AN INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE SAUNDERS By JEN PENKETHMAN George Saunders is the author of several volumes of fiction, including In Persuasion Nation and Pastoralia. His latest book is the nonfiction collection, The Braindead Megaphone. He has been given a MacArthur "Genius" Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship, but most readers know him for being terrifically funny. His literary talent lies mainly in the art of creating bizarre universes and then shaping them into forms that are recognizable. George talked to the HBC about polar bears and Stephen Colbert, and confessed fears of being an old writer with a blanket on his legs, reading his own Collected Works.

Photo by Caitlin Saunders

In The Braindead Megaphone you wrote about Esther Forbes's book Johnny Tremaine and how it fueled your love for reading. What was it that got you started on writing, as opposed to just being a reader?
Huh. I've never really thought about that. It was all mixed up together for me, reading and writing, I think—I could never really separate the two. If reading produced a good feeling, then writing seemed like a desirable thing to do. Sort of like if you were moved by hearing the piano, you'd want to learn to play. I do remember a certain feeling I had after reading Johnny Tremaine—of trying out little sentences in my head to see if I could make my reality sound like Forbes's.

What is your favorite thing you've ever written?
I don't know—I mean, there's a mode of writing I like to do, and I have nice memories of suddenly being in that mode—but I'm not sure there's anything I've written that I'd consider my "favorite." I know there were certain stories that were surprising, or where some sudden lurch took place that I couldn't have anticipated ("SeaOak," say, or "Bohemians") and that's fun. But as corny as it sounds, I enjoy thinking about the ones that aren't done yet, or even started yet, that will make everything I've already done look like prep work, if you see what I mean. Otherwise, it's kind of depressing—some old guy sitting in his room with his Collected Stories, legs covered with a blanket—ugh.

In your stories, you set up these universes with special rules, but you are careful never to say, "these are the rules of this story-world." And yet you make the narration feel very open and communicative. Was this something that happened naturally, or that you had to work for? Do you write the rules somewhere else before you try to write the story itself?
No—mostly I just try to really imagine myself as having lived in that world awhile. We never, in real life, say, "So I picked up the telephone, a device for effecting long-distance communication via wires." We just say, "I called Vic." So, no matter how weird the universe is, the people living in it are used to it. It's no different, really, from trying to write a historical novel. Ben Franklin doesn't go on at length in his mind about historical details in an expository way—he just knows them.

How do you end up writing stories about polar bears stuck in a Cheetos commercial in which they are hit in the head with an axe over and over? In other words, do you set out to write bizarre or funny things, or do you have a different purpose?
Why, is that weird or something? Ha ha! No—in that story, as I remember it, I just set out to try and tell a whole story using only TV commercial vignettes. That was really about it. I don't know why, except I thought it would be hard. And it was! I have this idea that almost any idea, if you dwell on it long enough, will eventually do the work of "real" literature. Stories are about starting here and going there—the meaning comes from the structure and the change over the course of the story, not the "validity" or verisimilitude of the initial concept. So even if you're writing about that polar bear—I mean, you're not, not really. You're writing about certain changes in a consciousness, which happens to be, apparently, embodied in a polar bear. Wow. That's a weird sentence. And I didn't even get to the part about the axe in the head yet.

Your stories take place in a world ruled by the presence of TV. Do you watch a lot of it?
Not any more than most people, I don't think. And I'm not sure that's true of all the stories—a few, for sure. But mostly it's just surface, you know? You need something you know a lot about—something you're comfortable improvising around—so that the story can do its real work. And I don't know anything about, say, farming or hunting or nature or city life, etc., etc.

Speaking of TV, you went on Stephen Colbert's show. I'm dying to know if that's as bizarre an experience as it seems.
It was fun, really. The bizarre thing is the transformation he undergoes between the time he says hi backstage and the time he's shouting at you on-stage. He somehow gets taller and leaner. And you get smaller and fatter and stutter more. What's not to love?

Would you vote for Stephen Colbert for President?
Oh sure. Especially since I was supposed to be his running mate. But then—stupid me—I left it to him to file the paperwork. In 2012, I'll be filing the paperwork, that's for sure.

You see a lot of work from young writers by teaching at Syracuse. What are young writers producing these days? Do you see a lot of a certain style or sense of humor?
It's hard to generalize—we see all sorts of styles and approaches. And there are usually 2-3 of us doing the selecting, so that no particular mode dominates. The main thing we look for is what I'd call emotional intelligence—a writer who is not just on autopilot, but is looking for those moments of real beauty (or humor, or pathos) and is willing to go wherever it takes to get them.

How did it feel to write nonfiction, in The Braindead Megaphone? Did you feel any responsibility to be objective?
I don't think objectivity is all that desirable, at least not for me. What I tried to do was confess my subjectivity and then be willing to change my opinion. I mean, these are not journalistic pieces, per se, but sort of like "Idiot Meets World" pieces. So if I went into a story feeling a certain way, I just admitted it, then tracked the way I was changing my mind, or not…

One thing you do in your fiction that I especially admire is leaving out specific targets for the satire—Phil, the protagonist of "The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil" could be Bush, or he could just be any brainless leader. How was it to become specific and topical in The Braindead Megaphone?
Honestly, I don't think of myself as an issue satirist, ever. I feel like I'm just writing stories about human beings and the way they act. Or, more precisely, I'm taking certain human tendencies and isolating and exaggerating them. This is different from what I was doing in the essays, for sure. In the essays or travel pieces or whatever they were, I was just trying to be more direct and conversational and stick with some basic facts. The truth is, I think you start writing something, and then sense its DNA, if you will—and then you modify your approach accordingly. So I try not to think too much about technique or some kind of overarching aesthetic philosophy or anything like that—I mostly just try to get each piece to work on its own terms, if I can.

In the title essay of The Braindead Megaphone, you wrote, "This battle, like any great moral battle, will be won, if won, not with some easy corrective tidal wave of Total Righteousness, but with small drops of specificity and aplomb and correct logic, delivered traditionally, by many of us all at once." Do you see this happening, anywhere in the United States?
Sure, I see it happening all over the place, every day—so many excellent, thoughtful blogs, columns, essays, etc. I think we really are in a battle with some pretty stupid forces. So my point there is that if enough good, smart, articulate people just say what they think, it will make a difference. I mean, it does make a difference. In the same way that, for example, saying nice things to people makes a difference. Will people who say cruel things ever vanish from the earth? Probably not. But in the meantime, there's a kind of equilibrium.
I can imagine a world where, 20 years from now, people look at, say, archival footage of Fox [News Network] and just go: "What the hell were they thinking?" And that would be good, since it would imply that "they" had got it figured out, and saw that kind of "journalism" for what it is. But I can also imagine a world where, 20 years from now, it's all Fox, all the time, and what now seems (to me anyway) excessive and aggressive and jingoistic will seem completely mainstream. So, without being too dramatic, I'd say it is up to us, to call this crap for what it is and reclaim our own national discourse. And how else to do it, except by recommitting to trying to be articulate and fair-minded and expressive and precise every day, day after day?

So how can I join the Saunders Army?
We're changing the name. "Army" is too violent. We're going to call it the Saunders Calmness Consortium. And we're also changing the "Saunders" part, as Saunders is too mid-talent. So henceforth we'll be calling it the Tolstoy Calmness Consortium. All are welcome.

(December, 2007)