George Saunders

So the idea that there's physical suffering is,

And then there's the suffering of denial on top of it.

You know, and we all know that.

Like if your leg hurts, but you can't let it hurt, it kind of hurts more, you know?

So I think that's what in the book, the Frenchman correctly posits that if they could just get Boone to say, yeah, I lied.

I really did.

I'm sorry.

That that would represent a better state of being for him than the one in which he actually dies and which he continues to deny it.

So that's the truth.

I think there has to be, yeah.

You have to be in relation to what you actually did.

So sin, I mean, it's a word I brought from my Catholic childhood.

But now I understand it as, I mean, it can be so infinitesimal.

You're feeling X and you say you're feeling X prime.

Hmm, that's going to cause you a little pain.

You know, that's the idea.

And yeah, that's sin.

And that's the sin.

Now the characters will use that word often.

The Frenchman, you know, he died in 1890 or something, so he's using it in a traditional sense, but I think it's compatible with this other sense.