George Saunders

And so they didn't die at peace and so they're hanging out in this waiting room.

But on the more practical side, I started out my writing career as kind of a realist.

Like I loved Hemingway and Joyce and all those guys.

But I just couldn't do it.

When I would do that, try to write about my life, it was just so boring, you know.

So what I found out was if I put in early, if I put in a theme park, things got fun.

You can write in Hemingway's voice, but you said it in the Virgin Mary theme park, and suddenly you're into something kind of funny.

So it's really, in some ways, it's just a device to get more energy and more fun into the book.

I don't know what I believe about after death.

I mean, I would be surprised if mental phenomenon just stopped.

And anecdotally, from all these near-death things, it sounds like what happens is kind of like that Buddhist thing where your mind, the body steps aside and the mind goes berserk for a while.

But in a way, if you say, okay, let's make a world where our neuroses get supersized

and basically we just become our neuroses, that's a pretty good description of a day, really.

I mean, you know.

Yeah.

So if you want to talk about human psychology, human desire, it's not a bad—liminal space isn't a bad place to do it.

Oh, they'll come back.

Two, please.

Well, I think the – well, probably – and this is a positive form.

But when we first had our daughter, Paula and I got married and we got engaged in three weeks in the romantic Syracuse ambiance and then pregnant on the honeymoon and then difficult first pregnancy.