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An Interview with George Saunders
Tom Fleischmann conducted this interview with George Saunders over email on November 6, 2005, as a preview of Saunders' visit to Ypsilanti at the end of the semester.
UpInMichigan.org: The beginning of The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil reads like a fable. This fits into the tone of some of your other work and the work of several of your contemporaries (Aimee Bender jumps to mind). Do you see modern fables taking a more prominent role in literary fiction? And how do you see yourself fitting into the fable tradition?
George Saunders: In that case, it sounds that way because it started out as a kid's book. Then it veered off-course and became about genocide. Whoops! But in general—I think even my adult stories are fable-like but I'm not sure I could say why. I wasn't even aware of this until a few years ago. I think it's partly because I don't entirely trust the other kind of fiction—where we feel the writer is trying to make an 'authentic' picture of real life and that we are supposed to be learning about real life from these highly detailed imitations of it. I mean, I believe in it when other writers do it—but I can't do it. I have some basic failure of faith in the idea that a "real" human being can be fairly represented in prose. I know for a fact one can't. But I feel like if I first wink at the reader—"You know and I know this is an impossible thing, so let's agree that I'm going to exaggerate things a bit, I'm going to concede in advance my own inability to 'represent,'" then I feel ok about making the attempt.
This may be the essence of the fable. When I say: "Once there was a ten-ton duck" you know I don't expect you to believe that. So maybe you say: "Okay, so what if there was?" And we have a mutual understanding that, by talking about the one-ton duck, I am going to attempt to give you an experience that may, in some mysterious, back-door way, have something to do with your real, interior, ultimately private, life.
UIM: You received workshop training at Syracuse in the late 80's, then found work in the quite different world of technical writing. How did the two types of writing play off each other and influence the type of work you ended up publishing today? And now that you're teaching writing at Syracuse as well, does that affect your writing in a new way?
GS: The tech writing worked in two ways. First, it made my prose very sparse—my bosses made it clear that they didn't want anything inessential like, say, adverbs, or commas. Second, there was a kind of corporatese we were always writing, and I found this really interesting—this new kind of language that was purposely obfuscating the truth, but in a very suave, scientific, passive-voice way: a kind of perverse poetry. When we were really saying, "Yup, you've got a shitload of radium in the groundwater there, and we have no idea where it came from or how far it's traveled so far," we'd say: "The existence of evidence of possible non-chemical contamination was observed. Based on existing data, the source of said condition and its areal extent could not be definitively determined." And by that time, with any luck, the reader was asleep, or had killed himself, and the client was off the hook.
UIM: ...Phil, as a novella, is the longest single story that you've published. Your next book is going to be another collection of short stories. As a short story fan, I appreciate you sticking to the form, but what about it particularly has kept you faithful considering all the pressure to produce a novel?
GS: The main thing that has allowed me to resist the pressure to write a novel is sheer crushing inability. I am like a beetle who has decided not to run marathons. I would if I could but my legs are too short.
UIM: The illustrations added a lot to ...Phil, and you played off Edward Gorey in your recent New Yorker poem. How interested are you in text-graphic interaction? Do you read any contemporary writers who are publishing graphic novels, or was this a one-time thing for the novella?
GS: I find illustrated books really appealing but I don't have plans for another one at the moment. I love Chris Ware and Art Speigelman, and was always a big Charles Schulz fan. And I love to see the illustrations The New Yorker and Harper's choose for my stories. So there's something there—I think it's just a non-visual person's love for something I can't do, or imagine doing myself. I also think my interest in this kind of book can sometimes function as a way of avoiding the harder, no-pictures-allowed books, or working up a certain momentum for them.
UIM: That New Yorker poem was, I believe, your first published poem. You're also doing quite a few political essays lately. Are you becoming interested in genres outside of fiction? Are you reading much poetry or creative nonfiction?
GS: I'd have to quarrel with your calling that a "poem." That thing was, to poetry, what a guy stepping on a live electrical wire is to "dancing." But yes—I am basically trying to do anything I can to keep myself from getting prematurely senile. I feel like one of the things a writer has to do is keep challenging himself to try new things—not to replace what he (I) "really" does/do—i.e., short stories—but rather to bring new light back to this main work. And playing around in other forms helps me do that. For example, I just took a trip to Dubai for GQ and wrote about it, and I can feel that it inflected the part of my brain that writes fiction. I am not reading much poetry, as reflected in the quality of my one published "poem," which sounds like, not only has the writer not ever read a poem, he may not even be able to read at all. I am reading some great non-fiction—all of it, for some reason, about Lincoln. I just finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, about the Lincoln cabinet—very inspiring and wonderful.
UIM: Many of your stories focus on (usually false) dichotomies, whether they're more defined in the Outer Hornerite/Inner Hornerite way, or subtler, like with employers/employees. Do you think people, and particularly Americans, tend to disregard complexities in favor of easy-to-digest, oversimplification?
GS: I think we all do that, because complexity is so hard. It is much easier to make a simple picture of life and then breathe a sigh of relief because now you don't have to think anymore. But sadly, in all things, we have to resist the impulse to take our hands off the wheel. That is, every day we have to start over, review the data, shake off all we've previously decided. I think that's when age sets in: the minute you start craving the cessation of thought. It's a comfort to say, for example, I'm a LIBERAL! Or I'm a CONSERVATIVE or I'm the WORLD'S BIGGEST PINK FLOYD FAN! and then let this categorization answer all questions for you—but I think that's Step One of "How to Die." (But, by my own logic, I'd better not be too sure about this).
UIM: While your stories don't have as direct a political point as someone like Orwell, they're satirical nature still makes them politically relevant. Do you have a political idea in mind when you sit down to write, or is that something that comes organically from your work?
GS: It comes organically. It is, I think, kind of hardwired into me and into my idea of what fiction should do. Stories are about people trying to make the most of their lives, and this is automatically 'political' in a certain wide sense, since it involves the question: How should we live? But at a deeper level, I think stories should be a question, really, and the question should deepen as the story proceeds, to the point where you can't answer the question at the end, and in fact have more questions, and are more convinced of the nobility and value of these questions. And then the net result of the story is increased awe and humility. So I don't really like "political" stories, if this means that the writer of the story knows what he thinks and is using the story to prove or illustrate his knowledge. That is boring and reductive and insulting to the reader, no matter how enlightened the viewpoint of the writer may be. Fiction is to train us in being comfortable with our own uncertainty. I'm with Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you are mistaken." Stories help in this.
UIM: Likewise, how political are you in your day-to-day life? I know you advocate for an organization that educates refugee children in Nepal (which is great). Does working in some sort of humanitarian role fuel your writing or make it more genuine?
GS: No, I'm actually, compared to a lot of people I know, pretty slothful in this regard. We have two kids and I teach and we don't have all that much extra money or time. I think I'll be able to do more as our responsibilities ease up. I hope so. But in reading about Lincoln, it's been very interesting to be reminded of an earlier (and fading) vision of America, wherein the whole point of the enterprise was to ease the burden of the unfortunate—to make citizens out of the impoverished, to educate them and ease their way and give them opportunities until they were fully vested in the country, at which time they were expected to give a hand up to those currently on the bottom. And this wasn't just some hobby, or some noble side purpose—it was the whole point of the country. "All men created equal" understood to mean: "All get an equal chance." Whatever stood in the way of an equal chance (poverty, ignorance, prejudice) was to be leveled. So I was inspired by this.this idea that what ails America now, on so many fronts, is an absence of this kind of moral vision. What are we about? What are we here to do? At present the answer seems to be: Get more stuff. Or: Make sure we stay on top. But why stay on top? What are we trying to do with all this stuff? Well, the answer seems to be, we are trying to stay on top so we can continue to stay on top, getting more stuff, which will allow us to remain supreme, which we must do, because we are the best.
I'm afraid that, unless we get some larger and more noble purpose, we are going to sink into what materialism always causes people to sink into: Selfishness, sloth, decadence, violence.
And that vision has to be complex, and intelligent, and well-considered, and constantly re-considered. It has to keep the actual improvement in the circumstances of individuals in mind. So "sending freedom around the world" is too vague. I believe we have to make it our national goal to benefit other beings. Not just us. That, to me, seems like a worthy goal for a great country, and something that could keep us gainfully employed for years, and might even make us (again) beloved to the world.
UIM: Ben Stiller's production company is supposed to be in production for "CivilWarLand" with plans to do "Sea Oak." Have you talked with the people behind the films much? How do you expect these stories to translate onto film?
GS: I wrote the scripts for both. I think they'll be really good movies. It was nice to adapt them myself because I got to control the degree and flavor of the departure from the stories. I suspect if I was adapting some other writer's work I would have been maybe too reverent and respectful. But adapting my own stories, I felt like, "Hell, I know this guy, he won't mind." And then could make whatever adjustments would make the movie better. I've been allowed to work really closely with Ben and his company so far—been to a table reading and went on a location scouting trip—so that has been really enjoyable.
UIM: You've lived all over the country—Chicago, New York, Colorado, Texas. Do you think these geographies have affected your writing, or do you consider yourself more of an American writer who isn't placed in a particular region?
GS: I think both of those things are true. The fact that I've moved around has made me perhaps more aware of what all those places (and maybe all American places) have in common. There's something beautiful and strange and new about the fact that you can find the same suite of, say, Denny's + La Quintana + highway exit ramp, in Merced, California, as in Amherst, Massachusetts. I mean: the exact same vista. And the exact same floorplans once you get inside.a form of "new regionalism," maybe.
UIM: Thanks again!
GS: No, thank YOU!
___
George Saunders will be reading with Jason Ockert at Eastern Michigan University at the Sponberg Theatre, 6pm, November 28, 2005.
Tom Fleischmann is a recent graduate of Grand Valley State University. He writes for Between the Lines newspaper and plans to attend graduate school next year.
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