George Saunders

if you drop below a certain level, you're an embarrassment and the cavalry isn't coming.

So I think, and I'll add a third thing.

There was a, when I first got out of college, there was a friend of mine from high school and I went to visit him and he was living in his mom's basement and he had a good job and very like attractive, intelligent guy.

And the question kind of hovered over, like, why are you still with your moms, you know?

And he said that he'd had certain experiences when he was young and they were very poor that were quite humiliating for him.

And he'd internalized them and he said, I'm not moving out of this basement until I'm a millionaire.

And it really struck me because he was not somebody who was at all off-center or deficient in any way.

He was a high-achieving guy, but that early pain had stung him.

So I think that's what this guy's tapping into.

Maybe in a more general sense, I think that's what capitalism is about, really.

I mean, it's beautiful if you're above the line, and if you're below the line, capitalism plunders the sensuality of the body.

So that's – I thought, well, if I want to have a motivation for him that isn't easily dismissed, that's a pretty good one.

And I could feel it.

I could viscerally feel it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, again, in the local sense...

I think about when our kids were little and I was working and it was a great job, fine, tech writer, you know.

But, and this is maybe a fact of contemporary life, for 10 hours a day, I was doing something that had no relation to anything that I cared about, except providing for, you know.

So within that workspace, I would do whatever, I was photocopying, I was, you know, mopping up spills.

I mean, it didn't really matter, writing technical reports.