FEMALE SPEAKER: So as many of
you, I'm sure, already know,
George Saunders has been
charming readers and critics
alike for years with his
truly unique brand
of speculative fiction.
He's the recipient of a
MacArthur Grant, as well as a
professor of creative writing
at Syracuse University.
And lucky us-- he's here
to promote his--
what was, for me at
least-- a long
awaited new book of stories.
By the way, "Tenth of December"
is available in the
back via Books Inc. Thank
you so much, you guys.
And please help me welcome
George Saunders.
[APPLAUSE]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Thank you.
Thanks everybody for being
here-- nice to see you all.
I thought I would just
read a little sample
from the new book.
And then we could just talk
informally about writing, or
maybe the creative process,
or whatever comes up.
So this first thing, I'll
just read a little--
I was on a reading tour a couple
years ago and I drew
this Polish driver
who was done.
He'd driven enough.
And he was like a zen driver.
He could drive without
getting you anywhere.
[LAUGHTER]
And he was taking me to this
bookstore reading, and he
said, "Sir, you go now to do
reading?" I said, "Yeah." He
said, "Little advice for you.
Don't read too long." And I
thought, oh you know my work.
But basically, you never leave
a literary reading going,
damn, I wish he'd read
another 40 minutes.
So I'll just give you
a little sample.
And I never was a big sci-fi
reader as a kid.
Except the one real big moment
of my reading, or my cultural
life, was that moment in Star
Wars when the ships come over
and you can see that
they're dented and
rusty and fucked up.
And I thought that was really
a major revelation.
So some of my stuff
is kind of sci-fi.
This is definitely
kind of sci-fi.
And I think it's self
explanatory.
But basically, this
guy is in a--
well, you don't where he is
at first-- but he's being
ritually administered these
different kinds of drugs.
And these drugs, as they do,
they change everything.
So he's, you'll see in the
course of the story, there's
some inflections in his voice
and consciousness that are
from these drugs that are
being dripped in.
And later you find out that
actually he's in prison.
And his mom has scratched some
money together to get him into
this slightly nicer prison,
where instead of being a
prisoner, you're--
what did we used to call it in
the corporate world-- like a
research assistant.
[LAUGHTER]
So this is a little section
from "Escape from
Spiderhead." "One.
Drip on?" Abnesti said
over the P.A.
"What's in it?," I said.
"Hilarious," he said.
"Acknowledge," I said.
Abnesti used his remote.
My MobiPak trademark word.
Soon the interior garden
looked really nice.
Everything seemed super clear.
I said out loud, as
I was supposed
to, what I was feeling.
"Garden looks nice," I
said. "Super clear."
Abnesti said, "Jeff, how about
we pep up those language
centers?" "Sure," I said.
"Drip on?" he said.
"Acknowledge," I said.
He added some Verbaluce to the
drip, and soon I was feeling
the same things but saying
them better.
The garden still looked nice.
It was like the bushes were so
tight seeming and the sun made
everything stand out.
It was like any moment you
expected some Victorians to
wander in with their
cups of tea.
It was as if the garden had
become a sort of embodiment of
the domestic dreams forever
intrinsic to human
consciousness.
It was as if I could suddenly
discern, in this contemporary
vignette, the ancient corollary,
through which Plato
and some of his contemporaries
might have strolled; to wit I
was sensing the eternal
and the ephemeral.
I sat pleasantly engaged in
these thoughts until the
Verbaluce began to wane.
At which point, the garden
just looked nice again.
It was something about the
bushes and whatnot.
It made you just want to lay out
there and catch rays and
think your happy thoughts,
if you get what I mean.
Then whatever else was in the
drip wore off, and I didn't
feel much about the garden
one way or the other.
My mouth was dry though and my
gut had that post Verbaluce
feel to it.
"What's going to be cool about
that one?" Abnesti said, "Is,
say a guy has to stay up late
guarding a perimeter or is at
school waiting for his kid and
gets bored, but there's some
nature nearby.
Or say a park ranger has to
work a double shift."
"That'll be cool," I said.
"That's ED763," he said. "We're
thinking of calling it
NatuGlide or maybe ErthAdmire."
"Those are both
good," I said.
"Thanks for your help, Jeff,"
he said, which is what he
always said.
"Only a million years to
go," I said, which is
what I always said.
Then he said, "Exit the interior
garden now, Jeff.
Head over to small workroom
two." Into small workroom two
they sent this pale,
tall girl.
"What do you think?" Abnesti
said over the P.A. "Me?" I
said, "Or her?" "Both,"
Abnesti said.
"Pretty good," I said.
"Fine, you know," she said,
"normal." Abnesti then asked
us to rate each other more
quantifiably as per
pretty, as per sexy.
It appeared we liked each other
about average, i.e. no
big attraction or revulsion
either way.
Abnesti said, "Jeff, drip on?"
"Acknowledge," I said.
"Heather, drip on?" he said.
"Acknowledge," Heather said.
Then we looked at each other
like, what happens next?
What happened next was Heather
soon looked super good.
And I could tell she thought
the same of me.
It came on so sudden.
We were like laughing.
How could we not
have seen it--
how cute the other one was?
Luckily, there was a couch
in the workroom.
It felt like our drip had, in
addition to whatever they were
testing, some ED556 in it, which
lowers your shame level
to like nil.
Because soon, there on the
couch, off we went.
It was super hot between
us, and not merely
in a horndog way.
Hot yes, but also just right--
like if you dreamed of a certain
girl all your life and
all of a sudden there she was
in your same workroom.
"Jeff," Abnesti said, "I'd like
your permission to pep up
your language centers?"
"Go for it," I
said, under her now.
"Drip on," he said.
"Acknowledge," I said.
"Me too," Heather said.
"You got it," Abnesti
said with a laugh.
"Drip on?" "Acknowledge,"
she said all breathless.
Soon, experiencing the benefits
of the flowing
Verbaluce in our drips, we were
not only fucking really
well, but also talking
pretty great.
Like instead of just saying the
sex types of things we had
been saying, such as wow, and
oh God, and hell yes, and so
forth, we now began free styling
re our sensations and
thoughts in elevated diction
with 80% increased vocab, our
well articulated thoughts being
recorded for later analysis.
For me the feeling was
approximately astonishment at
the dawning realization that
this woman was being created
in real time, directly
from my own mind,
per my deepest longings.
Finally, after all these years,
was my thought, I'd
found the precise arrangement
of body, face, mind that
personified all that
was desirable.
The taste of her mouth, that
look of that halo of blondish
hair spread out around
her cherubic, yet
naughty looking face.
She was beneath me
now, legs way up.
Even, not to be crude or
dishonor the exalted feelings
I was experiencing, the
sensations her vagina was
producing along the length of
my thrusting penis were
precisely those I had
always hungered for.
Though I had never before this
instant realized that I so
ardently hungered for them.
That is to say a desire would
arise, and concurrently, the
satisfaction of that desire
would also arise.
It was as if A, I longed for a
certain heretofore untasted
taste, until B, said longing
became nearly unbearable, at
which time C, I found a morsel
of food with that exact taste
already in my mouth, perfectly
satisfying my longing.
Every utterance, every
adjustment of posture, bespoke
the same thing.
We had known each other forever,
were soulmates, had
met and loved in numerous
preceding lifetimes and would
meet and love in many subsequent
lifetimes, always
with the same transcendentally
stupefying results.
Then there came a hard to
describe, but very real,
drifting off into a number of
sequential reveries that might
best be described as a
type of nonnarrative
mind scenery, i.e.
A series of vague mental images
of places I had never
been, a certain pine packed
valley in high white
mountains, a chalet type house
in a cul-de-sac, the yard of
which was overgrown with wide,
stunted, Seussian trees, each
of which triggered a deep
sentimental longing--
longings that coalesced into and
were soon reduced to one
central longing, i.e.
An intense longing for Heather,
and Heather alone.
This mind scenery phenomenon was
strongest during our third
bout of lovemaking.
Apparently Abnesti
had included some
Vivistif in my drip.
Afterward our protestations
of love poured forth
simultaneously, linguistically
complex and
metaphorically rich.
I dare say we had
become poets.
We were allowed to lie there,
limbs intermingled
for nearly an hour.
It was bliss, it was perfection,
it was that
impossible thing--
happiness that does not wilt to
reveal the thin shoots of
some new desire rising
from within it.
We cuddled with a
fierceness/focus that rivaled
the fierceness/focus with
which we had fucked.
There is nothing less about
cuddling vis-a-vis fucking, is
what I mean to say.
We were all over each other in
the super friendly way of
puppies or spouses meeting for
the first time after one of
them has undergone a close
brush with death.
Everything seemed moist,
permeable, sayable.
Then something in the
drip began to wane.
I think Abnesti had shut
off the Verbaluce,
also the shame reducer.
Basically, everything
began to dwindle.
Suddenly we felt shy,
but still loving.
We began the process of trying
to talk apres Verbaluce--
always awkward.
Yet, I could see in her eyes
that she was still feeling
love for me, and I was
definitely still
feeling love for her.
Well, why not?
We had just fucked
three times.
Why do you think they
call it making love?
That is what we had just
made three times--
love.
Then Abnesti said, "Drip on?"
We had kind of forgotten he was
even there behind his one
way mirror.
I said, "Do we have to?
We are really liking this right
now." "We're just going
to try to get you guys back to
baseline," he said. "We've got
more to do today."
"Shit," I said.
"Rats," she said.
"Drip on?" Abnesti said.
"Acknowledge," we said.
Soon something began
to change.
I mean, she was fine, a
handsome, pale girl, but
nothing special.
And I could see that she felt
the same about me, i.e what
had all that fuss been
about just now?
Why weren't we dressed?
We real quick got dressed--
kind of embarrassing.
Did I love her, or
did she love me?
Ha, no.
Then it was time
for her to go.
We shook hands.
Out she went.
Lunch came in on a tray--
spaghetti with chicken chunks.
Man was I hungry.
I spent all of lunch
time thinking.
It was weird.
I had the memory of fucking
Heather, the memory of having
felt the things I'd felt for
her, the memory of having said
the things I'd said to her.
My throat was like raw from how
much I'd said and how fast
I felt compelled to say it.
But in terms of feelings, I
basically had nada left--
just a hot face and some shame
re having fucked three times
in front of Abnesti.
So I'll stop there and deliver
what "Reading Rainbow" calls a
cliffhanger, and thank you.
[INAUDIBLE]
[APPLAUSE]
So now, if anybody has a
question I'm happy to take it.
And there's a funny
phenomenon.
I've been doing a
lot of readings.
And there's this weird thing
where invariably the person
who asks the first question is
the one with the highest
sexual energy in
the gathering.
[LAUGHTER]
It's weird.
It's like some kind of
Darwinian thing.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah, I
had an idea it was you.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: I had the opportunity
the other day to
read a little "New York Times
Magazine" article about you.
And in the back, at the bottom
of it, they mentioned that you
studied or practiced
some [? Yingla ?]
Buddhism.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And a lot of this
stuff, in terms of perception
and having alternate viewpoints,
different ways of
understanding our experience
and reality, particularly
generating experience and being
able to appreciate that
and work with that came out.
And I wanted to, I guess hear a
couple points about how you
deal with the flexibility of
understanding how we perceive
things and how we generate
[INAUDIBLE].
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Sure, that's
a great question.
I think, for me, that the answer
is a little simple,
which is, for me, everything
that I do in fiction is
through the language, like
the individual sentence.
And it's a funny thing, because
when you're a young
writer, you're concept heavy.
And you usually participate
in some version of the
intentional fallacy, which is
your job as a writer is to
pull up the big shit truck full
of meaning or theme and
get the reader [INAUDIBLE]
sit there and, bam,
and drop that.
And it's a fundamentally
condescending view.
Which I think most of us when
we're young artists, we have
that idea, that you're a good
artist to the extent that
you're conveying some theme.
So I had a long period of not
doing much in art, because I
was operating under
that assumption.
And I had a breakthrough where I
realized that in order to be
in the kind of intimate
relationship you have to be in
with your reader, you have to
commit to not being sure about
what's happening.
In other words, to come into
it with as low content as
possible and feel your way
through it by watching the
energy coming off the prose.
So that's the main answer for
me, is as I'm writing I'm
imagining an intelligent,
engaged person right over
here, who's smart and is a
little skeptical and is
watching me to see if I'm going
to pull any tricks.
And I imagine a little gauge
in my head-- like positive
over here and negative here.
So as you're reading your own
prose, you're watching that
needle, and you're trying to
keep it up in the positive.
And when it gets negative, then
your job is to be all
right with that.
And like a scientist, to
say well, why did it
do that do you think?
Why is it on page two, nine
lines in, I just felt a little
bit of a drop.
And then, if you can avoid
answering that too
reductively, then it opens up.
So really, in a way, that's the
answer to your question.
But I also was raised
Catholic.
And we did this intense thing
called the stations of the
cross, which maybe
some of you did.
And this was the '60s,
so we really did it.
We did it for five straight
days, naked in the desert
being flayed.
But the thing was, there were
these images of the suffering
of Christ around the room.
And so you sat and you
looked at each one.
So now it was the
second station.
And there was a little narration
from the Bible.
And then you were to sit,
quietly, and think about it.
And we had one nun who was
wonderful, because she would
say, think about what was Jesus
experiencing and so on.
And then she'd say, think about
what the Roman soldier
was thinking.
What about that guy-- there's an
image-- what about that guy
standing to the side?
What's his role?
So that was early, like
Novel Writing 101.
But from an early time, the idea
was a part of the fictive
process was generating
empathy for somebody
that you might not.
I'm not sure if I'm answering
your question at all.
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: And when
I was a child--
Thank you for your question.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
It's really just about how to
appreciate the different ways
of perceiving--
like you were saying, like you
can have [INAUDIBLE] the
different characters or
understanding that we create
our reality to a
certain extent.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Exactly.
And for me, one of the
interesting fictive points is
that if you were trying to make
a quote, unquote accurate
picture of this room, it would
probably consist of 107
separate mind streams going
at once and occasionally
interacting.
And often the explosiveness of
the interaction has to do with
the mind streams.
He's thinking, no
one respects me.
I never get a break.
And then she's thinking about
her sick mother and she
inadvertently steps
on his foot.
And a shit storm happens.
But actually it's not really
a physical, it's two mind
streams bumping a little bit.
Congratulations on your
sexual energy also.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: I wondered if you
could say a few things about
your influences.
And the reason that I'm
interested in this is
listening to you in this piece
resurrected for me a powerful
memory of having read "Flowers
for Algernon."
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Oh yeah, sure.
Sure, yep.
AUDIENCE: I feel like it's
really beautiful
in a similar way.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah, I know.
I had the same-- when
I was writing the
story, I went oh I remember.
I didn't really remember the
details of the story, but I
thought, oh I'm channeling
that.
AUDIENCE: Yeah
GEORGE SAUNDERS: You know I
think when I was younger, I
hated any kind of suggestion
that my work had anything to
do with anything that
had ever occurred.
And then as you get older,
you're like well of course,
where else are you going to
come from, except all the
influences that have
passed through you?
So in a way, that they might
be at the heart of that
Picasso thing about, was it
good artists borrow, great
artists steal?
That saying, yeah of course, in
any kind of work none of us
exist totally originally.
And maybe your supplements as an
artist is your willingness
to let those influences
flow through you.
[INAUDIBLE]
And then the other thing I
noticed is when you're on a
book tour that you always get
the influence question.
And the first thing is to go,
well of course, Shakespeare.
Jesus, Mother Teresa was
quite important, right?
But then when you really think
about it, for me, the '70s
comics were usually--
Steve Martin in his early
incarnation, Monty Python,
George Carlin.
And in our school, that was
really a way to get a little
bit of credibility is that you
could stand up and recite the
George Carlin album or do
a passable Steve Martin.
So I had a long period where I
really considered that low--
not literary.
And because of where I came
from, I thought, well
literature--
I never had met writers.
Literature is a thing that you
can't quite do, where you
totally become someone else.
And only at this crisis point,
I went well maybe not.
Maybe literature is where you
really open up the valve to
everybody that you've been.
And for me that meant letting
in the sound of vestigial
Steve Martin and the
Monty Python.
So I think influence can
sometimes may be more full
body than we think it is.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I saw you come to Google
about five years ago.
And I wanted to hear you talk
a little bit about what it
must be like five years later
to have some of your stories
coming true and we're
making them happen.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: My neighbors, for
example, just got some
[INAUDIBLE]
in Atherton.
And so I was just wondering if
you draw, I guess, inspiration
from Silicon Valley?
Or if it's, I don't know, some
other level of inspiration?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: I don't really
do a lot of research or
direct tapping for ideas.
But I think my feeling is that
if you were wired right, and
if you were alert enough, even
the most banal moment would be
crazy and full of wonder.
So the fact that we're here,
we're at Google, we're feeling
pretty good, most of us
are young, and yet
we know for a fact--
totally verifiable--
that in x number of
years we'll all be
rotting corpses somewhere.
We know it.
Why are we so happy?
Why are we eating lunch?
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Or even to be
a little more serious, we
venture forth every day in love
with somebody or somebody
is beloved to us, and yet the
incredible vulnerability that
everyone comes to an end,
including the people
you love, for sure.
So to me that--
what's weird is the habitual
position of
being OK with that.
Yeah, I know it's true,
but my phone's a
little low on battery.
It's crazy really.
So to me the inspiration for
the weird pieces is just
through the writing process,
through revising, through
trying not to be dull, to try
to get some sense of that
wonder back into prose.
So I don't really do a lot of
looking for weird things.
Also, the other thing I notice,
I don't really have as
much judgment about contemporary
culture as people
think I do.
I like it.
I like everything.
I like that--
I won't name companies-- but
some of the dangerous
technological developments,
I think it's interesting.
So to me, the highest position
is to have five or six
opinions, all open,
on your desktop.
And they contradict, and there's
no way to reconcile
them, but you're OK
leaving them open.
That would be the highest
aspiration.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Hi.
AUDIENCE: When you have a story
that plays around with
characters that are opposites,
do you ever find yourself
having trouble sympathizing
with one?
Or you sympathize more with
one over the other?
GEORGE SAUNDERS:
Totally, yeah.
The question is if there's two
different characters, do you
have trouble with sympathy?
And I think you absolutely do.
And you should, really.
It would be weird
if you didn't.
But then I do this kind of
iterative revision thing,
where I just go into it hundreds
and hundreds of
times, each time tweaking a
little something or a lot--
just expressing my opinion
on each draft.
And what's interesting is if you
do that, the first step is
to out yourself on your bias.
Like in this book, there's
a story called "Puppy."
And there's these two mothers
who are very similar, and they
had the same interests.
And in the end, it's
catastrophic what happens.
And in that story, I definitely
had a bias for the
poorer of the two women.
But when I submitted it to the
"New Yorker." she said
something really smart.
She said, the way you're writing
her dialogue, you're
condescending to her.
Because I had written it really
straight white trash.
And she said, that throws
the story off.
You seem like you're making
fun of her and
not the other one.
So in that, the process
was to take her
dialogue up a little bit.
And in doing that, she became
a more full person.
And I liked her better.
So for that story, the critical
thing was to do just
what you're saying-- adjust
it, so that there's some
semblance of equity
between the two.
But I think as a general writing
principle, your main
job is to do something
and then notice it.
And then adjust accordingly.
And then notice the thing that
you've done, and adjust
accordingly--
rinse, lather, repeat
a million times.
And then weirdly, in time, the
story will adjust itself
morally to be more fair, which
is really a weird thing.
But yeah, I think you should.
Of course, you would.
AUDIENCE: I think it's really
interesting what you said
about acknowledging how your own
mindset has changed as a
writer from a more professorial
place to more engaging--
to combine that with what sounds
like a very intense
iterative visionary
writing style.
Do you ever have the desire, or
do you ever go back to your
earlier work thinking I
can punch this out.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: No.
It's so bad, I don't even try.
I'll give you an example.
This is a true story.
My wife and I we got engaged in
three weeks, and we had a
baby right away.
And so we were racing.
And I was working for a
company called Rating.
I was a tech writer, and a very
low level tech writer.
And my wife had been married
once before, and had a more
full, better, a richer life--
I'll put it that way.
And I could feel her looking at
me like, come on, let's get
something going.
So I went on this
trip to Mexico.
And it was this perfect
novelist trip.
It was a wedding, there was a
male model slash surfer who
was in the wedding party, there
was a guy who just out
of jail for a DWI, there was
a radical Catholic priest.
I'm like, this is it!
It's a gift from God.
So I came home.
I'm like, honey, you're
sitting on a goldmine.
Don't worry, I got it.
So I wrote this novel for about
a year and a half, and
we had one daughter
by that time.
So I get home from work, drink
a pot of coffee, and if I was
feeling really ambitious a
bottle of Boone's Farm, which
is a deadly combo.
And I would write just until I
would drop at the desk, go to
work, and I did this for
a year and a half.
And then I had the book.
And it was 700 pages.
And I thought, no I'm
a minimalist.
So I cut it.
I cut it to 400, rock hard.
And so I said, I think I've got
a little novel for you to
read, sweety.
So she said, OK.
So I said, just take
your time.
I'll give you a week or so.
And of course, like any writer,
in an hour later I'm
looking in the room.
And she's literally sitting at
the desk like this, fried.
So to give you an idea, the
name of that book was "Le
Bourda de Eduardo." Which I
think just means Ed's wedding.
So I don't ever go
back to that.
That stuff has a taint on it.
I just would rather
move ahead.
Thank you bringing up that
painful subject.
[LAUGHTER]
But the one thing that I am
interested in, and I'm sure
this is true for you guys too,
in any kind of creative work,
that moment where you--
Donald Barthelme has a great
essay called "I'm not
Knowing." And he says the
writer's that person who
embarking on her task has
no idea what to do.
And that, to me, seems like
the sacred state,
if you can get there.
And then Stuart Dybek, this
great Chicago writer, has this
thing about the story Is
always talking to you.
And your job is to listen.
But for some reason, we have a
tendency to not really want to
hear what the story's natural
energy is saying.
But we want to override it.
And so I was a geophysical
engineer, that was one of the
big basic scientific principles
was you don't go
into a study rooting
for some answer.
So that was very helpful
in writing.
AUDIENCE: I was wondering if
you could speak a bit about
your editing process.
Specifically, I read somewhere
that "The Semplica Girl
Diaries" started out as a 200
page story and evolved into a
10 page story.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: And I guess without
spoiling it for everyone, I'm
wondering what got left out
and how you decided.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Sure.
So the question is about
the editing process.
And I had a story called "The
Semplica Girl Diaries" which
started in '98 and I finish
it last spring.
And it was up to some huge
number of pages and got
drastically cut.
One of my things is I think as
artists we have to submit to
our neuroses a little bit.
So often we think that to be an
artist, you have to conquer
your neuroses and
be a perfectly
calm, wonderful person.
But my experience was rather
you turn towards with your
ticks and go OK, come on.
So for me I have a real, just
like inner nun syndrome, like
I really don't like what I do.
When I do it, I feel like, ugh,
Mr. Saunders, what do you
think you are smarty pants?
So that ends up to be, if you
keep it in check, a pretty
valuable editing tool.
And I have a slight aversion,
I've always had this since I
was a kid, an aversion to what
I consider banal language.
You know when you're in grade
school and they have those
little readers, and it's like,
Jimmy was a bright happy boy
as he bounced into the room
in the middle of a
bright, fall day.
It actually made me
a little sick.
There was something
so unessential
about it, and blah.
So for me, one of the things
that I do is I'll get
something up to a decent length,
pretty happily, with
that feeling that all is well.
And then that inner nun thing
will come in and speed it up.
And I think the subtext to that
is do you respect your
reader's intelligence?
So I'll give you an exaggerated
example.
If you have in a first draft
something like, Bob came
happily into the room and sat
down on the blue couch.
Perfectly functional
sentence right?
But it bugs me, because you
think, wait, why does he have
to sit down on a couch?
Can you sit up on a couch?
All right, well let's
cut the word down.
Bob came happily into the room
and sat on the blue couch.
Why does he have to come
into the room?
Is there any meaning to him
coming into the room?
Not that we know of--
OK, cut.
Bob happily--
I don't care.
We don't care about
Bob's happiness.
Bob sat on the blue couch.
Blue?
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Does
blue signify?
Not really--
OK, Bob sat on the couch.
Bob?
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Cut it.
So now we don't have much, but
what we have doesn't suck.
We have Bob.
So in a slightly less radical
way, I apply that kind of
thinking to the story.
And the logic is, if I'm making
those really seem like
nitpicky decisions, every time
I do it, I'm honoring your
intelligence a little bit.
That which you could assume,
I'm going to assume that
you're smart enough to assume.
And in my model of reading, the
whole thing is to get you
stepping closer and
closer and closer,
trusting me more and more.
And in the process of trusting
me more, the fictive reality
is becoming more three
dimensional.
And you get that magical
fictional moment where you and
the character aren't different,
and you can't
negotiate your way out of the
cliff that's approaching.
And I think that process
is done--
one way it can be done is by
this micro editing to assume
intelligence.
So on that story, it
was 180 pages.
But at page 30, you were
asleep, basically.
There was no urgency in it.
So then part of the job is just
to say OK, those are just
pages and now time
to trim it back.
I don't know if that answers
your question, but yeah.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Hi.
AUDIENCE: Thanks for
coming back.
You just explained how you spent
actually quite a lot of
time writing books.
Ed's wedding was a
year and a half.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yep.
AUDIENCE: Stuff like that.
How do you motivate yourself to
just keep on going through
all that time?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Right.
You know, honestly
it's just ego.
I mean, I really like writing.
And I like to be known
as a writer.
And I like the whole schtick.
But to me the most horrifying
moment is when you send
something out too soon, or that
moment where you have
misidentified something shitty
as good, and it's got your
name on it.
It's like ugh.
It's a nightmare.
So for me, I have from high
school, I loved the-- yeah.
Some people, they want
to be songwriters or
they want to be whatever.
I really wanted to be a
short story writer.
And it makes me really happy
to be in that harness.
So I'll get something like that
"Semplica Girl Stories."
I had it in pretty good
shape in 1999--
pretty good.
But on a scale of 10, it was
about a seven and a half.
And I could feel that I could
get it up to 8.3 for sure.
And at that point, I don't
really care how long it takes.
So it's a lot of
negative urge--
ego, grasping, desperation,
but also the pleasure.
I feel like once you've taken
a story, any project you're
in, once you've really stuck
with one to the end and seen
the benefits, for me that's
a bit addictive.
I know what a finished story
feels like, and I'm just not
interested in not
getting there.
So then it's weird, because it
becomes a suspension of time,
where that story
took 12 years.
That's all right.
It's out.
It's better than it was.
AUDIENCE: So I'm taking a short
story writing class up
at Stanford, and we read
"CivilWarLand" in "Bad
Decline." And the whole class
really loved the whole book.
And we discuss your short
stories all the time.
So I wanted to ask you as a
professor of creative writing,
what do you think makes
a great writer?
Is it experience?
Is it focus?
Is it getting an MFA?
Is it getting a Ph.D.?
Or being an engineer and then
having that experience?
What do you think--
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Right.
Yeah, so if you can do all
of those, you're good.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
GEORGE SAUNDERS: No, that's
a great question.
You know what's funny is that we
are in a moment in America
where the MFA is getting
a big head.
And Gary Shteyngart, he
had this great line.
He said, we have reached the
point in American literary
culture where the number of
readers is exactly equal to
the number of writers.
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
And I teach in a
great program.
But there's two fallacies that
need to be debunked.
One is to be a writer, you
have to get an MFA.
False.
Two is if you get an MFA, you'll
be a published writer.
False.
We've seen a doubling
at Syracuse.
When I go home I have
560 applications to
read for six spots.
And the vast majority are from
people who are just coming
from undergrad.
So there's something
weird about that.
It's not quite right.
But when they come, our students
are off the charts.
But the thing we teach them-- we
try to teach them-- is that
the answer to your question
is nobody knows.
Nobody knows.
You can be the smartest person
in the room, the most
articulate, the most well
traveled, the most soulful,
and you can put pen to paper and
you don't have any oomph.
Or you can be a little
nondescript person with no
opinions who just has never
really done anything, and
somehow when you put the
pen to paper, this--
So that's the hard thing.
But it isn't true of anything
worth doing?
There's an x factor
that's magical.
So what you can do is
you can do the work.
I think that's really
important.
And I found out yesterday that
I've been telling a vicious
lie about Robert Frost
for about 10 years.
I had a student who told
me, I thought--
I maybe misheard him--
that Frost was doing a seminar
at a grad school.
And a student asked a really
involved technical question
about the sonnet.
And Frost, to debunk his over
conceptual mind said, son,
don't worry, work.
And I've been saying for years,
that's great advice,
because Malcolm Gladwell's
10,000 hour rule, and blah,
blah, blah.
Well, I just found out that
he didn't say that.
He said, "Don't work.
Worry."
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: So
I don't know what
the hell he was thinking.
But I think what you'll find is
it's something that some of
us want so desperately--
to be good writers, I think
partly because it feels like
consciousness.
When you read a great writer,
you feel like you've been
really seen.
And you would love
to be the person
who's giving that feeling.
But because it's so hard, I
think it's got to be mystery.
I do think that for an
individual writer, if you put
the 10,000 hours in, you'll both
find out what your issues
are, and you'll find really
weird, unique solutions that
you never could have imagined
at the outset.
But that process has almost
nothing to do with whether
you'll ultimately
be published.
So it's tricky.
And you won't make any money.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: So consuming art is
very personal process, so it's
really hard to say that
someone was wrong
when they did it.
But in all your work, have you
ever witnessed someone
observing something you wrote
and just interpreting it very
surprisingly, or wrong?
And how did that
make you feel?
How did that go?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
When you said that, it brought
back one thing to mind.
I had written a story called
"Winky" which is
in the second book.
And it's this story about this
guy who goes to a self help
seminar, and it is the motto of
this thing is, "Don't let
anybody crap in your oatmeal."
And at home he's got this dim,
very religious sister who has
been kicked out of her house,
and she's living with him.
And he wants to get
rid of her.
So he's thinking, I'm not going
to let her crap in my
oatmeal, even though she's nice
and innocent and sweet
and has nowhere else to go, I've
got to live into my own
personal power.
So it's obviously a tongue
in cheek thing.
And in the story, he
goes home, he's
resolved to kick her out.
And when he sees
her, he can't.
And he melts.
But the kicker is that he feels
terrible that he's not a
powerful enough person.
So that's the story.
So it came out in the "New
Yorker." And about a week
later, I get this letter.
And this guy says, my
name is so and so.
I work with Charlton Heston
at the NRA, so I suspect
politically we have
our differences.
But I loved your story.
It helped me so much.
This is a great example
of art crossing
the left/right divide.
And of course, I was
like, ye check off!
See, I did it.
And so of course, fishing for
further compliments, I said,
oh thank you so much brother.
Tell me a little more about
how I changed your life.
And he said, well my mother
is in very good health.
She's 72, and she had a very
mild stroke, which has caused
me some inconvenience.
And your story convinced me
to put her in a rest home.
[LAUGHTER]
And I was like, what?
And I wrote him back
this long thing.
No sir, please, you've
misunderstood.
And I gave him the whole
exogesis of the thing.
And he's like, that's cool,
have a good day.
That was that.
So yeah, I think once you put
something out there, there is
no freaking telling what
someone's going
to read into it.
But what I've noticed is,
statistically, most people don't.
And that guy was looking.
I mean, he could have gotten
that excuse from a Starbucks
cup, reading the coffee
grounds or something.
But I think you have to assume
that-- and it's interesting to
do a tour, and this book is
actually selling, so I'm
meeting a lot of people.
And it's amazing how many good
hearted, good readers there
are who do get more--
get what you put in it
and then even more.
So mostly not-- that was
the one example I can
really think of.
AUDIENCE: Also because of that
story, I say crapping in my
oatmeal, and no one knows
what I'm talking about.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
See?
So there was a good outcome
too, so it's a balance.
Thank you.
Thanks for the question.
AUDIENCE: So I just wanted
to address something.
One of the reasons why your
stories grab me is that they
seem so honest.
And I think I read a reviewer
that said something about how
you can come closer to truth
in fiction sometimes
than in real life.
So I wanted to ask you, how do
you as you're writing try and
sidle up to truth
through fiction?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: That's
a great question.
And I think the answer is
a phrase at a time.
Because if I think about what do
I think is true, or if you
think, what's true?
We have some answers.
But mine are a little rickety.
They're a little conceptual,
they're a little political.
So what I love about fiction is
if you start with anything
really, any prejudice or
whatever, through this
iterative process of trying to
get your prose not to be a
buzz kill, basically, then
weirdly you'll gradually move
towards truth and specificity.
So if you say, Bob was ugly--
back to Bob again--
Bob was ugly.
Well, if you're a trained
reader, that sentence leaves
you a little, eh.
You're waiting for
detail, right?
So then if you write
that on Tuesday.
Wednesday you come back and
say that's vague, let
me flesh that out.
Bob wore an ugly sweater.
OK, now suddenly we're talking
about a guy with bad taste.
It's changed a little bit--
still not very specific.
Bob wore a stained red sweater
with the torn blue pocket and
a reindeer on the abdomen.
Well, that's a better
sense already.
And suddenly now it's
about Bob is now
a little bit slovenly--
almost belligerently slovenly.
And that's interesting,
suddenly.
And then it produces plot too.
Because having established
that Blob--
Blob?
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: I'm
editing right now.
So having established that
Blob is belligerently
slothful, then we know what
might have to happen to him.
So in the bad Hollywood
version, he meets an
incredibly neat girl, played
by Angelina Jolie.
So I think if you take the thing
a phrase at a time, that
boat will mysteriously move
towards truth, and also it'll
move you to a place
of empathy.
When we live in New York,
upstate, I used to wait for a
bus across from this
barbershop.
And there was this middle aged
barber who came out--
a pear shaped guy-- and
he'd come out with a
cigarette and a coffee.
And every time a woman walked
by, he would just go, zoom.
And even when she busted him,
he'd just keep looking.
And we just had our daughters,
so I was like a new feminist.
And I noticed this guy.
And I thought, I am going
to nail that guy.
I am going to write a story
and just make fun of him.
So I started, and it was
really enjoyable--
this guy with this
thought stream
that's always perverted.
And then about a year into that,
the story just died.
I couldn't get it to go
past the middle part.
It was fun.
It very funny.
And it finally occurred to me,
the reason I couldn't get it
to move is because I was so
intent on kicking him, that I
wasn't giving him any
hope of getting
out of that low position.
And that's not a story.
There has to be at
least a trace--
the hope that the person could
transcend himself.
So as soon as I did that, I
thought I've got to make this
guy more sympathetic.
Now because I'm not that
subtle, I wrote in
that he had no toes.
So that was my subtle Chekovian
move there.
But I did it, because suddenly
here's a guy who now he's
still a sexist, and he's
very defensive, and he
doesn't have any toes.
So suddenly, oh, poor
guy, and so then the
story could move ahead.
So I think that's where the
honesty and everything comes
from just line by line
immersion in
the thing, I think.
Yeah, but the funny thing about
that, because that story
come out in the "New Yorker."
And by that time, I'd spent
about three years with
this projection of
this guy in my mind.
So we happened to
be in that town.
And I'm walking down the street
with my wife and my two
daughters, and lo and behold
this guy steps
out onto the sidewalk.
And I thought, George,
you bastard.
You just mocked this guy in the
"New Yorker." You don't
know who he is.
He could be a million
[INAUDIBLE]
the tyranny of fiction.
But as we walked by, he looked
at my wife and my daughters
and he goes, ladies.
Like that, and I thought, wow!
[LAUGTHER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah, score!
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering if you'd
talk a little bit about
how your process is the same
and/or different when working
on nonfiction rather
than fiction.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Sure.
Yeah, I did a series of
nonfiction pieces for "GQ,"
mostly travel based pieces.
And those were such a relief,
because in fiction, as I've
said, I'm doing a lot of
rewriting to generate plot, to
say, well what's the next thing
that should happen, that
could happen, that's
meaningful.
And for some reason, that
takes me a lot of hours.
So with the nonfiction, you come
home from a week and you
know there are 10 things
that happened.
So then the process is just
trying to write those 10 and
see which one of them
comes to life.
And then once, say six of them
do, four of them don't, then
you just do a calculation.
I've got 12,000 words, I
can take this one up,
turn this one down.
So it's a little more like
engineering work--
you're cutting to fit.
And then the meaning of the
story, and the theme, come out
of which elements have risen to
the occasion a little bit.
So that tends to be faster.
Your main job is to make
whatever you do charming on a
sentence to sentence level.
But the events are
given to you.
So that's really a nice palate
cleanser in a way.
AUDIENCE: I think I read in an
interview with your editor
saying that with nonfiction
you tended to give extra
material to the editor.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: How does that
process work?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Well,
basically, at "GQ" I always
had a week long trip
and 12,000 words.
So you'd get those three
or four bits.
You're like I can't believe
that's not going in there.
And you have a point in time
vision of your 12,000 words,
but this part over here
still feels red hot.
So in that setting, you had the
liberty of saying what do
you think, should I try
to fit this in?
And my editor, Andy Ward,
is just a great
friend and a great guy.
And he can just say, no, no,
no, yes, put that one in.
And once he's said that, then
it becomes really like a
Rubik's cube.
Where does it go, what do I have
to give up to get that
back, and so on?
But just to have a second set
of eyes saying, actually no,
you've got that, that one's not
so good, I think there's
heat in that third
one, put it in.
AUDIENCE: My question is about
how your world view influences
your writing.
In many of your interviews,
you've talked about when you
started off and you were working
as an engineer, you
had the sense that things could
go drastically wrong in
your life at any point, how
it was very fragile.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Right.
AUDIENCE: And that world view
seems to be reflected in
stories like "CivilWarLand." And
now you're famous, you're
well-to-do, and your books have
even started selling.
I'm wondering how your world
view has changed, and whether
that change affects how you
write and approach fiction?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: That's a
great question, yeah.
For me, when we were young, a
writer is like the canary in a
coal mine in that we were
never in the gulag.
We were way over extended
on credit
cards, but not starving.
But I found that just that
little whiff of fear that you
have when you have small
kids and you're
not a powerful person--
that was enough to really--
you know that great Terry
Eagleton quote about
"Capitalism plunders the
sensuality of the body." So I
could feel that.
And so I got those first
two books out of that.
Now why that was a revelation,
I'm not quite sure.
I should have known that.
So now it's later, and our kids
are wonderful and grown.
And so the one thing I notice,
my desire, what I want to
accomplish before die is to try
to make a fictional scale
model of the world in which the
positive and the negative,
the hopeful and the not are
there in a compelling mix.
And I noticed it --
when you look at my earlier
work, it's very good at
showing the potential
for chaos.
And I just want to try to get
some of the positive valence
in there, in a way that's
not cheesy, that's not
sentimental or corny.
But I think any of us who live
in America in this time,
you've got to love it.
We're very fortunate.
Or forget America, you walk
through a field of grass on a
summer day and they
just cut it--
pretty good.
So for some reason, fiction
skews dark.
Some would say happiness
writes white.
So technically, I think it's
harder to get the positive
valences in.
And that's my mission, but
again, without becoming Mr.
Positive Thinker--
the guy who gets a spike through
his head and says what
a great opportunity.
And I think the great
writers do it.
Tolstoy did it, Shakespeare did
it, Virginia Woolf did it,
Alice Munro does it.
And so that's my personal
mission.
AUDIENCE: Just a quick follow
up question on that.
I think that you are driving
at what was in my mind too.
Why does fiction tend
to be darker?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: That's
a great question.
AUDIENCE: Why is it so difficult
to capture the
beautiful and positive
moments in our lives?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: I think one
answer is just the Little Red
Riding Hood syndrome, which is
if I say once upon a time,
there was a girl named Little
Red Riding Hood.
Her mother told her, don't
talk to the wolf,
and then she didn't.
[LAUGTHER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: So
I think it's just
something about maybe--
here, I'm just guessing--
but maybe at some level,
storytelling is cautionary
in its design.
And I think that even in the
Bible, these things don't
often come out well.
But in the Bible, they do--
the Resurrection is the big--
so I think it's possible.
But for some reason, certainly
at the beginning levels,
smirking is so easy, to make
fun of something is easy.
And when we get our
applications, it's funny.
Because every year, you're
reading young writers.
And so for example, it turns
out that in that fictive
country, everybody over
35 is a pedophile--
everybody.
And every person, for example,
any midget is a
genius, is a sage.
Those are the only ones
who ever show up.
There's tropes that
you get into--
every stepfather is a terrible
monster, who only reveals
himself on page 12.
So that's not true.
It's just a pattern
of imagination.
So I don't really know
why that is.
But I know for sure, from
experience, it's harder to get
into those high registers.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
I want to ask you about
Hemingway's influence on you.
I was listening yesterday
at the forum.
You spoke about how you tried
to imitate him or
work a lot like him.
And it was frustrating
at the end.
And earlier, you spoke
about how you make
something sound true.
And I think Hemingway, in one
of his books when he was in
Paris, I think he tells that
he tries to write something
that sounds the truest.
That's a technique,
I think, for him.
If it sounds true, then
it's good enough.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Right.
AUDIENCE: And so my question is,
are there things that you
learn from Hemingway that you
use in your writings, like
this one or other things that
you can talk about?
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah,
Hemingway was a huge
influence, as he is, I think,
on a lot of writers.
And at some point, you get to
that critical point where your
worldview and your hero's
diction just don't close.
So I was living in Amarillo,
Texas and trying to be
Hemingway too.
And so you'd go like, Nick
walked into the Walmart .
It was pleasant.
[LAUGHTER]
GEORGE SAUNDERS: But there's,
for a young writer, that
wonderful moment where you go I
know things in my gut that I
can't say in that diction, now
matter if you're imitating
Kerouac or whoever it is.
So that is a holy moment for a
young writer, when you start
getting full body impatient
with your mentor.
But I did, from him, I think,
just minimalism--
just cutting, cutting, cutting,
cutting, making sure
that as much as you can help it,
you're not on auto pilot.
It was a dark and cloudy day.
Ugh.
Really?
So to just lean into the
sentence the way he did.
And make sure that the sentence
is not only a
sentence but it actually can
become a thing in the world
itself in a certain way.
AUDIENCE: Do you think
that this style it
represents his time?
It's not something you
can use anymore?
Because [INAUDIBLE]
a certain figure of people
[INAUDIBLE].
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Yeah, for me,
what I got tired of in
Hemingway was that he, in his
later work especially, he
wasn't funny.
He didn't have any sense
of humor actually.
He knew very well who the
noble, interesting
people were and so on.
And my life was not--
I never lived a Hemingwayesque
moment really.
I remember as a young kid coming
out of a funeral-- a
very sad, terrible thing.
But the funeral was being held
in a mock Georgian mansion--
one of those mansions that had
been put up just to be a
funeral parlor.
And then you walk out of
that, and everyone's
crying and it's terrible.
And across the street, there's
a Chuck E Cheese.
And the mouse is on break.
And he's on the side of the
building with his head off.
And he's smoking.
So that moment could not
show up in Hemingway.
He couldn't do it.
He had a stylistic cave he
had made for himself.
And I thought, that's where
the gateway to style is.
And when you see something in
your life, in your heart, in
your world that the style of
your hero can't accommodate,
then it's a time for growth.
MALE SPEAKER: I'm afraid
we're out of time.
But I just want to say
thank you for coming.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: Thank
you very much--
appreciate it.
[APPLAUSE]
