George Saunders is best known as a writer of short stories, for which has won multiple awards and accolades. In fact, he is considered to be one of the world’s greatest living short story writers. In 2017, however, he took home the Booker Prize for his first (and so far only) novel – the startlingly original Lincoln in the Bardo. The book follows Willie Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, as he succumbs to illness and ends up in the bardo, a limbo-like state between the living and the dead. This week, George Saunders joins our hosts James Walton and Jo Hamya to tell us all about how winning the Booker Prize changed his life, about the differences between short- and long-form fiction, how he embraced the Substack platform, and what he says to his creative writing students at Syracuse University about becoming a great writer.
 

• What it was like to win the Booker Prize, and how winning affected his work
• Why, after establishing himself as a short story writer, George decided to write a novel – and whether he’ll ever write another
• The differences between novel writing and short story writing
• How to write about historical figures without being trite
• His popular Substack, Story Club with George Saunders, which explores the art of writing (and analysing writing)
• Liberation Day, his latest collection of short stories
• What he tells his students, and why channelling one’s own personal charm is an important aspect of great writing

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Liberation Day by George Saunders

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Elmet by Fiona Mozley

Autumn by Ali Smith

Story Club with George Saunders (Substack)

The Art of Fiction: George Saunders interview (Paris Review)

My Writing Education: A Timeline by George Saunders (New Yorker)

‘Have a plan and be willing to abandon it’ (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert)

Transcripts of The Booker Prize Podcast are generated using both speech recognition software and human transcribers, and as a result, may contain errors.

James Walton:

Welcome to the Booker Prize Podcast with me, James Walton.

Jo Hamya:

And me, Jo Hamya.

James Walton:

And today we’ve got a special treat, as we like to think most episodes are a special treat because we’ve got an interview with George Saunders, one of the great writers in the world, in fact, and we’ll be talking to him about his book, winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. He is an enormously distinguished American novelist who won the Booker Prize in 2017, making him the second American to win after Paul Beatty with The Sellout, which we’ve discussed on this very show. On the shortlist in 2017, as we’re nothing if not Booker completists here, were Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1, Autumn by Ali Smith, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, Fiona Mozley’s, Elmet, and Emily Fridlund’s History of Wolves. So do you want to tell us a bit about Lincoln in the Bardo, Jo?

Jo Hamya:

Yes. I suppose I should start by explaining what a bardo actually is.

James Walton:

Why not?

Jo Hamya:

It’s derived from a Buddhist concept. The bardo is kind of what we think of as purgatory. It’s space between life and death, it’s where the spirit goes after dying, if it still has some attachment to the world. But Saunders is kind of altered the concept, so that instead of moving on to a new life as you would do under Buddhism, you just die. So the book takes place sort of against the backdrop of the Civil War, and it opens on a reception that Abraham and Mary Lincoln are holding at the White House, while their son Willie is upstairs grievously ill. And he eventually succumbs to his illness and dies, at which point he enters the bardo with a lot of other spirits. A lot of people in the bardo don’t actually believe that they’re dead. We get a lot of very beautiful backstory as to how they died. There are characters like Hans Vollman who died when a beam fell on his head, but he was about to go and finally consummate his marriage with his lovely young wife. So he died with a massive hard-on, which only increases in size as the book goes on. But none of them believe that they’re dead, they just believe that they’re sort of ill.

James Walton:

Takes a while, they keep talking about the being in their sick box, and we gradually realise that means coffin.

Jo Hamya:

Yes, Lincoln’s son, Willie, is quite a peculiar instance because children aren’t really supposed to linger in the bardo, they don’t really have enough experience or life to hold onto.

James Walton:

There’s no regret, yeah.

Jo Hamya:

They’re meant to pass on quite quickly. But very soon after his death, and this is I believe a real historical fact, Lincoln visits Willie’s tomb and holds his dead body and promises his son that he’ll return. And Willie hears this and is kind of unable to communicate with his father, but decides that he’s going to stay in the bardo and wait for his father to come back. But this is sort of a problem as we learn from another ghost called the Traynor Girl. Children who stay in the bardo begin to manifest as horrible nightmarish visions.

James Walton:

Yeah, all sorts of horrible things to happen to them.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah. And so the other ghosts in the bardo are kind of desperately trying to get Willie to move on, rather unsuccessfully so, and he begins wasting away, which makes this book sound really heart wrenching. At times, it is, but at other times, it’s just quite funny actually, if the erection story wasn’t enough.

James Walton:

Yeah, no, there’s sort of two continually interspersed things, which is the activities in the bardo with, you’ve got the main two characters, Hans and Roger, who committed suicide because his male lover had sort of gone off and said that he was going to go with women actually, that he just had to. And he cuts his throat and then realises, actually, I know that was a mistake.

Jo Hamya:

The world is beautiful.

James Walton:

Yeah, the world is beautiful, I’m going to hang around now. Anyway, also, dozens and dozens of other people tell their stories. It’s a book absolutely crammed with stories of people’s lives, and that is interspersed with historical facts about Lincoln. So this is 1862, the Civil War in its second year, and it’s not going terribly well at this point. So we get the historical background at the same time, in the form of little snippets of primary and secondary archives. If we’re making it sound like a peculiar book, I think that’s probably right. But you get used to its peculiarity really, really quickly. And life in the bardo seems like life in the bardo.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, I think the way it’s always described, is that it’s experimental or stylistically strange. It is really fragmented in every sense possible. The ghost stories are kind of told in monologue and names of the speaker are given below, as if it was kind of a script. Meanwhile, the historical parts of the novel about Lincoln and the White House and the Civil War are given as sort of fragments, excerpts that tie together, but also contradict each other. But it’s to me, all the more beautiful for that.

James Walton:

I think from a writer’s point of view, you admire the astonishing craft in bardo?

Jo Hamya:

I think this is starting, this is the first thing about George Saunders that I’ve read, but I’m starting to understand why he’s kind thought of as a literary guru. He teaches at Syracuse as well, on a kind of intensive writer’s programme. I totally get why people would go to him to try and master their craft. He’s unbelievable.

James Walton:

I suppose, if anybody doesn’t know him, although Lincoln in the Bardo is his first and so far, only novel. Very, very well established short story writer, normally referred to as the world’s greatest living short story writer. So in a way, you can see the short story-ness maybe, in the fragmentation of Lincoln in the Bardo, but we both loved it, didn’t we?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, we did.

James Walton:

And he also, I should mention, he wrote an unbelievably good book. This might not sound alluring, but trust me, you should go for it, on the Russian short story, called A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. And he takes seven classic Russian short stories and basically reads them astonishingly closely and makes you love them and love those stories and actually love him quite a lot in the course of that book. So without further ado, here’s our interview with George Saunders.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, let’s go.

James Walton:

Probably should warn you, the sound quality here in the interview isn’t unbelievably fantastic, which is to say, it’s occasionally a bit dodgy, but I really urge you to keep listening because what George Saunders has to say is fantastic. Jo, question number one.

Jo Hamya:

God. Well, since we are the Booker Prize Podcast, I just wanted to start. I’m always curious about how Booker authors remember the night of the ceremony, especially when they won? Do you have any memories of that night?

George Saunders:
Vaguely, I kind of blacked out. No, it was really a wonderful thing because it was kind of a surprise, kind of the rumour mill was like, “an American’s not winning this year, just go and have some drinks”. And so I thought, “Oh, that’s great.” And it was such a beautiful place. And then I kind of remember hearing the word Lincoln, and then everything kind of froze. And it was really, professionally the best night in my life. It was so much fun, partly because it was unexpected, and then it was just a feeling of, well, approval certainly, which I have a weakness for that. But also, it was a credential in the sense that now wherever you go, you’re the person who won the Booker. And I found it to be kind of a licence to be more daring in my work, which is strange to say. But somehow having the endorsement of that sort of august prize made me think, “Well, yeah, if it seems like a good idea to me, I should try it.”

James Walton:

And then you kind of swept into appearance after appearance?

George Saunders:

For that week, yes. I mean, even that night, it was funny because you feel like just having a bunch of drinks and cutting loose, but then you’re taken off to interviews and by the time you come out, the party’s over. But then, I think for three or four days after, it was just steady interviews. And then I came home and even in the States, the prize has an amazing amount of power as you know, and it was really quite a thing, for a month maybe. And then I started sort of deciding to quiet things down again and get back to the work. But it was really lovely.

James Walton:

And of course, you won the Booker Prize with your first novel, but unlike most first novelists or many first novelists who’ve won, you were already established indeed, a prize-winning author for short stories. Why did it take you so long to get around to a novel?

George Saunders:

Well, my wife kind of kidding me, said, “You didn’t write a novel yet. There’s a lot of white space in that thing.” I don’t really have much desire to be a novelist, I love the short story. And so it was really just a case that this particular material demanded more pages, and I was fighting it all the way. I kept saying sort of through the book, “Don’t humiliate yourself. If you can be 30 pages, let’s be 30 pages.” And then at certain key moments, the book very politely said, “No, I think I need to have a little more length.” And so it was kind of a process of, I guess just respecting the material, really. And I think a work of art, really, it’s at its best when you’re being kind of mutually respectful. So I’m saying to the book, “I want you to have every page you need, but not a page more.” And the book is saying, “Okay, I understand that. I won’t cause you to start just producing empty pages.” So that was kind of the contract I had with this book. And then I looked up and it was 300 pages, but I felt like it had sort of earned them, if that makes sense?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, it does. I’m really intrigued with the idea of white space in this novel. And I read that, at one point you tried it as a play, which makes sense with the kind of monologues that the ghosts have. But I’m really curious, I mean, you’re anthropizing the manuscript. Did it say to you that it had to be a novel? Why did it have to be a novel?

George Saunders:

Yeah. No, it’s such an interesting question. I visited this graveyard maybe 20 years before I started the book, and I’d heard that anecdote about Lincoln going to visit his son’s body. And instantly I thought, “Oh, that’s a good book for somebody, but not for me, it’s too earnest. I can’t do it.” And so then at one point, the idea was nagging at me all those years. So I said, “Okay, I’ll write it as a play. That’ll be somehow liberating.” And it was a real dumb play. I’m not a playwright. It was just a lot kind of a school production. “Hello, I’m Abraham Lincoln. I was president of the United States.” But I couldn’t give it up, even though every time I’d read it, I’d think, “Oh, there’s something wrong with this.” But I couldn’t quite give it up. And finally, one New Year’s day, sometimes what I’ll do is, I’ll just write a note to myself about what I hope to accomplish this year. And across that manuscript, I said, “Do not continue. Throw it away. It’s garbage.” And so that was supposedly dead. And then I was talking to a former student and he said to me, “I think if you ever wrote a novel, it would be a series of monologues.” And something in that to say, “Okay, it’s not a play. It’s actually a novel in an unusual form.” It just threw open a door in my head like, “Oh, I know how to do that. The voice is all wrong.” And I think with the play, I’d been kind of trying to be simple, and as soon as I said, “Oh no, it’s a work in prose.” I gave myself permission to use higher language and make jokes and the whole thing. So just that mental construct of saying, “Oh yeah, it is a novel, even though it looks like a play.” Kind of threw the windows open in a way that was really surprising.

Jo Hamya:

I read your Paris Review interview and got really stuck on the fact that in it, you said that when you submitted to your editor, he said that 80% of it was there. But you didn’t say what the other 20% was. Was there anything significant or difficult to fix?

George Saunders:

No. No. Really, it was just overwriting. You know, sometimes get in that mode of being a little too fond of your own shtick. And so I think in that original one, I remember that as a real vote of confidence because it was such a strange form, and at that point, it already had the historical references in it and stuff, and he didn’t even bat an eye at that. But I think at the same time, he wanted me to recognise that we had work to do. But as I remember it, it was just him showing me places where I had overdone it a bit and thereby undercut the fictive illusion. Sometimes you can feel a writer gets a little too excited, and it’s just a sense of being a little too fond of one’s own work.

Jo Hamya:

So you are currently on a publicity tour for Liberation Day, which is a return to short story form, and we’ll come back to that in this interview. But at the moment, I was wondering whether you are likely to write another novel and whether there was anything, I guess formally, that you’d discovered in novel writing that maybe you haven’t touched upon in short stories or indeed writing plays yet

George Saunders:

Yes. I mean, well, one thing, this is kind of crass, but it’s just the amount of attention you get for a novel and the amount of engagement that readers have, was really amazing to have a sustained narrative. So yeah, I hope so. I’m working on something now, and we’ll see. Right now it’s about eight pages of sheer hopefulness, so we’ll see. But I did enjoy with that Lincoln book, there was a moment where I was probably about 20 pages in and it seemed like it would be safer to quit, and then something said, “Well, just keep pushing and if it’s no good, it’s only a year of your life, no big deal.” But there was something thrilling about that, maybe especially a little later in life, to be in a position where you could will something into a bigger form. And in the process, I felt like I learned so much, as you said just about form, for sure, but also about yourself. And I found that that book got into a certain space, where I felt like the reader and I were taking a really strange chance together, where I was saying, “I believe in you.” And they were saying, “Well, all right, I’ll believe in you.” That I’m hungry to do again, if I can. So we’ll see if this current project turns into that or a pile of papers in a dustbin.

James Walton:

Just a couple of questions about Lincoln, actually, because obviously not only a big subject, but quite a well covered one. Why did you decide to have a go at Lincoln, as well?

George Saunders:

Really, the idea just kept eating at me. I had so many good reasons to not do it, and I kept telling the book, “We aren’t going to do that.” And every time I would have another moment of artistic success, that book would say, “How about now? You’re good enough, try it.” So it was just really the material being persistent. And as you’re suggesting, one of the terrifying things is to write about Lincoln, it’s like writing a book about Jesus or something. It’s been done, it’s been done thousands of times. So to try to find something new to say, it would be so easy to just make a caricature representation of Lincoln or a corny representation. So it was really threading a needle and in the end, that’s what was exciting about it was, nobody knows who Lincoln was, no one will ever know.
He was a man from a completely different time. His mindset was completely different. So then it becomes, “Well, he’s me or he’s at least some projection of me.” So it was a real challenge and I often think when you’re writing about somebody like this, you don’t want to show him too much. You don’t want to show him in full light. And you want to understand that even a guy like Lincoln, is mostly, he’s a middle-aged guy who just lost his kid, so that’s kind of universal. Also, it’s a cold winter night, so 60% of this phenomenon is physical. He’s just out in the cold. So it became kind of a magic trick of appearing to represent him, which is an illusion, really. I’m taking my phenomenon and general phenomenon and putting it all together and showing it to you very quickly so you don’t have too much time to distrust it and that’s Lincoln.

James Walton:

I’ve wondered, why not just let the South go? Why not just let it have its little slave republic and see how far that goes in the mid 19th century? And it doesn’t seem as if, from what the historians I’ve read, that it seems as if he could have preserved the Union without bringing in slave people, he would’ve done. So that wasn’t necessarily the motive. Why was the Union so sacred to him?

George Saunders:

Yeah, I think this is one of the places where it’s our inability to imagine a 19th century mindset, really comes into play because I’ve had the same idea, just let them go, they’ll fail, and they would’ve failed, just for economic reasons. But I think if you read his early writings, it’s all about Union. That was a real thing, I think, for our country to have made this Union fairly recently at that point. So it had a kind of value for them, that maybe we can’t quite imagine, I think. So initially it was that, and then Lincoln himself changed. So early on, as he said, he didn’t care. I mean, I think he was repulsed by slavery. He hated it, but he would leave it in place, he said, if it would save the Union. Then there was a famous moment where he called a bunch of African-American leaders to the White House, and his intention was to convince these men to buy into a scheme, to repatriate every Black person back to Liberia, that was the plan. This was an actual plan that people discussed at the time. And he floated this plan, and whatever happened in that meeting, he was so ashamed of himself afterwards. And I think what happened was these people said, “Sir, we’ve been here longer than you have, some of us. We’re citizens. It’s an idiotic idea.” So after that meeting, he never proposed it again. And there was a real change in his thinking about it. And also at the time, he was getting reports from the front of these heroic Black soldiers who faced a lot of peril, that if they were captured, they’d be executed on the spot, unlike their White compatriots. So there was this change in Lincoln’s heart, where he actually started to understand what was at stake. And so I tried to mimic that and at the end, to have him sort of go from, “I’m just to save the Union.” To actually, “This is much more major and morally inflicted than I ever knew before.” So that was kind of the formal intention of the book. But to your question, I don’t really know, I’m not sure.

James Walton:

But you were born in Texas, I believe, although you grew up in Illinois. Do you ever feel Southern, have you got Southern roots?

George Saunders:

Yes. I mean, I was, as a kid in Chicago, I was always very proud of being from Texas. I thought it was the thing that made me different. Yeah, I mean, it’s funny, even as a kid, I can remember a lot of vaguely Confederate overtones. People talked about that war in a way that was weird and very strange. Yeah, I don’t know. My grandfather was a travelling salesman in Texas, and so when I went down there, I was the only grandson, and he would take me on his route around these tiny towns in Northern Texas and so I had a lot of fondness for that period. He would kind of take me to these small towns, and we’d go to a bar and he’d kind of show me off, “This is my grandson, he’s a Yankee.” And then I would talk in my Chicago accent.

Jo Hamya:

I mean, one of the things that this conversation is making me think about is that, in the process of publicising Lincoln in the Bardo, you sort of simultaneously, alongside becoming the author of a novel, became a kind of political pundit. There was a lot to talk about around 2016 and 2017. I wonder how you think back on that? I mean, is it something that you expected to have to do during the writing of the book, and how did you find having to explain the contemporary state of America, whilst trying to market a book?

George Saunders:

Yeah. I feel a little bit uncomfortable because my level of political knowledge is about that of somebody’s drunk uncle at a party. I’m all opinion and no factual basis. But sometimes in this job, and especially after the Booker, you get opportunities to say things, and it’s something I really struggle with because I don’t want to be facile, and I don’t want to neglect anybody else’s experience, but at the same time, I don’t want to be somebody who had that opportunity and didn’t use it. So I kind of just try to proceed on the basis, that every human being is just as real as the other. And even your enemies, their worldview makes sense to them, and it doesn’t make sense to you. And so there are ways that you can, I think especially through literature, you can talk past the kind of surface level banter, sometimes very aggressive banter, that constitutes most of the public discourse these days. You can talk directly to the better part of the person. But on the other hand, I’ve been really frustrated that I don’t get many converts from the other side. I did a piece where I followed the Trump campaign around and went to the rallies and was down there on the ground and had some great conversations. Didn’t change a single mind. And so I should have brought copies of the novel and handed it out, that probably would’ve done the trick.

James Walton:

Yeah, definitely.

George Saunders:

Yeah.

Jo Hamya:

This idea of being given a platform and using it for something to say, is that part of the motivation to have a Substack?

George Saunders:

I started doing that partly because I’ve written, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, this book about Russian literature, and I really missed doing that kind of close analysis. So, Substack offered a little incentive to do it, and I thought, I’ll try it. And it was almost instantly clear that this community was so positive. It was really strange. My fear was that suddenly I’m on the internet and I have to fight somebody every day and it was so much the opposite. So many bright people. It’s really like a huge class. And for some reason, the vibe in there is very positive and very supportive. So I’ve become really a little bit addicted to it just as a part of my intellectual life, because I get to now, at about maybe once every three weeks, we introduce a new story and we analyse it. And I learned so much from the comments. And it forces you to back up your opinion by writing about it, which is a really good way to clean off any facile ideas that you have. So I really love it. And yeah, and I think a lot of writers are doing it because if you’re a person with a lot of ideas and active mind, it’s sort of hard to publish all those. I mean, even if they’re good, there’s not that many venues. So here you have a way every week to publish, and there is a way that a piece on Substack can make it into the broader culture and the larger discussion. So I haven’t used it really, I’ve been very disciplined about not being political in there and just sticking to writing technically about stories. And I think I’ll probably stay that course because I think that’s partly why the community is so positive, we don’t get off into the weeds at all. But no, it’s been really interesting, really exciting.

Jo Hamya:

I do wonder, now that you’ve returned to short stories, whether that direction that your life has taken as a teacher or an instructor of writing, has newly influenced your short stories or made you more self-conscious in any way, while writing?

George Saunders:

Yeah, I think that’s an ongoing battle. I’ve been teaching since the middle ’90s. So there’s always that moment where you say, “Okay, I’ve been talking a bunch of theory.” Or as we call it, talking a bunch of shit. And then suddenly, you have to then pivot to being an artist, which is not about rational belief or willing yourself to do this or that, or fulfilling this theory. So I’ve been doing that pivot my whole creative life, really. Swimming in a Pond in the Rain, helped me a little bit, just to see what the current limitations of my approach were. In reading Chekhov, you go, “Oh, I’d never thought of doing it that way.” So yes, I think a little bit, it’s kind of both beneficial and could be harmful. So I think so many things in art, it’s okay, everything’s okay, you just have to be aware of it. So I’m aware of the idea that if I’m talking theory or analysis, 40% more, I have to be that much more careful when I go to work.

Jo Hamya:

I really like what you said. I can’t remember which interview this is, but somewhere you said, that the charm an individual has will immediately translate into the charm they have as a writer, that the two cannot be mutually distinct. And I was kind of wondering, how you see that in yourself, what aspects of you, which need to please or persuade or charm, translate onto the page?

George Saunders:

I think frankness, I think a willingness to say something, then go, “Oh, that’s nonsense.” That’s something that I feel strongly as a person. I’m neurotic, I guess, basically, but I can see several ideas at once, if you ask me a question I have. So I’ve been able to kind of find a way to get that on the page a little bit, which often translates into humour. If somebody makes a strong position and then runs around the other side of the table, there’s something funny about that. So I think there’s kind of a frankness, and what that means for me is, that when I’m writing, I’m really trying to imagine the reader as a co-partner in the enterprise. So I’m trying to respect her. I’m trying to imagine her as being like me, maybe even a little smarter, a little better travelled, a little more sophisticated. And so as I’m editing, I’m really trying to imagine this better person that I’m trying to befriend. That’s a form of frankness too, to say, at a certain point, you can say, “I’m aware that this part of this story is landing on you in this way. Let me address that, friend.” So I think that’s the part. But this idea of charm, when I teach at Syracuse, I’m trying to tell my students that the first move that most of us do when we write, is we put up a front. We’re trying to imitate the beloved writers that we’ve known. That doesn’t actually work, even if you imitate Rushdie really, really well, you’re not Rushdie, even if you imitate him. So the idea is, go ahead and do that, and you’ll be frustrated because you’ll feel that you’re a light version of that writer. And at some critical moment, you’ll start to really squirm because the things you actually know in your life, aren’t showing up on the page, the costs that you’ve paid. So then at that moment, I will say to them, “How are you charming in real life? Is that there? If you’re a funny person, are you being funny? If you’re somebody who is a great listener, is your great listening, making it onto the page?” And that’s really the moment where a young writer will sometimes make a leap. And it was for me, such a relief because instead of keeping your best gifts outside the door, you let them in and you’re just yourself. So the problem is, you can’t simply decide, “Oh, what are my charms? I’ll make a list.” It’s much more intuitive and iterative, and it takes a lot of rewriting, I think, to get there. But it starts with a feeling of frustration, that what you really know is not showing up in your work or what you really care about is not showing up in your work.

James Walton:

With your work in Lincoln in the Bardo and the short stories in Liberation Day, it’s sometimes hard to tell. Well, Lincoln in the Bardo was described as wildly, lots of things. And sometimes you see, it seems you’re just letting your imagination go where it will, stories are piling up, characters are, and sometimes it seems if it’s under completely tight authorial control, which of those is it, do you think or is it?

George Saunders:

It’s both. It’s both. So it’s almost like you have two halves. You have wildly, anally explosive hat, put that one on and just go to town. And then you also have a, for me, it’s like the inner nun, which put that hat on, and suddenly you’re editing and cutting and shaping. So I think for me, you have to have both. David Foster Wallace used to talk about this, “A new writer thinks that if she feels it and types it up, you’ll feel it.” And a more experienced writer knows, “No, it’s a totally different thing.” You’re putting together words on the page with the intention of affecting the reader, but that in itself, is an open question of how to do that. So for me, I’ll have a really wild time knowing that tomorrow I’m going to have to come back and tidy up the room, that type of thing. Yeah.

James Walton:

And actually one thing, which Liberation Day, which I again greatly enjoyed. Again, the mixture of wildness and tight control and everything. Any of those stories that you particularly commend to the reader?

George Saunders:

As the book, Sails Away, I’m kind of fond of Elliot Spencer. It’s the second to last, and it’s kind of a difficult, weird, experimental thing. But I really like that story. And on the audiobook, Steven Root read it, and he did such a beautiful job, and it kind of opened the story up for me again, as a kind of, “Oh, that’s.” Sometimes a certain story will be a pathway to the next thing. And reading that whole book, that one in the title story, kind of make me think of what I might be. Those ideas are still alive for me. So they kind of speak to what might be.

James Walton:

Elliot Spencer’s, where people have that sort of memories scraped and reemployed as political protestors. Yeah. Is it?

George Saunders:

Right. Which is going to happen next week, I think.

James Walton:

Yeah, that’s terrific. In that case, I think unless you’ve got anything you’re bursting to say, that’s been fantastic to have you, and thank you very much.

George Saunders:

No, thank you. I love being here. Thanks for the beautiful questions.

Jo Hamya:

No, thank you, George. It’s been lovely.

James Walton:

They sort of say, never Zoom your heroes. Are we glad that we Zoomed George Saunders today?

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, really are. I mean, he’s just a genius, isn’t he?

James Walton:

Yeah. I mean, he really, really is.

Jo Hamya:

We seem to say this after every time we interview a book or author.

James Walton:

I think we are pushovers, I must say. But I mean, he’s a genius writer and pretty much a genius conservationist as well, I would say now.

Jo Hamya:

Yeah, I really liked what he was saying about sort of having to imagine himself into Lincoln, until he sort of became him, or Lincoln became George Saunders. Because that’s actually, what happens in the novel, we don’t hear much from Lincoln directly. What we hear is kind of spirits entering his body, until they become the president. That was just a really nice parallel.

James Walton:

Well, that’s it for this week.

Jo Hamya:

You can find out more about Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders at thebookerprizes.com, and remember to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Substack at the Booker Prizes. Also, George’s latest collection of short stories, Liberation Day, is now out in paperback.

James Walton:

And warmly recommended. Never forget, we also now have a Booker Prize Book Club on Facebook. Though, if you want to take part in that, please head to facebook.com/thebookerprizes to find out more.

Jo Hamya:

Until next time, bye.

James Walton:

Bye. The Booker Prize Podcast is hosted by Jo Hamya and me, James Walton. It’s produced and edited by Kevin Meolo, and the executive producer is John Davenport. It’s a Daddy SuperYacht Production for the Booker Prizes.