George Saunders

Isn't it not just about empathy?

Right.

And this empathy argument is people say, well, empathy means you have a feeling that makes you be kind.

But what if you don't have a... What if there's somebody towards whom you feel a little revulsion?

Could you still be kind to them?

And I think, of course, the answer is yes.

So with that speech, I waded into some pretty deep waters.

And as a fiction writer, I don't really want to be...

nice all the time.

Flannery O'Connor is not a nice writer, but she's, I would say, a very compassionate writer.

How has that informed the fiction, do you think?

Well, it has to do for me with abiding a little longer with a person or a character than we might normally.

So in real life, if somebody cuts you off in traffic, you know their political party, which is the opposite of yours.

But in fiction, you get that chance to kind of say, all right, well, let's reimagine that situation.

From the point of view of the person who cut you off, I think we learned that our capacities for understanding other people are actually much bigger than we think.

And especially in today's climate where everyone has to have an opinion that's a drop of a hat and antagonism is seen as a kind of power struggle.

Just to say, let me just hang here a minute longer to see who this other person is.

And maybe by doing that, broaden the range of possible responses.

So fiction does it just because your first pass of a character that you've made too quickly is often a little boring.

It's a cartoon.