Note: Text has been edited and does not match audio exactly
Aaron Schwartz: Hey, I'm Audible Editor Aaron Schwartz, and I'm excited to say that today I have the very distinct pleasure of speaking with one of my all-time favorite writers, George Saunders. You may know him from his Booker Prize–winning and Audie Award–winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, or his other acclaimed works, such as Tenth of December, Pastoralia, or my personal favorite, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. He's back with a brand-new collection of nine short stories titled Liberation Day. And here we are. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.
George Saunders: Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
AS: Since this is Audible, I want to start off by speaking about the audio. I listened to an early version of the book and I was immediately drawn in by the music that starts off the audiobook. And for listeners, who are going to hear it, it starts off with this choir of voices that crescendos over this repeating phrase, “The detail of the pattern is movement. The detail of the pattern is movement.” And it kind of builds to this big beautiful melody. I listened to it actually two or three times before I even started. I kept hitting replay.
GS: Yeah.
AS: I was like, "Oh, this is really great.” I was curious what the origin was behind that.
GS: Yeah, that's a composition by this amazing American composer, Caroline Shaw. And it's done by a group called Roomful of Teeth. And the piece is called “Partita for 8 Voices.” It won the Pulitzer a few years ago. I heard it live here in Santa Cruz one time and it just blew my mind how, I don't know, just how full my heart got when I listened to it. Because it'll be sort of chaotic and there's speech and all of a sudden it comes into this beautiful full chord, you know? So, the first story in the book has something like that going on where there are these—and this will make it sound weird—but there's these people who are basically captured and they're forced to speak at a very high level and sing these narratives. So, my mind just went to that piece of music, which I love so dearly, and they were nice enough to let us use it. So, it's a great intro, I think.
AS: Yeah, now that you say that and you link it to that first story, that makes complete sense. It's a beautiful way to start the book.
GS: I mean, I finished it a while ago and I'm just coming back to it, but mostly through the audiobook. And the thing I do kind of like about it is it's definitely over full. It's like that piece of music, it's so over-the-top, and then hopefully it resolves into something emotionally meaningful, which that piece of music certainly does. And we'll see if the book does or not.
AS: I think it does. I'll say that it does. And coming off of Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Audie Award in 2017 for Audiobook of the Year, which, belated congratulations for that.
GS: Thank you.
AS: That was such a listening experience. I think you had over 166 narrators, I read.
GS: It was 166. Yeah.
AS: Including people like Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally and Ben Stiller and Julianne Moore and yourself, and so many people. People at Audible, we all have these audiobooks that were sound experiences that kind of stick with all of us. And that's definitely been one of them. And in Liberation Day you have Tina Fey and Jack McBrayer and Jenny Slate and Stephen Root and some other great narrators, and yourself again. I was just wondering how, if at all, the experience of Lincoln in the Bardo affected the thought process going into the production of this audiobook.
GS: Yeah, for sure. And not only that, but the writing of the book. I worked with Kelly Gildea at Random House, who's just a genius producer. We worked together on Tenth of December first, and we really hit it off. I think we sort of bring out a mutual boldness in each other. Like, I'll say, "Well, what about this?" Or she'll say, "What about this?" And we kind of rise to the occasion. I think we kind of have committed to making every audiobook kind of crazy, like A Swim in a Pond in the Rain had some amazing narration. And so this one, yeah, I found myself thinking about how much fun it would be to do the audiobook even as I was writing the stories. And I'm kind of a voice-y writer anyway. So, for me, the link is very organic. I really love the form of the audiobook. And I think we just wanted to make something really crazy and intense and special.
"I found myself thinking about how much fun it would be to do the audiobook even as I was writing the stories. And I'm kind of a voice-y writer anyway. So, for me, the link is very organic. I really love the form of the audiobook. And I think we just wanted to make something really crazy and intense and special."
AS: It's funny you say that because I was thinking, “Elliot Spencer” is I think the second-to-last story in this collection. For those who read the text, you'll see that it's formatted in a very non-traditional way. You're playing with space and fragments and language and how it's sectioned off, which is something you've done in previous work as well. When writing something like that, how much are you thinking about how it sounds? Not even so much necessarily how it would sound narrated, but how much thought goes into the sound, and how much of that also was brought to life by the narrator and Stephen Root’s direction and where the two of you meet on that?
GS: I know that you're a short story writer, and that's a perfect writerly question. Because for me, there's the voice that comes out of your mouth, but then there's also the one that's in your head. For me, that one is running all the time when I'm writing. I have some kind of an inner voice that I'm both servicing and using to explore. It starts off a certain way and I can hear it perfectly. It changes as I'm writing the story. The problem is, I can't always do that voice out loud. I can hear it pretty well, but when I go to do it, I've only got like three voices.
With that story, I wasn't really sure how that would be done. I did it for The New Yorker, I read it, and it was kind of just me. But Stephen did this crazy, wonderful, almost quasi-robotic voice at first. The guy in the story has been kind of shorn of all his memories and all his knowledge and he's just kind of a brain. But I was listening to the audiobook not long ago for the first time in the car. And when Stephen started doing that, I just laughed out loud in that way that is sort of like, "Oh, this is going to be good." So that was lovely to hear that. It wasn't something that I had thought of exactly, but it was perfect for the material and it just instantly made me feel so sympathetic for that guy.
AS: Yeah.
GS: And that's, I guess, that's the whole game.
AS: I guess this is more of a craft question, but I had some professors in my MFA program talk a lot about reading the story out loud as you're writing it and revising it, to see how it sounds. Because it's hard to tell when you're really in it, doing it, how it's going to come across. I imagine that's part of the process too, is just sitting there reading it out loud.
GS: Well, for me, because my voice is kind of weird—I've got this kind of Alvin and the Chipmunks thing going—if I read it out loud, I find that I undercut myself a little bit. Like, in this book, there's a story called “Ghoul,” which is such a hard read, and Jack McBrayer just nailed it. But I read it for The New Yorker, and it's so difficult. And what I do, I read it out loud in my head, so that way I have the full access to that voice I can do mentally without kind of messing it up and then undercutting myself doing it out loud.
I think when I was a kid in Chicago, if you weren't athletic, which I wasn't, and you weren't, you know, real cool, which I wasn't, one way you could get some cred is by doing voices, like imitating a teacher, kind of in that George Carlin, Richard Pryor vein, you know? So that's something I was pretty good at as a kid. And for me, the big aha moment as a writer was when I went, "Oh, that's writing, that's exactly the same thing." You make up a person, you assign her a voice, and then you go to town, you do improv, basically, and then, what we do, you're allowed to edit your improv.
AS: Right.
GS: So, this thing with voice is all tied in with it, for sure.
AS: I want to get a little bit into the content of the book, without giving anything away to anybody. I referenced “Elliot Spencer.” And “Liberation Day,” and most if not all of these stories—"Love Letter”—all have a lot to do with the things that we're living through right now, like having bad people in positions of power and the stripping away of people's rights. And in the case of “Elliot Spencer,” the manipulation of people's minds and ideas and what we think of as truth and what reality even is. You're often lauded as a writer who can find empathy for those who we as a reader or listener might really have a difficult time doing. I think about your commencement speech, Congratulations, by the Way, which is something I revisit when I feel I need some realignment in my life.
And the thesis of that is kind of all about kindness and the need for kindness. The big regrets in your life were all the ones in which you had the opportunity to be kind and chose not to. And I wonder if at all, since Lincoln in the Bardo was written pre-2016, I imagine, and now these stories come after the past six years of craziness that we've been living in, if it's been more difficult for you at all to access that empathy, given the past few years?
GS: Yeah, I mean, it's honestly always difficult for me to do it. When I'm writing a story, I often have the same feelings of aversion that anybody would for the characters. So, for me, I treat fiction as kind of almost like self-training. Like, if you put a person in a story that you don't like and then you say, "Well, I'm going to spend eight months with you," you might not like them at the end, but you're going to be seeing them in more detail. Which I think is a form of, or at least it's a potential way to develop affection for somebody. So, my thing is, it's always a good thing to try to develop affection for somebody, even if you're totally against them, because, one, it's better for you, but also it makes you more efficient in opposing them if you have to.
I understand fiction as the writer goes first and makes up some silly deal, you know, some situation. When I do it, there's usually a schmuck in there, somebody who's just a dope. Then I infuse myself into that person as much as I can. And then I imagine that the reader and I are kind of bending over that person going, "Huh, wow, interesting. In real life, I would walk right by you, and in the story, because I can't, I'm going to just stay here a little longer and abide with you a little longer." I always felt that that's a really healthy thing to do, if you don't confuse it with enabling. It's a really lively, interesting question. If you took a person who was a real jerk, like an evil person, are you making a mistake by using the fictive form to make him more sympathetic? Maybe in real life he needs a kick in the ass, you know?
"It's always a good thing to try to develop affection for somebody, even if you're totally against them, because, one, it's better for you, but also it makes you more efficient in opposing them if you have to."
But this whole kindness thing, I think is really more about awareness. Since life is full of moments when we could screw up and make an unfortunate decision, it's in our interest to train our awareness and our alertness so that we don't decide too fast. And the idea is, well, it never hurts you to wait a beat. That's how I feel when I'm writing the stories anyway. But this last four or five years have been really hard. And what you see is that your angry, judgmental side is real anxious to come out. I'm just newly aware that that part of me isn't really that great, you know? He never does anything original. He never does anything nice. He's just pissed off. He sits on the couch and fumes. I don't like being that person. I'd rather be somebody who tries to understand these things a little more deeply. And then if and when some kind of action is required, I hope I'm there for it, you know? So, it's complicated times for sure. To me, that's just the point of the book really, is "Yeah, this shit is weird."
AS: Yeah.
GS: I mean, that's basically it.
AS: Yeah. It's become increasingly more difficult to remember that the only way that things are going to be okay is if we can work together, as opposed to trying to be right instead of being able to fix things together.
GS: And, you know, actually, as I get older, you also kind of go, "Well, things always aren't going to be right."
AS: Sure.
GS: There are catastrophic periods. And also, my natural disposition is I don't like conflict. I'm pretty good at understanding people. I feel like I'm fairly likable. So, all that adds up to a certain philosophical stance, which is kindness and empathy. But I know other people who are fantastic opposers, they get in there and they fight and they argue. That can sometimes be really good. I think everybody has to kind of look at themselves and what are you good at? When does your power come alive? That's the whole game of life anyway. There's no one cookie cutter. We all have to kind of play to our strengths.
AS: Kind of on a similar topic, in the early days of COVID, you had written an email to your students at Syracuse that was published in The New Yorker. I think it was like April 2020, early, when we were still wiping down groceries and didn't want to step outside and didn't really know what was going on. In that letter, you use this analogy that I've thought a lot about since, the idea that the world is like a sleeping tiger and we're all living on the back of it. And every once in a while, that Tiger wakes up and shakes us from the calm that we've been living in, and it always has, and it always will.
I was thinking about that when listening to “Love Letter,” which is a story of a grandfather writing a letter to his grandson, somewhat apologetically, and also explaining his point of view as to how America became this kind of dystopian police state. One of the things the grandfather says is, “The world, in my ancient experience, sometimes moves off in a certain direction, and having moved, being so large and inscrutable, cannot be recalled to its previous better state.” And so much has happened even since spring of 2020. You kind of mentioned this before when you brought up “Love Letter,” about where you were coming from in that story, as George as the character. I wonder, I don't know if you think that tiger's ever going to go back to sleep again? Or if you think the grandfather is right?
GS: That's the thing is, with characters, with that guy, he started out to be me, very much so. And then you kind of distance yourself a little bit. I think the tiger is always awake, actually. I mean, sometimes it rests for a minute. But I was talking to a friend about how crazy these times are, and she's a little older than me. She said, "Yeah, but you weren't quite a grownup in '68, '69, when Dr. King was assassinated, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. There were riots in the street." We get lulled into thinking the tiger goes to sleep sometimes. And even if it's not walking around in a public sense, you know, you get a disease or somebody you love dies, my feeling is that when the world doesn't do what I think it should, that's on me. I just had too small of a concept about it. And I think that's what this grandfather is saying. Basically, he's telling his grandson to keep his head in the sand, you know? And in a certain way, that's pretty good advice. If you were in Stalinist Russia, there's not a whole lot of tolerance there for anything. But we feel reading him that he's wrong. I think that's the thing that makes a good story, those two ideas are in your head and you're looking to the author to say, "George, which one am I supposed to believe?" And I go, "I don't know." You know, I don't know.
I think Michael McKean, his reading of that, really nailed that. He's such a likable narrator. But you feel the doubt start to creep in toward the end of the story. For me now, the story kind of exists to teach the reader and the writer that they're more comfortable with ambiguity than they think. You know, you can read that story and go, "I don't know what I think of that guy." And I go, "Yeah, exactly." You know, "Good job." We don't have to do this thing, which I think, as you mentioned earlier, is a little bit encouraged by social media, which is have a hot take on everything and stand by it and make it as agitating as possible. We're actually pretty good as human beings at existing in that uncertainty and going, "I don't know yet. I'm waiting to find out."
AS: I have these conversations with people and, yeah, in order to live a life, you have to kind of be able to put your head in the sand.
GS: I mean, some of the stuff, 200 years ago, you never would've heard about it. There's some kind of difficulty with the amount of information we're getting that isn't actually firsthand knowledge, and sometimes that's really good, because there were all kinds of police killings in 1920 that nobody heard about.
Honestly, at this point in my life, I kind of am just getting my head around the notion that I'll never figure it out. When you're young, you think, "Okay, if we could just get our shit together, we get this all figured out, we'll be the first generation." And after a while, you live long enough and you're like, "Oh, no, the nature of..." Well, the Buddha said it, you know: Life is suffering, and the nature of the world is it's going to be unsettled and unsatisfying, and it's also going to be beautiful and rewarding. And somehow accommodating those two contradictions, it seems to be the high-level work that we're meant to do.
AS: So, we spoke about it a little bit already, the narration and the process. But I was hoping we could jump in a little bit more because it's such a great cast that you have narrating these stories. And I was interested what was behind the casting process and how it all came together.
GS: Sure. Kelly Gildea and I have worked together on three or four books that were so much fun. So, we're pretty frank about it. Basically, our process is she suggests narrators and I go, "Awesome” [laughs]. Because she has a great sense of who could work. I think with this one, I think her idea was that the stories are funny, they're supposed to be funny, but also, hopefully, they're dramatic. She was looking for actors who could really do the comedy, which I think is so difficult, but at the same time would be able to really feel the depth. So, like, Edi Patterson reads a story called “The Thing at Work,” and she's so funny. She does, I think, three, at least three, different voices. But then, when, for me, the story was really trying to be sincere, she nails that as well. The voices make you look a little askance at the characters and have a good time with them. And then somehow within those voices, she's able to really convey the heart. So, you get it both ways. It's a lot of fun. And you're laughing until suddenly it's serious, you know? So, I think we were looking for that.
And Tina Fey, she reads a story called “The Mom of Bold Action.” And what she does there that really kind of stunned me was she—I mean, I like that character a lot, I do. But the way Tina read her, the story corners so tightly and you feel so much empathy for that woman, and then when she kind of, not to give it away, but she does some things that aren't the greatest, you feel disappointed in her and you still feel affection for her. I think that she takes you on a really wild ride, that was, to my listening, it was what was in the story, but more, you know, because of her genius. So, really, we're just looking for people who can do the comedy and the sincerity.
Like on “Mother's Day,” Melora Hardin, that's a story of these two kind of old women who are both bitter in their own flavor. And my guess is if we met them, we'd kind of be like, "Hey, can you move me to another table because this lady is too angry." But somehow Melora just, she makes you see them. And then there were certain moments when I was writing this story, I’m like, “This is a critical moment, this paragraph right here is where I have to make the reader open up to this character or the story doesn't work.” And the weird thing was, as I was listening to it, those precise paragraphs is where her performance just went off the charts. So, she must have felt it.
I think a lot of it is a choice, finding the right person, which Kelly does. And then she's also a wonderful producer, coach. She works with them line by line. It's a really amazing process, and it kind of makes me able to see my own book, which you know, for maybe six or seven months has gone a little static on me because I read it so many times. And suddenly you're able to look at it as a whole and it's such a delight.
AS: How did it feel reading the longest story in the book yourself?
GS: Well, I feel like the weak link. I can hear the voice in my head and I sort of can't quite do it, you know? But I like it. You do have that weird feeling of kind reading along going, "Oh, not bad." You're a different person than who wrote this story. And Kelly is a really wonderful coach because I get a little insecure when I'm reading them. And she's really, really good at letting me know when I've got something right. I do this thing where I have this Chicago thing where certain phrases are impossible for me to say, I just can't say them. I'll try it three, four times and she'll go, "All right, go ahead." But she's a wonderful friend and we share something, and I'm sure you'll know this feeling as a writer too. There's a moment when you have to have unreasonably high hopes for your work. It's almost like a form of positive arrogance, a pride or something. And when Kelly and I work together, we had that feeling of like, "Let's really make this so ass-kicking, no one will believe it." And we sort of commit to that, and then we make all our choices on that basis. And it's so much fun to collaborate with somebody who sees it as intensely as I do.
AS: And in listening to the audiobook, when you're reading “Liberation Day,” are there moments as a writer where, like you said, "Oh, it's pretty good," but are there also moments where you're like, "Man, I wish I said it this way" or "I wish I wrote it this way." Does the editing continue in the booth?
GS: Yeah, it's more like what happens is when I finish something, I would argue for every semicolon. I know it, I almost have it memorized. Then as the months pass, you fall a little bit out of connection with it. You get to a certain point and go, "Huh, okay, that's an interesting choice. I'm not sure why he did it that way." Not I, but he. So yeah, there's that.
But then I always kind of feel like, when you're really polishing a story, for me, if I'm editing it with The New Yorker or later with Andy Ward at Random House, you go into a certain zone that is so crazy, like you're so inside the story and you're examining the smallest little choices, that my theory is you get into the closest relation to it that you're ever going to be. So, after that, I kind of am not that inclined to change anything because it's like, if you were really in love with somebody and you spent a totally intense weekend with that person and you said some things, well, yeah, you really shouldn't unsay those because you were in that place at that time. So out of respect for the intimacy, you just let it sit. I kind of feel that way.
AS: Oh, that's an interesting way to think about it. That makes sense. So, as a writer myself, I don't know if I would love this question, but I want to know what you hope people take away from the stories in this collection.
GS: Yeah, we ask ourselves that all the time. I think that's the guiding principle. For me, I always think of the moment when somebody gets off a rollercoaster, and you're the rollercoaster designer. I mean, the first moment they're just going, "Ah, whoa, that was awesome." Then they might analyze it, they start talking about why it was awesome. But I'm interested in that first three or four seconds when nobody can speak. So, intensity is kind of what my little watchword is. Make the story as intense as you can make it. You're doing that on the line-by-line basis. You're just saying, "Is this better or this better?" In the end, I hope people just come out of it a little stunned, you know, positively stunned, stunned in a positive way. That's it. And then beyond that, you can talk about it.
"In the end, I hope people just come out of it a little stunned, you know, positively stunned, stunned in a positive way. That's it."
I just think, “Okay, when I read The Bluest Eye back when my kids were little, what happened to me?” Stunned, stunned many times throughout, but at the end, stunned. I thought, "Oh my God, what an accomplishment." You know? And then my vision was altered. Now, most books, I'd say it’s for a short time, maybe a couple days. That book, it's forever, you know? That's the aspiration, is you stun the person short-term in a positive way. You make them more aware of the world around them. And then maybe if you're really lucky, you will have done something beyond that, where, you know, I think a book can sometimes, a really good book can become like an actual experience. Like something happened to you when you were 12 that changed your view of the world forever, and it's not going back in the box. A book can approximate that, I think. You read the right book at the right time and it can alter you.
But I really just focus on individual stories and actually even just individual passages to try to produce that feeling of intensity. And then I say, “I don't know what it means. I don't exactly know what it's going to do to you, but I'm pretty sure that something's going to happen to you here on page 12, paragraph six.” And then I just leave it at that.
AS: Yeah. It's funny you say that, because I have that experience, actually, all the time with your stories when I first—
GS: Well, thanks.
AS: —read them. I just wanted to say, because I'm such a fan of yours, that my grandfather passed away a few months ago and it was, I was very—
GS: Oh, I'm sorry.
AS: —close with him. Thank you. He was like one of the closest people to me in my life. When I came back to my apartment here in Brooklyn after sitting shiva, I think the first thing I did was I walked over to my bookshelf and I picked up In Persuasion Nation and I opened it up to the last paragraph of “My Flamboyant Grandson.”
GS: [laughs].
AS: The first time I had read that story, years ago, I was really moved by it. But I was going to my apartment, I was like, "I need to just read this line about a grandfather that loves his grandson.” The last sentence is, you know, "I believe something great will come of him." It was so important to me to read that at that moment. And then I actually went back to read “Love Letter” as well, and it was the humanity and love and empathy in your work. I'm just, as a fan and a writer, but as a fan, I'm just so grateful for it. So, I appreciate everything you've done.
GS: Oh, thank you. I'm so grateful for you saying that. It sounds like he was a guy who really saw you.
AS: Yeah, yeah. We were real close. That was my guy.
GS: Well, I'm sorry for your loss, and sounds like he was very lucky to have you and vice versa.
AS: Oh, I appreciate that.
GS: Somebody told me recently that Denzel Washington, when his mom passed away, and I think she was in her nineties, he said something like, "Well, she didn't get cheated and neither did we." And I thought that was really meaningful, you know?
AS: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it, and Liberation Day is great. I'm excited for people to listen to it.
GS: Oh, such a pleasure. And I wish you the best of luck with your work, Aaron.
AS: Thank you so much. And listeners, you can get Liberation Day on Audible now. And for anyone who would like to listen, we're going to play the intro to Liberation Day now.
