Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Just a heads up, this episode does have some strong language. Has ambition ever led you astray?
I think the answer is no. And I tell my students, you know, if you have ambition, the worst thing you can do is deny it in an attempt to be a good person. If you took the name off it, it's kind of a love for life. It's kind of an aspiration to bring out the best in yourself.
I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life, questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is George Saunders.
It's funny, the state of mind you're in when you're writing, it's like kind of, you can be really beautiful and pure and concept-free, and I'll hit a nice moment in the story, make a nice fix, and a little voice will go, oh, the New Yorker's going to love that, you know? And then you go, yeah, okay, welcome to the table, now get out of the way, you know?
George Saunders is considered one of the master storytellers of our time. He uses humor and empathy to draw readers into characters and situations that stick deeply in the imagination. He also seems to me like a guy totally preoccupied with the liminal space between the living and the dead. And I dig this because I am also preoccupied with said in-between space.
It was the setting for his best-selling book, Lincoln in the Bardo, and of his newest novel, Vigil.
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Chapter 2: How does George Saunders define ambition in his life and work?
I am so very happy to welcome George Saunders to Wildcard. Hi!
Hi, Rachel. So happy to be here with you. Thanks for having me.
Oh, I'm just so pleased. What fun. I know. I think we are going to have fun if I'm allowed to just project that.
I can't wait to get the big cash prize at the end of the game.
You're going to be rich, George. Okay, so we're going to start with memories, and I'm going to hold up the first three cards, and you just pick randomly.
Give me that middle one. That's calling to me. The middle one.
Yes. Out of the one, two, three, you go middle, right off the bat. Okay, here we go. What's the riskiest thing you got away with as a teenager?
Oh, yeah. The riskiest thing as a teenager.
Okay.
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Chapter 3: What themes does George Saunders explore in his novel 'Vigil'?
But I definitely snuck out and I definitely went – when I was a sophomore, I definitely went to the senior – football party that was being held around the block and ultimately got away with it and only fessed up to it very late in life and by the time that no one cared, obviously.
See, I'm not sure that really counts unless you sell it.
That would have been a good answer. I stole my parents' car and then sold it. I told you it was not going to be a good one.
That's so sweet, though, that that's your greatest sin.
I know, that sounds so not cool or interesting. You're a good person.
But I was the same. I was also very self-regulated. But sometimes that got in my way. So my dad had a chicken restaurant in Chicago, a franchise, and I was his delivery boy. So one time we got an order late at night, and he said, you know, the customer's always right, take the order. And I went out, and the address was fictional. I couldn't find it. It was between two existing houses.
So I'm standing there stunned for a minute, and suddenly this guy comes out of the bushes. And pushes me down and grabs the package and runs off. And so the good boy in me was so kind of macho about that. I felt so humiliated that my family's restaurant had been robbed because of my, you know. So I put out some feelers and I was pretty well connected and I figured out who did it.
There was a group of four young men who had conspired to do this. And so this is what I got away with. I called – and in two cases went to the house of these guys and said, I challenge you – this is how stupid I was.
To a duel?
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Chapter 4: What childhood experiences shaped George Saunders' perspective on risk?
Justice. Okay. Next three. One, two, or three.
Let's take three.
What's an experience from childhood when you realized your parents were only human?
Hmm. Um, well, I have that. Could I substitute a nun in when I realized that nun was really human?
Sure. Did you have a nun play a strong role in your life?
Well, a very positive one and also this kind of funnier one, which is I was a reader of the epistle. And we would do mass every day. So I'd get out of class early and go into the church. And then the priest would give me the selection and I'd practice it. So one day I went to do that.
Catholic church. This is a Catholic church.
Catholic church, yeah. Yes. So there was – I think it's called the narthex. Those little like rooms on either side of the altar. So I walked in. I had gym shoes on. I walked in. turned the corner, and there was a priest and nun feverishly making out in the narthex. Yeah. And so, and I knew them both.
And the reason I, realizing they were human part is, I literally paused with one foot in the air, so shocked, like, and they didn't hear me because they were busy. And I then slowly just stepped out. And I paused for just a second, and I was actually saying, what's the thing to do here? And I had this feeling like, well, of course, of course. And I was an adolescent.
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Chapter 5: How does George Saunders reconcile ambition with the creative process?
So can I ask you to say more about what that was like when you say that you had had enough positive experiences built up that this didn't cause any kind of fissure?
Yes. Well, one thing was I had a lot of deep experiences that I would say probably were meditative that I didn't know to call it that. But in the church, we spent a lot of time in there. And so as somebody with a busy neurotic mind, I had that experience of by hour 1.6, you I'd have burned through all of my thoughts really and just be sitting there kind of quietly.
And it felt really good, you know, really peaceful. And then also I think I had this idea. I don't know whether I was taught this or I just came up with it. But hearing a lot of the stories about Jesus and the way he would interact with people who were a little bit on the dark side, you know, like the woman at the well and the rich man in the tree or whatever.
I thought, oh, he's kind of a novelist. Because what Jesus' superpower was, as I understood it, was that he, one, had something going on where he could see you very clearly, I would say now without a lot of projections about who you were. So he was able to really look into the core of you with affection and not judge. And that has come to seem to me like what a writer does really.
You make up some person, good or bad, and you hang out with them for a couple of years. And in the process, you burn through the easy judgments that you would make if you met them in person probably. And you start to go, okay, well, yeah, that's true. You're a mansplainer. Okay, let's look under that. Why is that, you think? Oh, you feel this.
So you can kind of get to a point where you're not necessarily making a case for them, but you're at least taking in as much data as possible. And so that's how I imagine Jesus managed some of these amazing reactions that he had to people that his culture were very averse to, you know, like a prostitute and so on.
Thank you for that.
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Chapter 6: What role does George Saunders' wife play in his moral compass?
Okay, we're going to get more into that topic in the beliefs round for sure. Also, I have one word to say that was preoccupying me. Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus is the little man in the tree.
Yep, yep, yep. And is that where Jesus says, is that about the camel, the eye?
Now I can't remember. All I know is there was a little song that I learned in Bible school. Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and he was in the tree. And so that's all I'm doing.
And he was there because he was too small to see over the crowd.
That's right.
Well, good memory. That's a good one.
Thanks, George. That's basically why I needed some affirmation from you for remembering, I don't know, the Old Testament. Okay. Next three. One, two, or three. Let's just do one since we're— What's something you took away from your first job?
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Chapter 7: How has George Saunders' view on death evolved over time?
And then what's beautiful is sometimes this miraculous fix can appear that you never in a million years could have thought your way to or aspired your way to, but you can only work your way to it, you know. So, yeah.
I mean, you've also—you've worked a lot. You've had, like, a lot of very difficult physical jobs in your life.
I mean, I'm 18 years old. Look at me. You know, look what it's done to me. It's—
In the minds.
Yeah, in the mind. That's right. But can I tell you, there's one P.S. I should say about that, Robert Frost.
Tell me.
Because I went around and told that story for years because it so perfectly describes my approach to writing. Don't worry, work, you know.
Yeah.
All the conceptual things, don't worry. You don't have to. And then at some point, a Frost scholar came up to me and said, you know, actually, he didn't say that. He said, don't work, worry.
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Chapter 8: What does George Saunders wish everyone could experience in their lives?
So, yeah.
Wait, what? That's horrible.
That's horrible.
Yeah.
I want to go back to the other version.
Yeah, I do. I don't have any faith in the second version. Although I think probably what he meant was You know, rumination or kind of contemplation is part of the writer's job. You don't have to be typing in order, but I don't know.
But I guess my follow-up question was, as someone who has done so much – you have, like, done very physical manual labor in your life. And then you became a person whose work is in the interior. It's ideas work. It's intellectual work. Do you – do you find that you need to balance? Like does every once in a while, do you need to just get in your body in a different way and out of your head?
Yeah. I mean, well, we, well, we, I do a lot of stuff. We don't hire out a lot of work, you know, like we some, but mostly I'm, you know, I'm like, I like to clean the house and I like to do the toilets. So, I mean, so I'm, I do find that I'm just, I don't like those things at all. No, I don't like them, but I, but I do, but I hate hastening back to chicken unlimited. There's something about being
And lost in a task is really nice for me because my mind is very active. And to be physically engaged with anything, really, it can be the smallest, silliest thing. It does something nice to the mind. And also, creatively, there's a lot of times where we're really...
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