George Saunders

But then at some point I graduated from the School of Mines, went overseas and was working in the oil fields.

I was walking home, possibly a little drunk one night in Singapore, and there was a big foundation of a hotel that was going up.

And there was some movement in the bottom, and I kind of staggered up to the fence.

And there were, I mean, hundreds of what I came to see were elderly Malaysian, Singaporean women clearing the site by hand, you know, tearing boulders off.

And something in that moment, it just snapped, and I made the connection between...

Those women and my extended family, many of whom were struggling with kind of the big boot of capitalism at that point.

And I thought, oh, I'm on their side.

So something in that instant clicked.

And then I was just much more open to sort of what we would now call progressive ideas.

So that kind of magical thing where you – well, for the first time I thought –

Contra Ayn Rand.

These people are the result of a system.

This thing that's happening to them, the way they're behaving, the difficulties they're having, isn't entirely just them.

And that in turn connected with my childhood Catholicism.

Oh, how so?

Well, I mean, I always thought, I always loved, I think it's the woman at the well when Jesus is able to, as I understood it as a kid, comes up to this woman who's scorned by other people and goes, I see you.

And I like you.

I love you.

I forgive you.

I always thought that was such a novelistic move.