George Saunders

Yeah, no, you're exactly right.

The intention's pretty great.

You know, and so does Jill.

But one of the fun things about writing a book for me, and in this method I use, it's very, a lot of iteration.

And, you know, so I think early in the book, I thought Jill was kind of right, you know.

And then as I kept revising it, the Frenchman seemed to be right.

And then I started to see, oh, they're both kind of out of their minds.

They're dead.

So the Frenchman, he's very much kind of neurotic in that way, you know.

There are these manic spirits who aren't quite focused on, they've got some truth in them, but they're expressing it kind of inefficiently.

And poor KJ Boone is, you know, these are his two guardian angels and they're both kind of mess ups, you know.

So I think that in the final analysis of the book, I went, oh, this is so sad.

You know, he does need some help.

But neither of these people is willing to give it to him.

The Frenchman comes in so hot and so angry that anybody would resist him.

And Jill assuages in such a sort of cozy way that nobody could take correction from her either.

So Boone floats through, and in a sense, he's not saved, actually.

And... That's the book.

That's the book.

Yeah, no, it is.