George Saunders

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.

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.