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Chapter 1: What influences shaped George Saunders' writing style?
welcome to this cultural life the series in which the world's leading artistic figures choose the influences and experiences that most inspired their own creativity i'm john wilson and my guest in this episode is the booker prize-winning american author george saunders he made his name as a writer of satirical or absurdist short stories which often explore contemporary consumerist society always underpinned with a strong sense of compassion and empathy
In 2017, his first full-length novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, about presidential grief amid a cacophony of spiritual voices, won the Booker Prize and became a global bestseller. His latest novel, Vigil, once again explores death and the afterlife.
George Saunders teaches creative writing at Syracuse University, New York, and is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in American literature. George Saunders, welcome to This Cultural Life. It's so nice to be here, thank you. And welcome back to London, where in 2017 you won the Booker Prize, of course, for your debut novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.
How big a surprise on the night was that win?
Chapter 2: How did winning the Booker Prize impact Saunders' career?
Infinite. I was kind of thinking I'd gotten the message that it wasn't the year for an American.
Chapter 3: What inspired George Saunders to write 'Lincoln in the Bardo'?
And so I was just there for the party. And then as the words Lincoln and the Bardo came across the room, I got a jolt. You know, it was really unforgettable. It was one of the best nights of my life.
For many people, that Booker win was their introduction to you as a writer.
Chapter 4: How does George Saunders define the concept of the 'bardo'?
It was your debut novel at the age, I think, of 58. But of course, you had been winning so much acclaim and prizes for your short stories for many years. Did the idea of Lincoln in the Bardo start off as the possible next short story? And at what point did you think, actually, no, this has to be a novel?
I had first become aware of the source material some 20 years before, and it just scared the heck out of me because it was a little more earnest than I was used to doing. I thought, oh, that's a good book for somebody to write.
How did you come across the story?
Literally driving past a cemetery in D.C. where Lincoln's son was buried.
So we should just explain this point for those people who haven't read Lincoln in the Bardo. The Lincoln in the title is not... Abraham Lincoln, but his son, Willie, the 11-year-old son who has died and is visited in the tomb by his grieving father. And the Bardo is a Buddhist concept of a limbo state between life and death.
Exactly. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What role do compassion and empathy play in Saunders' work?
So we were driving by this Oak Hill Cemetery and my wife's cousin just casually pointed up and said, oh, that's the crypt where Willie Lincoln was. And I said, who's Willie Lincoln? I didn't know. It's in the historical record that Lincoln apparently did visit the crypt at night alone, which just kind of blew my mind. So over the next 20 years, I was reading about it just as an amateur historian.
And then over that time, I guess I just got enough confidence to think, all right, I can try to be a little more earnest and a little more historical. And so at 55 or so, I thought, you know... If I don't do this now, I'm never going to do it. And I don't want to be the guy whose own grave says avoided that which he most longed to do.
So I gave myself kind of a six-month contract to try to make a big mistake if I wanted to. And a big book as well. So it was never going to be a short story. No, I knew it would be something along... And in fact, I tried it as a play, and I'm not a very good playwright, but it felt that it could be more substantial than a story, for sure.
Interesting you say it could have been a play, because actually there is a play-like aspect to it in the way it's experimental. Lincoln's visits to the tomb are witnessed by this vast cast of ghostly spectral characters, and then interspersed also with quotes from supposed historical records.
Chapter 6: How did George Saunders' upbringing influence his storytelling?
Were any of those records real?
No.
Yes. First, they all were. And then there were certain times where I just needed sort of a spanning quote. And it was kind of funny because I thought, I really need to make one up. And I thought, well, can I do that? And then this voice said, well, it's your book. You can do whatever you like. So it became part of the fun of the book to have some
accurately quoted historical text, and then to try to make up others. So it became kind of a really strange stylistic challenge to be able to write a convincing 19th century news release or diary entry.
And that sort of very staccato form, which is almost like a play script, that answers the question, why that form then? Yes, it kind of grew out of the play.
And then also I thought, you know, since it became clear that the main narrators were going to be ghosts,
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Chapter 7: What lessons did Saunders learn from his writing experiences?
I didn't want to say, then the ghost said, blah, blah, blah. So I just thought if you made it in kind of a, you read the text, and at the end there's an attribution. And if the person is living, the attribution is capital letters. And if they're dead, it's all lowercase. It was kind of beautiful the way that form, it seemed to arrive just as I needed it.
It was probably the best four years of my life just to show up at the writing room with no anxiety and just literally turn on the spigot and let the ghost start talking. It was just lovely. He was softly sobbing, Roger Bevins III.
He was not sobbing, my friend remembers incorrectly. He was winded, he did not sob, Hans Vollmann. He was softly sobbing, his sadness aggravated by his mounting frustration at being lost, Roger Bevins III. He moved stiffly, all elbows and knees, the Reverend Evely Thomas. Bursting out of the doorway, the lad took off, running toward the man, look of joy on his face.
which turned to consternation when the man failed to sweep him up in his arms, as, one gathered, must have been their custom. The boy instead passing through the man, as the man continued to walk toward the white stone home, sobbing.
Chapter 8: How does Saunders view the relationship between fiction and truth?
He was not sobbing. And what about the environment, the bardo itself?
Are you a practicing Buddhist? I'm a Buddhist who doesn't practice very much, but yes, it is my spiritual path. And in the Tibetan tradition, bardo means transitional. But normally when people use that word, they mean the transition between the moment of your death and whatever is next. So, originally I thought, oh, I'll just study the Tibetan Book of the Dead and put it in my book.
Well, that's way beyond me. So, my bardo is kind of a combination of the Tibetan use and then my Catholic purgatory from when I was a kid. So, the idea is you kind ofā¦ If your life hasn't been entirely satisfactory, then you linger a bit and you kind of are a little bit of a victim of your own neuroses or desires.
And also in the book, the kind of the punchline is that they don't know they're dead. And as soon as they find out, then they might decide to go onward.
And Willie Lincoln is the one. Plot spoiler is the one who opens their eyes to that appalling fact that they are all dead. And it's interesting you called them ghosts earlier because I thought of them as sort of dead souls, restless spirits, those sort of things.
But you're quite happy to use that word. our crazy minds are somewhat tamped down. But when you die, the mind goes supersized. And so whatever your issues are, whether it's love or anxiety or whatever, they get supersized. That's, I think, in the Tibetan tradition where heaven and hell come from, is if you have a loving heart, get supersized, you're in heaven.
And if you're an angry, violent person and that gets supersized, then you're in hell.
On This Cultural Life, George Saunders, my guests choose the influences and experiences that have had the biggest impact on their own creativity. And your first choices for this programme are your parents. You were born in Texas but grew up in Oak Forest, Illinois. What was home life, earliest memories of home life?
Well, Oak Forest is a working class suburb of Chicago. So our family was a very funny family, lots of high energy, talking at once and joking. And that was kind of the way that you showed affection was to joke with somebody. So it was very warm, a lot of political discussion.
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