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