NEWSLETTER

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George Saunders is that rare sort of writer who may have gone ahead and invented a new genre. I’m not really sure to call it yet, but it’s something along the lines of Dystopian Social Satire. I would say something else here about Chekhov and magical realism, but I don’t want to get too clunky. Maybe you get the idea?

Saunders’ characters trudge through a landscape populated equally by insipid advertisements and zombies and ghosts. And it’s all treated like no big deal. In Saunders’ world, mass-badger killings are a problem for which an entire industry has envisioned a solution, one that is as mundane and accepted as cubicles and barbershops. While this alone would convince me to sign on the dotted line, his stories are also real, old-fashioned yarns, where things happen, plots reverse, coworkers betray one another, and teenagers fall out of love, and all of this is working toward expressing a truth, usually one about compassion between two people.

Vice: Can you comment about your life from high school graduation, perhaps, to age thirty? Looking at your resume is dizzying—you worked as everything from a groundskeeper to a geophysicist to an office drone. Were you trying to soak up a lot of different environments, or was it just the way things worked out?

George: I think it was partly confusion—I didn’t quite understand how the world worked—partly a kind of young guy’s hunger for life, partly an aspiring writer trying to do things that would make his mind larger, partly luck, partly misfortune. One thing kind of led to the next. But as I get older I can look back a bit objectively at myself as a young man and say that I (he) had (1) a real love for the world, (2) a high energy level, and (3) a kind of dopey arrogance, and that these three things made me get out and do a lot of things.

Do you think it helped your writing?

I do think it benefited, or at least colored, my writing. I think I saw enough of the world, high and low, and in odd enough refractions, that it gave me a little moral confidence. I feel pretty sure that my basic judgment is sound about people and events.

I’m assuming, wrongly perhaps, that many of your peers growing up didn’t do as much exploring as you did. Is that a dumb assumption?

My memory of that time—late 1970s, early 1980s—was that I was pretty typical in terms of energy expenditure, but maybe atypical in that I couldn’t have said what it was I was trying to do. I had this vague idea of writing someday, but wasn’t doing much of it. I had this idea of how a writer lived, and was, as I remember it, trying to be that person: going into ostensibly exotic or dangerous or beat situations and having a look around. But there were always a lot of energetic, adventurous people around, especially when I was studying at the Colorado School of Mines, and later when I was working in Asia. I actually always felt kind of bookish and cautious compared to these people.

How did you get into science? Was this an interest early on?

It wasn’t. But I had a great geology teacher in high school, Joe Lindbloom, who changed my life forever through his class. And when it was time to go to college I had no plan at all, so he intervened on my behalf and got me into the School of Mines. I had such great admiration for Joe and the way he thought about science, and so that was where my interest came from, really. I was trying to impress him, and honor the way he ennobled science and connected it with things I was more naturally interested in, like ethics and philosophy.

Is it fair to assume you spent some time working in cubicles? The power dynamic of offices is territory that seems very rich for you. Do you remember any specific, non-fiction instances of workplace cruelty at a job?

Oh sure. I remember having to fill out evaluations on some very good friends who were going through difficult times personally, and then getting chewed out because I hadn’t been “truly frank.” But it’s more the creeping, gradual, everyday stuff that I still dream about—the accreting nature of being under someone else’s power. And the weird and complicated thing was, the people who were oppressing me were usually pretty nice people and were being oppressed themselves, and would joke about the fact that they were oppressing me and being oppressed. Then just after our little commiseration session they would go away, and pretty soon here would come an oppressive memo, or they would fire somebody and leave early in order to avoid discussing it. It was the system that was (is) funky—this system that offers this wonderful collective protection to a group of people, in exchange for their time, time spent doing trivial activities away (for 8 to 12 hours a day) from the people they love. And these activities are, usually, completely irrelevant to the people they love, except that… a paycheck results.

Right. It’s like some weird math equation.

Exactly. The overall pattern is: long stretches of True Desire subjugation, followed by the longed-for Time With the Beloved. This is stressful and makes people behave in messed-up ways.

Was it ever different?

Sure. Think of life on a farm. But the catch is, life on the farm was dangerous and uncertain and scary, probably less so than life at the corporation, which is why, of course, collectively, we’ve chosen that route. As Walt Kelly said: “We have met the enemy, and he is Us.”

Raymond Chandler said something once about a writer who’d described the writing process as hell. It was something like, “No wonder his books are unreadable. Writing’s the best part. It’s what you’re in it for.” You seem to be of his school. Has writing always been a pleasure for you? Or was there a day when it just clicked?

I was working as a groundsman in an apartment complex in Amarillo, Texas and had decided to finally really, really try to get published. Over about three nights, I wrote this little story that later got accepted by The Northwest Review. Writing that, I was having so much fun. I had somehow blundered into a mode of writing that I really understood—kind of funny, irreverent, and pop-culture-influenced. I had a lot of confidence in that mode. I always seemed to know what to do next. So that was the first time that “writing” and “power” seemed connected. It was really fun and beautiful and that’s basically the feeling I’ve been trying to recreate ever since.

INTERVIEW BY JEFF JOHNSON


TO BE CONTINUED
GEORGE SAUNDERS | 1 | 2 |

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Comments

	bonerdreamz69, on Jul 16, 2008 wrote: Newsflash, Ponz: essays are always kind of boring.
Anonymous, on Jul 16, 2008 wrote: i got a lot out of from what he was saying there’s intelligence and emotion in what he had to say it was inspiring because he described many people whose existences have become insipid BECAUSE OF Culture Wow. Cool writer.
	PONZ, on Jul 13, 2008 wrote: I think VICE degrades all of us in the same way humiliation TV does. Maybe lots of us deserve it tho... Oh yeah, I love Saunders’ early books ( Pastoralia and CIVIL WAR LAND..), but I thought that book of essays was kind of boring...
Anonymous, on Jul 13, 2008 wrote: George Saunders for Vice President!
Anonymous, on Jul 13, 2008 wrote: I love his writing and this interview was really interesting. I’m sure that’s too earnest for a Vice comment.
Anonymous, on Jul 13, 2008 wrote: Illuminating and interesting. Really.
Anonymous, on Jul 12, 2008 wrote: I’m logged in on the accounts part of this page, but I am not posting with my name when I come out to the comment board