George Saunders: Seems like a dysfunctional combo of both. I build it up brick by brick, then chip each brick down to the minimum. And then I try to take out a few inessential bricks. So… that's fun.
What was your first publication?
I had a story called "The Compassionate Groundsman," in a Chicago magazine called Nit&Wit.
Five books you are reading or thinking about now?
Memoirs of US Grant
The Eyes Were Watching God
Faithful Ruslan
Patriotic Gore (Edmund WIlson)
Middlemarch (George Eliot)
If you had to inhabit a fictional world, what would it be (i.e., the environment of which
novel or short story)?
I'd like to spend a few hours in a Gogol story—but also have a way to get out when I need to—like when the giant Nose is approaching.
Most interesting day job you've had (from the perspective of a writer)?
They were all pretty interesting but I got a lot out of eight years I spent tech writing. It wasn't conventionally exotic or exciting but was sort of like Capitalism 101.
Novel writing or short story writing? Any preference?
So far, short story writing. Every novel I start just shrinks right down.
One sentence of advice regarding writing?
All answers come out of work.
Your books have great titles. Were they your first choices?
I think so, yes. Except they made me change "BUY THIS, PLEASE, I HAVE TWO KIDS IN COLLEGE, YOU BASTARDS."
In a nutshell, what are you working on now?
I tend to keep my in-progress things a little secret. I can say it has phrases, sentences, punctuation – the whole shebang.
What's an interview question you've never been asked that you wish had been?
"Would you please accept this ten million dollars in cash, just because?"
At one point a geophysical engineer, MacArthur Fellowship-winner George Saunders is the author of nine books, including the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, and the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
