George Saunders

It just has to formulate it correctly.

So in this book, I think there are kind of two characters who embody that question, and I think they're both right.

And so my job, rather than answering your question, is to allow each of them to make the best possible case for their view.

So with this book and with Lincoln and the Bardo, I wrote myself into a place where the question got more and more profound, and I found myself less and less capable of giving a definitive answer.

And you think, well, actually, that's not for an artist to do.

You ratchet the question up, and you go, yeah, that's a tough one.

Yeah, well, there's a guy who's one of these sort of climate change denial architects who's now on the last night of his life, and his name is K.J.

Boone.

And he's got a couple ghosts or many ghosts who come to see him.

And one of them is the ghost of this woman, Jill.

And she died at 22 in 1976.

And her idea about things, because of an experience she had at death, is that...

Nobody is to blame.

Nobody should take credit.

We're just these vessels that live out sort of karma, you know, and therefore the only thing to do is to be kind and comfort one another.

That's her view.

There's a Frenchman who died in the 1800s whose view is not that.

He's a kind of a vengeful presence.

So those two throughout the book are kind of going back and forth over how to approach this sinner in the bed.

And so those are the two viewpoints I kept trying to like refine and