George Saunders

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.

It was really great.

Met a bunch of lovely people and did a talk and everything.

And at the end, I was collecting my things and I just got to stand in that window for a minute.

The desk used to be right at this window.

And it was the weirdest thing, you know, because that guy that I was was so ambitious and so stupid, you know, so like not in touch with how one went about having a writing life or what it would mean.

And really, I mean, like grotesquely out of touch.

But he was pretty earnest, you know.