Yeah.

523
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:17,639
Well, since you, you have referred to, you know, Tolstoy and Chekhov and, you know,

524
00:34:17,639 --> 00:34:21,920
the Russian writers that you love, I did go back and was reading some of your earlier book

525
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:26,940
about, you know, how to read the Russian writers, your book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. And

526
00:34:26,940 --> 00:34:31,780
you talked about what they did is they asked the big questions. And so I'm going to, I'm going to

527
00:34:31,780 --> 00:34:36,440
quote from your introduction here. How are we supposed to be living? What were we put here to

528
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:42,360
accomplish? What should we value? What is truth? And how might we recognize it? How can we feel peace

529
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:48,920
when some people have everything and others have nothing? Those are not usually the questions that

530
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:54,179
I think most fiction writers today at least deal with, but you do, obviously. I mean, you are like,

531
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:58,540
I don't know if you object to the word a moral writer, but it's, I mean, there's, there's clearly

532
00:34:58,540 --> 00:35:03,560
a lot of moral seriousness in what you do. Yeah. I, I, I've always had the idea that a writer is

533
00:35:03,560 --> 00:35:08,760
primarily an entertainer and the entertainer has to grab you. And the way that we grab you is by

534
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:12,680
talking about something you care about, you know? So I think some, sometimes literature can slide

535
00:35:12,680 --> 00:35:17,500
off into the merely clever, you know, somebody doing magic tricks. Um, and that, that can be

536
00:35:17,500 --> 00:35:24,540
wonderful too. But for me, I never had any interest in writing something that wasn't kind of about,

537
00:35:24,540 --> 00:35:29,920
uh, a cringe statement, but the meaning of life, like, what are we doing here? That, that I don't,

538
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:35,320
otherwise I don't really know what the thriving factor would be. So what, what, what do you think a

539
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:39,260
fiction writer can do to, to address those questions that, you know, the big questions

540
00:35:39,260 --> 00:35:44,560
that, you know, I just quoted that a really good nonfiction book or an essay just can't do?

541
00:35:44,700 --> 00:35:48,620
Where can fiction take us? Yeah. Well, that's, that's the question you ask with every book.

542
00:35:48,700 --> 00:35:52,780
You hope that there's an answer and you're trying to steer your book into that zone where it's doing

543
00:35:52,780 --> 00:35:56,980
something that only it could do. I think the, for me, the main thing is it can be so speculative,

544
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:02,440
you know? In other words, if I make up a person and I do a good job of making up, there he is,

545
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:07,400
he's on the page. You and I are both looking at him and he's got incredible freedom and I've got

546
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:11,460
incredible freedom to make him do whatever I need to do. So that introduces a kind of a wildness in

547
00:36:11,460 --> 00:36:15,160
the moral universe where there, I don't have to be constrained to the facts or to anything,

548
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:22,160
but also there, there's a second way that fiction works, which is not to do with the details of the

549
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:28,920
story, but with the details of my relationship with you, the reader. So in Chekhov, for example,

550
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:34,400
who's a real model for me, one of the patterns I've noticed in his work is I'll start to read

551
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:38,980
him and my very natural tendency to want to know who the good guy is, asserts itself. And I say,

552
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:43,880
oh, this is the right person. Chekhov doesn't have much patience with that. So he'll, he'll show

553
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:48,460
something else. And suddenly you think, oh, okay, I'm sorry, Anton, I misunderstood. This is the right

554
00:36:48,460 --> 00:36:54,040
view. And he'll do that four and five times. And by the end, your judging tendency has been a little

555
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:57,500
bit challenged and neutralized and you think, okay, okay, I don't know what's going on here.

556
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:05,100
So the idea that a work of fiction can kind of exhaust our everyday mundane desire to judge things

557
00:37:05,100 --> 00:37:10,320
simply and put them into categories and be done with it. And at the same time, it reminds us that

558
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:14,900
we have a higher capacity to abide with ambiguity and contradiction. So when I read Chekhov, I just

559
00:37:14,900 --> 00:37:19,980
come out of it feeling a slightly greater respect for my ability to abide with situations instead of

560
00:37:19,980 --> 00:37:24,660
having to nail them, which these days, I think social media does sort of the opposite. It says,

561
00:37:24,900 --> 00:37:29,020
what's your opinion on the rainforest? And yeah, I don't know. Well, okay, you know, vote quickly.

562
00:37:29,500 --> 00:37:32,940
So I think we're living in a time where everyone seems to think that we have to have

563
00:37:32,940 --> 00:37:38,580
constant opinions about everything. And it's very stressful. Whereas in the fictive world,

564
00:37:38,940 --> 00:37:44,000
you are encouraged to take your time. And by the end, with that open mind, you're able to take a lot

565
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:48,780
more information and, and sometimes judgment disappears and you have a feeling of like,

566
00:37:49,340 --> 00:37:54,920
oh, that's how it is, you know? And I think that's a very powerful moral position simply because you're

567
00:37:54,920 --> 00:38:00,700
more patient and you are less inclined to make a mistake because you're watching, you know?

568
00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:05,340
Yeah. So it's interesting what you were saying about Chekhov and how he kind of shifts your

569
00:38:05,340 --> 00:38:08,700
perspective, like, you know, what you should really believe. And it sort of made me think,

570
00:38:08,780 --> 00:38:10,680
I don't know, did you watch the TV show Succession?

571
00:38:10,680 --> 00:38:11,780
Yes. Yes.

572
00:38:11,820 --> 00:38:15,400
Which I thought was so brilliant because, I mean, it's, it's, you know, they're all despicable

573
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:20,740
characters, but just as you just sort of couldn't stand someone, then they make that person a little

574
00:38:20,740 --> 00:38:25,040
bit more likable and then someone else a little bit worse. And they kept going back and forth. And

575
00:38:25,040 --> 00:38:26,660
to me, that was sort of the genius of that.

576
00:38:26,660 --> 00:38:30,580
Yeah. And in a sense, what you're left with is you, you see how quickly you wanted to write

577
00:38:30,580 --> 00:38:34,680
somebody off and the, the universe of that show says, well, not so fast, you know?

578
00:38:34,860 --> 00:38:38,680
Yeah. Yeah. And for the writer, it's really interesting because it, it has to do with

579
00:38:38,680 --> 00:38:42,900
actually not about anything moral, but it has to do with something technical, which is

580
00:38:42,900 --> 00:38:48,040
watch your own text and see where you're leaving the reader. You know, right now I've, I've got

581
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:52,020
you thinking the person A is a villain. As a writer rereading one's own work, you should

582
00:38:52,020 --> 00:38:56,460
go, oh, okay, I can use that. And that's, I think what Chekhov did and what the writer's

583
00:38:56,460 --> 00:39:01,120
succession did. So in a certain way, it's about intimacy between the reader and writer. I have

584
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:07,960
to know fairly well where I've left you. So then I can then surprise you. I would say bad writing

585
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:12,000
is kind of disrespectful writing because it, it, it's a phone in, you know? So that's

586
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:15,860
another thing I love about writing is it trains me to imagine other people more fully.

587
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:21,000
So it sounds like you're always sort of shifting back and forth in terms of how much you want

588
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:24,680
to empathize with a particular character. I mean, it's like, if, if there's too much empathy

589
00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:27,960
there, maybe you want to pull it back a little bit and like make that person a little bit

590
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:30,600
less likable and the same with the unlikeable.

591
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:34,880
And also I would, I mean, I get tagged with that empathy thing a lot. So I kind of take that

592
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:40,740
word aside. Let's think about accuracy. So this KJ Boone guy, if I make him a cartoon

593
00:39:40,740 --> 00:39:46,000
Cruella de Vil villain, I think a fair-minded reader is going to go, eh, you phoning that

594
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:50,800
in. If I make him a secret saint who's so sweet, but he just accidentally plundered the

595
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:55,580
earth, the same reader is going to cry bullshit. So somewhere in the middle, I think you're

596
00:39:55,580 --> 00:40:00,680
looking for, for accuracy, fundamental accuracy of statement as Nabokov put it, which means,

597
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:05,780
well, what it really means is you have to be super sensitive to the two extremes. If

598
00:40:05,780 --> 00:40:10,020
I start making him a character of evil, I have to revise that. If I start attributing

599
00:40:10,020 --> 00:40:13,740
virtues to him that he wouldn't have, I have to trim that back. And all that comes down to

600
00:40:13,740 --> 00:40:15,120
line by line stuff, you know?

601
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:20,580
So I want to ask you about Dwight Garner's review of Vigil, not his judgment of the book,

602
00:40:20,580 --> 00:40:27,440
but his starting premise that anytime a novelist focuses on virtue, it's bad for art. It becomes

603
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:33,000
prescriptive, it becomes mushy. And I'm guessing you fundamentally disagree with that premise.

604
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,840
Well, yeah, I do disagree with that. I mean, it's demonstrated in all kinds of great literature

605
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:43,280
that the examination of virtue and vice is part of the game. So I don't know. I don't know.

606
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:46,160
I am reluctant to review reviews.

607
00:40:46,160 --> 00:40:50,060
And I get it that you don't want to comment on someone who, you know, reviewed your book,

608
00:40:50,240 --> 00:40:51,540
but the premise of it.

609
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:55,500
Well, one thing that I think happens sometimes, it happened in that review and it happened in

610
00:40:55,500 --> 00:41:02,080
another one a few years before at the Times, I kind of get tagged as being a kindness advocate

611
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:06,480
or more or something. And sometimes there's a certain cherry picking of other sources to

612
00:41:06,480 --> 00:41:07,900
support that. And I...

613
00:41:07,900 --> 00:41:12,380
St. George. I mean, that's, you know, you've been tagged with, you were the apostle of kindness

614
00:41:12,380 --> 00:41:15,240
and goodness and, you know, the good Buddhist and all of that.

615
00:41:15,240 --> 00:41:19,480
Yeah. So that's a little, I mean, I'm sure I'm in part responsible for that, but there's also

616
00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:26,340
kind of a stone rolling downhill quality where if we talk about rhinoceroses here, then the

617
00:41:26,340 --> 00:41:29,320
next interviewer brings it up and pretty soon I'm the rhinocerose advocate.

618
00:41:29,500 --> 00:41:35,120
So I think in... I guess as a writer, you hope that the book at hand will be reviewed.

619
00:41:35,300 --> 00:41:38,740
And I think in that particular review, there might've been some tendency to equate my view

620
00:41:38,740 --> 00:41:42,940
with Jill's. But I think if... I mean, my reading of the book is that the book is poking at that

621
00:41:42,940 --> 00:41:50,280
all the time. So I, you know, it's a free country. So reviewers get to review and I... that's fine.

622
00:41:50,700 --> 00:41:56,480
But I'm wondering, I mean, sort of to pull back a little bit, I'm wondering if maybe we need more

623
00:41:56,480 --> 00:42:01,620
of a sense of moral reckoning in our culture now. And maybe we've sort of like let that slide a

624
00:42:01,620 --> 00:42:05,920
little bit and it's time to come back and pass judgment a little bit.

625
00:42:05,920 --> 00:42:09,880
Well, it kind of depends. I mean, the moralizing... I don't think you want to moralize... I would agree

626
00:42:09,880 --> 00:42:12,720
that you don't want a moralizing quality in the book because that's not what a novel does.

627
00:42:12,720 --> 00:42:18,300
A novel is supposed to... As I said, it formulates the problem correctly. But if the problem that

628
00:42:18,300 --> 00:42:24,620
the novel is formulating is trivial, then there's no moral heft. I mean, a good book is... I think

629
00:42:24,620 --> 00:42:31,040
it's always fundamentally taking up moral issues in the sense that a character is being asked

630
00:42:31,040 --> 00:42:36,300
to make choices. And on what basis would he do that? So I don't... I think in that review,

631
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:42,100
there was some sense that this book was a propaganda message for kindness, which I think... I can't

632
00:42:42,100 --> 00:42:47,680
it isn't. I mean, you know, I wrote it and it isn't. So I don't think it's really...

633
00:42:49,680 --> 00:42:53,500
It's sort of like your reputation preceded how some people...

634
00:42:53,500 --> 00:42:57,300
Yeah, it preceded the reading of the book, which is a little bit unfortunate from my point

635
00:42:57,300 --> 00:43:00,680
of view. And also, you know, the kindness thing was a speech... I made one speech...

636
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:01,680
A commencement speech.

637
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:05,660
...and I certainly believe in kindness, you know. But the speech is about my own failure

638
00:43:05,660 --> 00:43:10,280
at the same, you know. So... And I try to be nice in public. I try to, you know, have good

639
00:43:10,280 --> 00:43:15,380
public manners. But... So it's a little bit of a... It's a bit of an albatross. I might have

640
00:43:15,380 --> 00:43:19,980
to go rob a bank or something. But I think, you know, the work... In the work... I mean, a lot

641
00:43:19,980 --> 00:43:25,240
of my work is very dark. And I think... I do intend my books to be morally charged in the sense

642
00:43:25,240 --> 00:43:29,260
that I want them to ask what we're doing here. And are there ways that we get off the

643
00:43:29,260 --> 00:43:35,220
path? Of course there is. How can we get back on the path? And the primary moral function

644
00:43:35,220 --> 00:43:42,260
I think of a book is to, through specificity, lead us up this mountain of reduced judgment

645
00:43:42,260 --> 00:43:46,500
we talked about earlier, you know. So if I'm having a frank conversation with you as a reader

646
00:43:46,500 --> 00:43:50,820
and we're talking about something that matters and I'm doing it in a skillful way, we're going

647
00:43:50,820 --> 00:43:55,220
to find ourselves in a kind of a beautiful motorcycle sidecar ride up this mountain.

648
00:43:55,240 --> 00:44:00,500
And at the end, we're going to just be both a little more full of wonder, to use that

649
00:44:00,500 --> 00:44:04,840
word again. It just means we're going to not know. And we're going to feel that that not

650
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:08,820
knowing is actually okay for a little bit. You know, that's... That's the moral part of

651
00:44:08,820 --> 00:44:14,180
it. Yeah. Thank you. This has been such a pleasure. I've enjoyed it so much. Thank you

652
00:44:14,180 --> 00:44:16,620
very much. Yeah. It's just been wonderful. Thank you. Thanks.

653
00:44:18,140 --> 00:44:22,880
George Saunders, talking with us at the Central Library in Madison just before his appearance

654
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:28,200
at the Wisconsin Book Festival. His new novel is titled Vigil. I'm Steve Paulson.

655
00:44:28,580 --> 00:44:33,500
And I'm Anne Strainchamps. On our next episode, I'll talk with literary scholar Renee Berglund

656
00:44:33,500 --> 00:44:39,360
about Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and natural magic, a scientific discipline that's

657
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:40,520
maybe due for a revival.

658
00:44:40,980 --> 00:44:45,980
Thanks to our audio engineer, Steve Gotscher, and to digital producer, Mark Rickers. I hope

659
00:44:45,980 --> 00:44:49,500
you'll subscribe to Wonder Cabinet on your favorite podcast platform.

660
00:44:49,500 --> 00:44:54,300
And sign up for the newsletter so you never miss an episode. You'll find it all at

661
00:44:54,300 --> 00:44:56,980
wondercabinetproductions.com.

662
00:44:57,280 --> 00:44:58,340
Until next time.