George Saunders

And then I get out on the street and there's, for some reason, there's a string quartet.

I wander by it.

I don't hear it because of my obsession with these headphones.

Okay, am I punished?

Not really.

I mean, I don't know that I'm punished.

I'm not overtly punished, but somehow there's a difference in that experience versus the one with the headphones out, maybe.

That's not very satisfying.

I mean, you think, oh, Hitler missed out on a lot of opportunities.

You know, that's not so satisfying.

But I mean, that's one.

The book is struggling with that very question, for sure.

Oh, yeah.

I hope so.

I mean, yeah, I had, you know, a moment a couple months ago, I went back to my alma mater, the School of Mines in Colorado.

And so it was sort of an all-day series of events.

So they put me in this one building and kind of gave me a little temporary room, office.

And as I went upstairs, I thought, oh, my God, I used to live here.

And so the room next to the room they gave me was my bedroom from a really fraught year in my college experience.

So then we went through the day.