The Daily
'The Interview': George Saunders Is No Saint (Despite What You May Have Heard)
10 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. Last fall, George Saunders was awarded the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
In the speech introducing him, in addition to a glowing rundown of his literary resume, which includes the 2017 Booker Prize-winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, he was also called the ultimate teacher of kindness and craft. Pretty good, right? Well, mostly. The craft part isn't the problem.
Saunders, who is 67, has been a revered teacher in Syracuse's prestigious creative writing MFA program since 1996. His 2021 bestseller, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, was a distillation of his teaching, featuring close readings of Russian short stories.
And out of that book came a substack called Story Club with George Saunders, where he continues to teach, answers reader letters, and shares writing exercises with more than 300,000 followers. He also has a new novel out this month called Vigil, about a cantankerous oil tycoon on his deathbed. It's the kindness part, though, where things can get a little tricky.
In 2013, Saunders gave a convocation speech to Syracuse graduates all about the power of practicing kindness. That speech went viral and then was repackaged as the best-selling book titled Congratulations, by the way. The success of that speech has wound up casting Saunders into a kind of self-helpy guru of goodness role, which is frankly a little strange given the satirical bite of his fiction.
And it's also just kind of an odd thing for someone to have to live with, because as he explained in our conversation, he's just as fallible and flawed as the rest of us, and as his unforgettable characters. Here's my interview with George Saunders. George, thanks for taking the time to be here today.
Oh, thanks for having me. It's great.
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Chapter 2: What challenges does George Saunders face regarding kindness?
I felt so bad about it.
But I think I wrote most of it out. And then I kept going. And I thought, yeah, I think I backed out. Yeah.
And at one point you looked at me and you said, is this real? And I just lied to your face.
But it's funny.
It honestly pops into my head as something I feel bad about.
What's interesting about that is when I— No, no, it's totally fine. Because when I look back at my, you know, so-called career, that was an anomaly. I couldn't—I thought, that doesn't make sense to me. I couldn't quite—so I'm glad to know that it was fake.
It was fake, yes. All right, so now I can move forward with a clean conscience.
I can stop worrying about that husband whose wife, you know.
Okay, so your new novel, Vigil, it raised a lot of questions for me, thematic questions.
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Chapter 3: What insights does George Saunders share about his new novel, Vigil?
And as for what happens next, I don't know. In the book, in that last 15 or 20 pages, I got a lot of surprises, things that I was kind of rooting for didn't happen, things that came out of nowhere and surprised me. So for me, that's the beauty of the writing process is
It's almost like something rises up out of me that's a little smarter, a little more fair, a little more curious, and hovers over the desk for a while. And the theory is, the reader's over there, the book urges that little spirit-like thing out of him as well, and the two things merge. So you get this brief period of rarefied communication.
that weirdly seems to inspire a suite of really nice things like a little more empathy, a little more engagement, a little more patience. So I kind of live for the moment when that little spirit comes out of me and I can stop being this guy and be him for 12 minutes.
What you just described, how the engagement with literature results in these positive side effects, a little more empathy, a little bit more understanding, maybe a little more patience, a little bit more interest in other people. It's sort of a recurring theme. theme in interviews with you and things you've written. And I have questions about that.
So do I. Because on the one hand, I think we could point to countless examples of genius-level writers, presumably people who are as deeply engaged with literature as someone could possibly be who are giant jerks. And then conversely, just an example from my life, the kindest, sweetest, most empathetic person I ever knew was my paternal grandmother, who was illiterate her whole life.
So what makes you believe that your hopes that you have for what literature can achieve are true and not just sort of a nice thing to hope?
Yes. Well, to the first point, I think there's a mistake when we think someone who's done something beautiful in art must be a wonderful person. It's just like if somebody can play football really well, they might be a really bad person. They just have a skill. The second thing is I think these benefits, which I talk a lot about it because I feel it every day. I see it happening to me.
They're not necessarily going to fix everything. They're sort of incremental changes of consciousness on the part of the writer and the reader. I'm not claiming it as some kind of universal solution, but I also think we, to me anyway, it's becoming clear that
Writing and reading is a way of simply underscoring that human connection is important, that you can know my mind and I can know yours, which is a vastly consoling idea, and we need it. Just from my own experience, so many times in my life, I felt a more articulate version of myself emerge after a period of writing. And when that happens, the world changes.
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Chapter 4: How does George Saunders define the relationship between determinism and personal responsibility?
Why do you refer to shareholder value as a fiction?
Well, it's not a fiction, but it's not as important as people think it is. I mean, it seems to be, to me, it seems that we use that to excuse a lot of bullshit that we wouldn't put up with normally. I don't know if I can articulate this, but it seems to me in our time we've become very comfortable with a certain mental move. And it's something like, I know what the right thing is. Wait there.
And then we turn and we do something else. I think it's just pervasive. It's one of the reasons our politics is the way it is. I mean, our president calls a reporter a pig. And some percentage of people say, well, I know. I would never do that. I would never. I have a wife. I have a daughter. Never would I call a person a pig. However, then we turn.
So I think this is, again, this is just a first thought, but I'm interested in the way that we can know very well that certain enlightenment values are true and important, and make an excuse, sometimes it's shareholder value, to turn and look away from us.
Yeah, sometimes the excuse is as simple as, it's easier.
It's easier, yeah. Or, you know, there's also, I mean, isn't it a drag to have to say in a scolding tone, I don't do that. Or that strikes me as low. I think maybe starting back with reality TV, we lost our ability to say, that's toxic and I don't want it. And so we say, well, it's toxic, but I'm not going to be a prig. Does that resonate with you at all?
Well, it does. I think it also connects to a lot of the backlash against the censoriousness of the left. There's the idea that young men in particular were like, they're just always finger wagging at everything. I'm not interested in that.
It's interesting because going out into America, I see a fairly... medium functional culture with pretty good civility. And the politics doesn't seem to correspond to that. And I think it may be about this issue of who gets to throw the flag, you know, who gets to, yeah, anyway, that's for the next book. I got to think about it.
You know, I saw recently you won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Foundation. And in one of the introductory speeches to your acceptance speech. Get ready for this one. You were referred to as the ultimate teacher of kindness and of craft. And, you know, you're often...
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Chapter 5: What do the characters in Vigil represent about judgment and morality?
And then it was made into a book that I think also did well.
Yeah. But then, so then that you have made this... this claim that it would be good for us all to be more kind. And then after that, you go on a tour and you get to dig into that bit and go, huh, okay, so what does it actually mean? Well, it's not nice. Niceness is not the same thing. And you can kind of reason your way to see that kindness has something to do with awareness.
In other words, if kindness is being of benefit to people within your sphere, okay, well, how do you know if you're being of benefit or not? So it was an interesting, that talk was an interesting way for me to realize that maybe I had equated kindness and niceness in too easy of a way, disconnect those, and then it gets to be a real lifelong connection
But I think now what I think is that kindness, so-called, has so much to do with your ability to be in a moment without a whole lot of monkey mind going on. Because then you're more likely to be able to posit what could be helpful in that situation and make the decision.
I think people who are interested in ideas of kindness and togetherness, I think that's basically a self-selecting group of people. But for this other group of people who maybe aren't thinking about or don't care about questions of kindness or what it means to degrade our shared world, is there anything you would suggest that they read to maybe just open up the door just a little bit?
Well, I want to push back on your framing because I think even the worst hurt on the planet, if you fall down in front of him, he's going to help you up in general. I actually think that's true as a kind of working hypothesis.
So then we get to a different statement of your question is why does a person who in his own life does value kindness and does love his parents, love his kids, why does he hit the switch on whatever harmful thing he's doing? That's a deep question. My theory is most people don't operate from the Cruella de Vil school of evil. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I suck. You know, I don't think so.
Uh, so then it gets really interesting. Okay. So why then, if you sat down this person and said, do you believe in kindness? Of course I do. Why then at the moment of truth, did they make the decision that they make? And I think, you know, you can look at our politics right now. Um,
And I don't really have an answer, but I'm very interested in some of the stuff that comes out of the White House press thing is really, it's post Orwell, post Kafka, the things that are being said. But I'm guessing that if you sat that person down, they wouldn't disagree with us in principle. So that's a very rich question, and I don't think anybody knows.
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Chapter 6: How does George Saunders view the impact of literature on empathy?
And you have the advantage of me. You know, my name, I don't know your name. Let's talk. And so there was a two- or three-day silence, and then he said, I won't apologize. I was drunk, and I didn't think you would read that. Okay, okay, I understand. And we went back and forth for a few rounds. So I think the number of interactions a day that we now have that have that kind of strange –
conditionality of impersonality it it skyrocketed and i think it it's corrosive that to me is the major through line of my life actually not just the last few years but from 1958 to now i think somehow we're devaluing human to human contact which is really the only thing that there is thank you so much for taking all the time i really i really enjoyed it and i'm looking forward to you to speaking to you again on friday sounds good a few days
After the break, George and I speak again, this time about how when it comes to teaching, less can often be more.
Sometimes even like there'll be a student who has a shining moment of real sincerity or earnestness or something in the story that the sort of hipster in them has been keeping out. And just slightly put your hand and go on that and say, you know, as an older person, this is really resonant to me. This really is beautiful.
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