{"id":7461,"date":"2017-04-05T09:20:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T08:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7461"},"modified":"2017-04-06T11:02:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T10:02:53","slug":"george-saunders-interviewed-by-james-reith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7461","title":{"rendered":"George Saunders, interviewed by James Reith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is going to sound very chichi,\u201d Saunders begins, \u201cbut I\u2019m at the Beverly Hilton in LA.\u201d He\u2019s trying to find a seat, poolside, away from other people, so that he can talk to me over the phone. With characteristic humour, he\u2019s quick to downplay any notions of book-tour glamour: it\u2019s \u201ccombination of joy and humiliation,\u201d as he puts it. A description that would also fit his fiction. Whilst he can downplay the Hilton, it\u2019s getting harder for Saunders to downplay his literary accolades. He\u2019s a multi-award winning short story writer who, at fifty eight, has just published his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo<\/em>. Zadie Smith deemed it \u201ca masterpiece\u201d<\/a> before it was released – and it has continued to receive rapturous praise since.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fairly common to think of short-stories and novels as different forms with shared materials. Like cakes and biscuits. Saunders\u2019 analogy of choice is yurts and mansions. \u201cI kept waiting for it to be something different,\u201d he told me, thinking that, for a novel, he would need \u201ca whole new set of tools.\u201d He later came to realise that both forms share \u201cthe same basic skill set in storytelling.\u201d By which he means \u201cpolishing the bit you\u2019re in, so it really is saying something and then, at the same time, looking ahead and behind the story – to see if anything back there needs to be adjusted. [And] what the current bit is prompting.\u201d Or, returning to his mansion analogy, Saunders realised he \u201ccould just link up a bunch of yurts.\u201d Still, he refers to his book as \u201cits own weird, little machine.\u201d \u201cWhen it comes to the 800 page, multi-generational novel,\u201d he continues, \u201cthat may take a different muscle\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Saunders\u2019 \u201cweird, little machine\u201d concerns Willie, the 11-year-old son of the presidential Lincoln, as he navigates the Bardo, a hallucinatory state – drawn from Tibetan Buddhism – that exists between life and reincarnation. Abraham then visits the son\u2019s body whilst grieving. \u2018Why Lincoln? Why Buddhism?\u2019 you may ask. Saunders is, or at least was, just as curious as you, for his approach focuses as much on how<\/em> as what <\/em>he writes. Buddhism not only influenced the book\u2019s setting, but it\u2019s very execution. \u201cI think I was a Buddhist before I knew what it was, through writing,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI had a breakthrough when I was maybe thirty two,\u201d he continues, \u201cand the breakthrough was so simple that it\u2019s kind of hard to talk about\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The first of Saunders\u2019 two breakthroughs was that writing \u201cis a branch of entertainment.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve always been kind of funny in person,\u201d he tells me, \u201cand that energy, of trying to entertain somebody,\u201d he recognised, \u201ccould be part of writing.\u201d But this came with an associated realisation: that \u201cyour job as a writer was to try your best to read the passage as if you hadn\u2019t seen it before. Your real job, which is almost impossible, is to blank out your attachments to it.\u201d He uses the analogy of having a meter in your head, with \u2018P\u2019 on one side and \u2019N\u2019 on the other. \u201cI just need to keep that meter up in the positive zone as much as I can,\u201d he tells me. \u201cTo put it in a kind of new-age way, you\u2019re trying to fully inhabit the moment of the story – even to the level of the phrase, or the word, and see – like when you go to the optometrist – \u2018is this better, or is this better?\u2019\u201d He writes iteratively. Intuitively. Moment-to-moment writing accompanying moment-to-moment living. \u201cWhen I began mediation,\u201d he tells me, \u201cI was really surprised by the overlap [between it and writing]\u201d.<\/p>\n

The practical implications of Saunders\u2019 intuitive, moment-to-moment approach shaped one of the novel\u2019s strangest characteristics: that the names of the spirits, who narrate much of the novel, come after what they say. You don\u2019t know – until you begin to recognise their speech patterns – who was talking until they have finished. Originally, the academic and pseudo-academic quotes in the novel were displayed with the attributions at the bottom. And the names of the spirits appeared before their speech. \u201cI just had this feeling, that I\u2019ve really learned to trust over the years,\u201d Saunders tells me, \u201cthat it just bugged me. It made that transition from ghost to non-ghost too obvious. Those little impulses are very holy.\u201d So he switched the ghost\u2019s attributions. In doing so, he lost clarity and gained instability. But he liked that. \u201cI made the case that this had some aesthetic benefit, because you\u2019re dead. A little instability is to be expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fiction, the way you make value is very much about trusting the intuitive,\u201d Saunders tells me. \u201cSo many images in this book were for fun. At speed. To service that little inner-satisfaction you get when something looks right on a page. And when you do that, you step back and go \u2018oh yeah, that makes some thematic sense.\u2019 That\u2019s allowing me to speak about things I didn\u2019t even know I wanted to speak about.\u201d And this notion, at least according to his teaching experience, is \u201ctrue for everyone, but manifests in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven a comma can be a very bold statement,\u201d Saunders says, discussing the brain when reading – and its sensitivity to detail. \u201cPart of this intuitive approach,\u201d he continues, \u201cis to say, alright, hopefully on page 8 you\u2019re going to be in some elevated state of textual awareness. I\u2019m going to try and be in a very similar one, so that when we reach a decision point, you and I are kind of connected, in a way. You, the reader, and I, the writer, are inhabiting that same field of indicators – and my subconscious is a little ahead of both of us. And you just trust it.\u201d This intuitive notion of storytelling, as a way of connecting, is a cornerstone of Lincoln in the Bardo <\/em>– \u201cthe book,\u201d Saunders tells me, \u201cwas a larger attempt to use that philosophy,\u201d which informs his short fiction – and it is also diametrically opposed to the kind of storytelling the ghosts perform within the novel itself.<\/p>\n

The ghost Hans Vollman repeats, throughout the book, a single story regarding his unconsummated marriage. \u201cIntuitively, and by limited talent,\u201d Saunders continues, \u201cI resisted the beat where I tell a second story about Hans Vollman\u2019s life. I didn\u2019t want to. And when I tried to, I couldn\u2019t. This is where it gets really zen\u2026\u201d Rather than seeing this as a failing on his part, as a writer, he just continued with this notion. \u201cSo whenever Hans would come up, he would just repeat that first story. I exported it: it\u2019s not a failure of mine, it\u2019s a feature of theirs.\u201d But he then wondered why they – the ghosts – could not come up with other stories. Then it dawned on him: \u201cthey\u2019re dead. And this storytelling is not just decorative. It is literally keeping them there in this place they shouldn\u2019t be. Not only are they not capable of making additional stories, they don\u2019t have them anymore.\u201d He compares them to the stereotype of an elderly person repeating the same anecdotes continually. \u201cIt\u2019s very touching, they\u2019re clinging to their identity through these, often traumatic – or sometimes just irritating – narratives.\u201d The ghosts cling to a sense of self, through storytelling, in a spiritual realm where the self is an obstacle to be overcome. All this stemmed from not wanting to write another story for Vollman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI struggle to explain it,\u201d Saunders continues, \u201cbut the subconscious, if you call it that, is an incredibly powerful storytelling machine. It can actually take your flaws as a human being, and your flaws as a storyteller\u2026 And then if you respond to them in the right way, with a little patience, they can actually turn into strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another obstacle Saunders encountered was writing – even if only occasionally – in the voice of Abraham Lincoln. His way around this was to think of Abe as \u201cjust another human being.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s going to be me, basically,\u201d Saunders continues, \u201cme on a different day.\u201d Which is the same for all the characters. \u201cSo much of this fiction is actually gaming oneself, and recognising that this is not a catalogue, not a photograph – it\u2019s a dramatic contrivance that\u2019s designed to produce a certain effect\u2026 And I don\u2019t know what it is. I want it to be powerful and non-trivial. But I\u2019m not guiding you, really.\u201d He pauses. \u201cI\u2019m, hopefully, blundering off in a nice way, and you\u2019re following – and together we have some transformative little moment at the end.\u201d In the hands of a lesser writer, Saunders\u2019 personal projections could\u2019ve resulted in narcissistic fantasies. Instead, he grasps for something universal.<\/p>\n

Despite Saunders\u2019 personal writing strategies, however, he knows that you can\u2019t evade the politics of writing in the voice of such a central, historical figure. \u201cEven with this approach, you don\u2019t get out of the responsibility. You still did make a Lincoln. Now it might have helped you to do so, to pretend that you weren\u2019t, but in the end, of course, you did.\u201d To publish is to endorse. \u201cOne of the moves that we don\u2019t talk about in fiction writing is \u2018I approve this message.\u2019 You do something by accident, and then go \u2018ooh, okay.\u2019 That\u2019s writing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of energising an historical person,\u201d he continues, \u201cis when the reader sees part of her own mindset appearing there. I\u2019d be going along, making this Lincoln who is, in a large part, me – with my understanding of life and love and so on – and I\u2019d go: \u2018wait a second, this is the guy who\u2026 is going to leave this graveyard [and] invent the concept of total war.\u2019\u201d He massacred hundreds of thousands. Freed a sixth of the population. And had feelings like you or I.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe history sections [of the novel] came in as a corrective,\u201d Saunders continues, contrasting them with the supernatural elements. He had previously attempted another book set in a graveyard, inspired by chatlines. He liked the errors that so often occurred in chatline text, and thought they looked like \u201csouls talking back and forth.\u201d But the book had \u201cno forward motion.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s some kind of subtle contract between reader and writer,\u201d he tells me. \u201cIf you know I\u2019m writing ghosts, you know I have 360 degrees of possibility. And there\u2019s a little bit of an indulgence that I\u2019m getting from you.\u201d He compares this indulgence to dream sequences. \u201cYou have three dream sequences in your career,\u201d an old writing teacher told him, \u201cso don\u2019t use them up too quickly.\u201d With Lincoln in the Bardo<\/em>, Saunders realised he needed a \u201cfactual spine,\u201d so that \u201cif a reader was drifting\u201d he could \u201csnap her to attention with a quote from Doris Kearns Goodwin,\u201d a Lincoln biographer, \u201cand suddenly something changes in the contract. It literally is like if someone\u2019s drifting to sleep and you let off a firecracker.\u201d Saunders first heard the, likely apocryphal, story of Abraham Lincoln cradling the body of his dead son twenty years beforehand – and he had been doing some casual research into Willie Lincoln\u2019s death since. He found the historical details made Willie\u2019s death all the more tragic. But the core, dramatic intent of the historical asides was to ensure readers didn\u2019t resist the novel \u201cbecause it\u2019s just a bunch of ghost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inevitably, we get to Trump. \u201cPeople I love are Trump supporters,\u201d he tells me, trying to explain his country\u2019s fractious political situation. Saunders may have a near-mystical approach to writing as a process, but his views on art\u2019s role in culture is practical. \u201cWe marginalise art,\u201d he tells me, \u201cand I think we\u2019re paying the price. Our discourse is degraded.\u201d He calls the \u201csocial media snark\u201d of Donald Trump the \u201ctotal opposite of art,\u201d and compares a hypothetical social media spat with a Trump supporter to a wrestling, or boxing, match. \u201cBut if he was reading my book – or I was reading his book – suddenly you\u2019re in a different, much more generous, space. This country that we,\u201d America, \u201care right now,\u201d Saunders continues, \u201cis not the country that we always were. It\u2019s not the country that we\u2019re meant to be. And art,\u201d he tells me, \u201cis a way that we can remind ourselves of that.\u201d I can\u2019t think of a more generous space than Lincoln in the Bardo. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is going to sound very chichi,\u201d Saunders begins, \u201cbut I\u2019m at the Beverly Hilton in LA.\u201d He\u2019s trying to find a seat, poolside, away from other people, so that he can talk to me over the phone. With characteristic humour, he\u2019s quick to downplay any notions of book-tour glamour: it\u2019s \u201ccombination of joy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nGeorge Saunders, interviewed by James Reith - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=7461\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"George Saunders, interviewed by James Reith - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cThis is going to sound very chichi,\u201d Saunders begins, \u201cbut I\u2019m at the Beverly Hilton in LA.\u201d He\u2019s trying to find a seat, poolside, away from other people, so that he can talk to me over the phone. 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