Wild Card with Rachel Martin - George Saunders

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

George Saunders isn’t sure what he believes about the afterlife, but he knows it’s fertile soil for a good story. In his latest novel “Vigil,” he explores questions of judgement, redemption and our ability to change. And at this stage of his career, Saunders is reflective about his own path, what he’s built through hard work and what he still longs for.To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a heads up, this episode does have some strong language. Has ambition ever led you astray? I think the answer is no. And I tell my students, you know, if you have ambition, the worst thing you can do is deny it in an attempt to be a good person. If you took the name off it, it's kind of a love for life. It's kind of an aspiration to bring out the best in yourself. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wild Card.

The show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers. questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one back on me. My guest this week is George Saunders. It's funny, the state of mind year in when you're writing,

it's like kind of, you can be really beautiful and pure and concept-free, and I'll be hit a nice moment in the story, make a nice fix, and a little voice will go, oh, the New Yorker's going to love that, you know? And then, yeah, okay, welcome to the table. Now get out of the way. You know. George Saunders is considered one of the master storytellers of our time.

He uses humor and empathy to draw readers into characters and situations that stick deeply in the imagination. He also seems to me like a guy totally preoccupied with the liminal space between the living and the dead. And I dig this because I am also preoccupied with said in between space. It was the setting for his best-selling book, Lincoln in the Bardo, and of his newest novel, Vigil. I am so very happy to welcome George Saunders to Wildcard. Hi, Rachel, so happy to be here with you. Thanks for having me. Oh, I'm just so pleased. What fun. I know. I think we are going to have fun if I'm allowed to just project that.

I can't wait to get the big cash prize at the end of the game. You're going to be rich, George. Okay, so we're going to start with memories, and I'm going to hold up the first three cards, and you just pick randomly. Give me that middle. Give me that middle one. That's calling to me. Out of the one, two, three, you go middle, right off the bat. Okay, here we go. What's the riskiest? thing you got away with as a teenager? Yeah.

The riskiest thing as a teenager. Hmm. Flip. Immediately flip. I'm going to just contemplate the thing. You just use that right off the bat. Okay, the riskiest thing I got away with as a teenager. Well, I should first say that I was the eldest child and so very much a prototypical

eldest child. So it makes my answer perhaps less interesting than. Well, I stole my parents' car. You stole your parents' car. I mean, I just made that sound really dramatic. It is true, but I only drove a block. So I'm not quite sure if that counts. But I definitely snuck out.

And I definitely went, when I was a sophomore, I definitely went to the senior football party that was being held around the block and ultimately got away with it. and only fessed up to it very late in life, and by the time that no one cared, obviously. See, I'm not sure that really counts unless you sell it. That would have been a good answer. I stole my parents' car and then sold it.

I told you. It was not going to be a good one. That's so sweet, though, that that's your greatest sin. I know. That sounds so not cool or interesting. But I was the same. I was also very self-regulated. Yeah.

But sometimes that got in my way. So my dad had a chicken restaurant in Chicago franchise, and I was his delivery boy. So one time, we got an order late at night, and he said, you know, the customer's always right, take the order. And I went out, and the address was fictional. I couldn't find it. It was between two existing houses. So I'm standing there stunned for a minute, and suddenly this guy comes out of the bushes and pushes me down and grabs the package and runs off. And so the good boy in me was so kind of macho about that.

I really felt so humiliated that my family's restaurant had been robbed by it because of my, you know. So I put out some feelers and I was pretty well connected and I figured out who did it. There's a group of four young men who had conspired to do this. And so this is what I got away with. I called or in two cases went to the house of these guys and said, I challenge you. This is how stupid I was. To a duel? No, yeah, if perhaps you haven't read Pushkin, my friend.

But I said, yeah, come to this place. I'm going to fight all four of you at once. The risky thing, none of them showed up. That was the, that was the blessing. So. George, I have so many follow-up questions. I mean, first of all, this is, I don't want to age you, but this is before the Internet. You couldn't like.

Way before. It just before phones. Or food. It was that ancient. There was no food available, except for the chicken restaurant. But that's why we were so in demand. So how did you find them? Do you remember how you tracked them?

Yeah, no, I do. One thing I had, for some reason, I had, how would you just say it, I had connections both high and low. So I knew a lot of tough kids and a lot of druggie kids. And so I just put out feelers among a few of those and they go, yeah, we know who it is. And it turned out that it was these four kids. Yeah, and it wasn't directed in me. But of course, I took it that way. And so, but for me, I think about it as kind of the eubris that I had to, first of all, to take it so personally and to have my ego so easily hurt.

And then to think I was going to go out like a vigilante and, you know, what, I don't know what. But so anyway, that was, I was a pretty, in retrospect, a pretty strange kid, actually, you know, pretty intense. And this was all ideas based, you know, about my sort of primacy in the universe, you know. So thank goodness I didn't just get killed. I mean, yes, you could have been really hurt. Does that stand out as exceptional in your childhood? Was that an aberration? Or was that pretty typical, that kind of strength, courage, ego?

Yeah, thank you for this. That's very generous. I think it was the one time where the wild inner life, one of the few times where the wild inner life might have intersected with reality. I might have given reality a chance to correct me. But I had a very, I mean, in retrospect. very wild mind. I still do. But I mean, at that point, there was kind of a, I was kind of a sweet kid who believed strongly in whatever appeared in his mind and then tried to act on it. But I think sometimes it was just funny, you know, like a deranged. But also a very strong sense of right and wrong. Yes, yes. Or at least seeking that, you know, and sometimes getting it wrong, but I was always seeking some kind of right, wrong mix in the world. Yeah. Justice. Okay. Next three. One, two, or three. Let's take three.

What's an experience from childhood when you realized your parents were only human? Hmm. Well, I have that. Could I substitute a nun in when I realized none was really human? Sure. Did you have a nun play a strong role in your life? Well, a very positive one and also this kind of funnier one, which is I was a reader of the epistle, and we would do mass every day.

So I'd get out of class early and go into the church, and then the priest would give me the selection, and I'd practice it. So one day I went to do that. Catholic Church. This is a Catholic Church. Yeah. So there was, I think it's called the narthex, those little like rooms on either side of the altar. So I walked in, I had gym shoes on, I walked in, turned the corner, and there was a priest and nun feverishly making out in the Northex. Yeah. And so, and I knew, I knew them both. And the reason I, the realizing they were human part is, I literally paused with one foot in the air, so shocked, like, and they didn't hear me because they were busy. And I then slowly just stepped out and I paused for just a second. And I was actually saying, what, what's the thing to do here? And I had this feeling like, well, of course, of course. And I was an adolescent. I was starting to have some, feelings, you know. And I thought, well, of course, they're human beings. And I had the thought,

this doesn't mean that what they're teaching you isn't true. I remember that very distinctly. Wow. They could be flawed, not flawed, but they could be flouting the rules in this realm. And yet, they could still have a solid basis. And so, and I, then I turned around and walked out, and as I walked out, I thought, this is going to stay with me. And I didn't tell anybody for 25 five years or something like that. But you had that awareness in the moment. Yeah, I did. I almost like to protect them because I like them both separately.

They're very nice, nice. But that was a nice, not only a moment of realizing they were human, but realizing that human meant you contain multitudes, you know. You could be wonderful in this phase of your life and a real stinker in this one. One didn't forgive or negate the other, but you had to keep both in mind, you know. So that was. It's also amazing. It did not, it didn't send you at that.

into some kind of existential faith crisis. Like, it's all a pack of lies. And these people who are the curators of the truth are just, you know, that's exactly very perceptive. Because that thought did come up. And I thought, no, I reject that, you know. But that's the first thought is, oh, now I can jettison the whole thing. But I'd had enough positive experiences with nuns, but also with the religion,

that I wasn't so anxious to jettison it. even as I was, you know, in a certain hipster level I already was, but inside I was still kind of honoring it, you know. You don't get a ton of people on this show who have a lot of positive experiences in childhood with organized religion. So can I ask you to say more about what that was like when you say that you had enough positive experiences built up that this didn't cause any kind of fissure? Yes. Well, one thing was I had a lot of deep experiences. that I would say probably were meditative, that I didn't know what to call it that.

But in the church, we spent a lot of time in there. And so as somebody with a busy neurotic mind, I had that experience of by hour 1.6, you know, of the mass, I'd have burned through all of my thoughts, really, and just be sitting there kind of quietly, and it felt really good, you know, really peaceful. And then also, I think I had this idea, I don't know whether I was taught this or I just came up with it,

but hearing a lot of the stories about just, Jesus and the way he would interact with people who were a little bit on the dark side, you know, like the woman at the well and the rich man in the tree or whatever, I thought, oh, he's kind of a novelist. Because what Jesus's superpower was, as I understood it, was that he, one, could, had something going on where he could see you very clearly, I would say now, without a lot of projections about who you were. So he was able to really look into the core of you with affection and not judge. And that has come to seem to me like what a writer does, really. You know, you make up some person good or bad, and you hang out with them for a couple of years. And in the process, you burn through the easy judgments that you would make if you've met them in person probably. And you start to go, okay, well, yeah, that's true.

You know, you're a mansplainer. Okay, let's look under that. Why is that, you think? You know, oh, you feel this. So you can kind of get to a point where you're not necessarily making a case for them, but you're at least taking in as much data as possible. And so that's how I imagine Jesus managed some of these amazing reactions that he had, the people that his culture were very averse to, you know, like a prostitute and so on.

Thank you for that. Okay, we're going to get more into that topic in the beliefs round for sure. Also, I have one word to say that was preoccupying me. Zacchaeus. Zakias. He's the one in the tree. He's the one in the tree. Yep, yep, yeah. And is that where Jesus says, is that about the camel, the eye?

Now I can't remember. All I know is there was a little song when I learned in Bible school. Zichias was a little, we little man, and he was in the tree. And so that's all I'm doing. And he was there because he was too small to see over the crowd. That's right. Right. Yeah. Well, good memory. That's a good one. Thanks, Stuart. That's basically what I needed some affirmation from you for remembering, I don't know if the Old Testament. Okay. Next three. One, two, or three.

Let's just do one, since we're... What's something you took away from your first job? My first real job was with my dad's restaurant in Chicago was called Chicken Unlimited, which is a very kind of... And we had this kind of Zen... It's bold. You can never run out. That's right. But we had a Zen catchphrase, which is, chicken unlimited doesn't stop at chicken.

Hmm. Think about it. So I was the delivery boy. And actually, I think what I learned there was just, I mean, I love to work. I love any kind of work, even if it's hard or pointless. And so we would, it was a family-run business. And so it was very sometimes stressful because people would come in. And if it wasn't going well, it was me and my mom, my dad, my two sisters were working, you know.

So I think I just learned that love of when in doubt work, you know. There's a student told me once, he was doing a paper on Carl Sandberg. Maybe it was Robert Frost. But anyway, the story is that at a seminar, a poet asked Frost, let's say, this big complicated question about the sonnet. And Frost supposedly said, young man, don't worry, work. And that's what I took away from that first job was when in doubt, like there'd be times where, you know, we were so crowded and we were kind of messing it up. And the only way to get out of that was to close your mind and work, you know. And I saw my dad and mom were very hard workers, and I'd see them hustling, you know, and it was really a bonding thing.

So, yeah, so I think that was the biggest thing was that you can sometimes, and this is certainly true artistically, you can be in a position where you don't see any possible escape. It's just a screwed up story or a screwed up novel. Then at that point, what you do is you say there's only one doorway out, and that's through work, you know, revising and stuff. And then what's beautiful is sometimes this miraculous fix can appear that you never in a million years could have thought your way to or aspired your way to, but you can only work your way to it, you know. I mean, you've also, you've worked a lot. You've had like a lot of very difficult physical jobs in your life. I'm 18 years old and look at me. You know, look what it's done to me.

It's just. In the minds. In the mind, that's right. But can I tell you, there's one PS I should say about that, Robert Frost. Tell me. Because I went around and told that story for years because it so perfectly describes my approach to writing. Don't worry, work, you know. All the conceptual things, don't worry.

You don't have to. And then at some point, a Frost Scholar came up to me and said, you know, actually, he didn't say that. He said, don't work, worry. So, yeah. Wait, what? That's horrible. That's horrible. I'm going to go back to the other version.

Yeah, I do. I don't have any faith in the second version. Although I think probably what he meant was, you know, rumination or kind of contemplation as part of the writer's shop. You don't have to be typing in order. Right. But I don't know. But I guess my follow-up question was, as someone who has done so much,

you have, like, done very physical, manual labor in your life. And then you became a person whose work is in the interior. It's ideas work. It's intellectual work. Do you find that you need to be? balance? Like, does every once in a while, do you need to just get in your body in a different way and out of your head? Yeah. I mean, well, we, well, we, I do a lot of stuff, we don't hire out a lot of work, you know, like, some, but mostly I'm, you know, I'm, like I like to clean the house and I like

to do the toilet. So, I mean, so I'm, I do find that. I'm just kind of, I kind of like those things at all. No, I don't like them, but I, but I, hastening back to the chicken unlimited, there's something about being, and I'm lost in the task is really nice for me. Because my mind is very active. And to be physically engaged with anything, really, it can be the smallest, silliest thing. It does something nice to the mind. And also creatively, there's a lot of times where really good solutions come when you're doing something else. You know, when you're whatever, mopping.

You know, then suddenly the story will kind of, it almost feels like it sneaks up behind you, goes, here's the answer, you know. Yeah. But you have to stop looking for a little bit. Yes. Do something else and then it comes. Yeah, that makes sense to me. I want to pull out of the game and talk about your newest book, Vigil. And if I can attempt to summarize the plot, there is a man on his deathbed, an oil executive named K.J. Boone, right?

And he is visited by this, she's not really an angel. She's a woman who is, she has already died. and it is her job to chaperone this man into the next life or just on onto the other side of living. And he's a person who's done some damage in his time on this earth. Yes. What, I guess my first question is, what is her job to help him see the error of his ways or to be a neutral force to do? just usher him through this inevitability called that. Well, you put your finger on the really kind of the center of the book.

She would say her job is to comfort him. She doesn't really define what that means. And I think what we come to find out is she's not that good at her job. She has this idea that if she just shows up and says all as well, the dying person will be comforted, which I'm sure in some cases is true. she had an experience at her death that it caused her to be super sympathetic for all human beings you know and her thing is that basically if you really look closely at it from the angel point of view everything good about you everything not so good about you your ability to change

what's good about you or bad about you all of those things kind of came to you when we don't know before birth for sure you know so she's not a big fan of this idea of free will. She thinks basically because we're so predisposed to certain things and even our ability to adjust a predisposition is predisposed, the only position is to be very, very merciful towards human beings, even bad ones. That's her position. Is it your position? Well, sometimes. You know, I mean, it's, I had this, speaking of the Catholic days, the first intimation I had of this, and even then I knew it was a weird and maybe hard to accept idea. But in first grade, I was a really good reader just because I just could read

almost instantly. And the nuns loved it, and I loved that. And it was, every day, it was a joy. You know, maybe you had a similar thing. You know, you just show up to be praised, basically. I mean, do this. I would be finished first. I did like that as a young person. Right. Yeah, it's the best. So, but so one day, you know, after three or four days of this celebration, I look over in a good friend of mine is, he's not a good reader. He may be, he might have been dyslexic. I'm not sure. He's really struggling. You know, very articulate, intelligent kid, but he just couldn't read. And he was lagging behind the others, and the nuns didn't like that. And that was the shadow side of the nuns, as they were rigorous and could be harsh. So at the end of

one long day, I just, we're getting ready to pack it up. And I looked over and I see him with his body kind of turned away, and he's crying, you know. And I, and there's something in that moment, I felt bad for him, but I also felt bad about myself for being so triumphant, you know. Like, for all the, all I've been thinking of these days is how lucky I was to be me, you know, to be a good reader. And I never thought about it. Because according to this theory, it was all baked inside you from the get-go. And I was thriving and he wasn't. And something about that just hit me, mostly just how there wasn't justification for me feeling so great about myself.

Yeah. Because in the womb, I hadn't checked off the box they made me the best reader. I just showed up. So that idea really kind of stuck with me. And for a while, it gave me some real questions about accomplices. Like if, you know, if you are sort of pre-baked not only with skills, but with a lot of ability to make the skills better or the good work ethic, that's great. But at what point do you get to say I did that, you know? Now, on the other hand, there's another character in the book, this Frenchman who says, that's nonsense.

You can't live like that. And I agree with him as well. Well, yeah, because people have to be held accountable for their bad behavior. That's right. And you have to develop your own positive traits, too. You can't just kind of flow through. So really, the book was sort of an offloading of these two ideas I've had that are really in direct contradiction. I think some philosophers say it's the absolute view, which is hers, versus the relative view, which is the one we walk around living in.

How does the space between living and dying help you tell those kinds of stories? Because it's a place you like to think about a lot. I do. I do. I mean, to me, both of the books kind of take place in a waiting room, like a waiting room where the judgment is next, but we don't really get to see that process at all. We're just in a waiting room that seems to be occupied by people whose lives were such that they didn't die at peace. You know, they had some kind of agitation or a sense of deprivation or something that keeps them kind of resonating. There was a Buddhist idea that when we're alive and we're in the... bodies that's a blessing because the mind is so powerful and neurotic but when in a body it's

kind of contained so they always say it's like a you're like a wild horse the mind is like a wild horse tied to a fence as long as you're in a body but then when you die in that liminal space the rope gets cut and your mind is just supersized and you know they say in some of these teachings that like if you think of a foreign city you go there or if you have occasion to have a negative feeling, it becomes demons, you know, or if you have a happy feeling, it becomes heaven. So I think these people are all in kind of that mode where they're, they just didn't, I would say maybe it's that in life there was some kind of denial that was going on. And so they didn't die at peace. And so they're hanging out in this, in this waiting. But on the more practical side,

I started out my writing career as kind of a realist, like I loved Hemingway and Joyce and all those guys. But I just couldn't do it. When I would do that, try to write about my life. It was just so boring, you know. So what I found out was if I put in early, I've put in a theme park, things got fun, you know. You can write in Hemingway's voice, but you said it in the Virgin Mary theme park, and suddenly you're into something kind of funny. So it's really, in some ways, it's just a device to get more energy into the, and more fun into the, into the book. So it's just a helpful construct. It's not something you actually believe. I don't know what I believe about after that.

I mean, I would be surprised if mental phenomenon just stopped. And anecdotally, you know, from all these near-death things, it sounds like what happens is kind of like that Buddhist thing where your mind, you know, the body steps aside and the mind goes berserk for a while. But, you know, in a way, if you say, okay, let's make a world where our neuroses get supersized and basically we just become our neuroses,

that's a pretty good description of a day, really. I mean, you know. Tell me about it. Yes. Yeah. So if you want to talk about human psychology, human desire, it's not a bad. Liminal space isn't a bad place to do it. Yeah. I've worked through eight neuroses already today.

That's only, you know, the afternoon. Oh, they'll come back. Okay. We're moving to round two, round two. Cards are blue. Insights, George Saunders. One, two, or three? Two, please.

When have you been in over? your head? Well, I think the, well, probably, and this is, this is a positive form, but when we first had our daughter, Paul and I got married and we got engaged in three weeks in the romantic Syracuse ambiance and then pregnant on the honeymoon and then difficult first pregnancy. So we were, you know, you've been through. You guys met in undergrad. We did. No, we met actually at the MFA program in Syracuse. Got it. She's a really wonderful writer. Yes. And you've been together a long time. And you started a family very young. Yeah. Right. So that period where we, I'm guessing, it's around

1988, and we had two adorable daughters at home and no money. And I think we both felt like, oh, so this life that we imagined for ourselves of being, you know, high-powered writers traveling around the world at ease, that's not going to happen because now we're really into the fight here, you know. Can we, we just bought a little house and we were, and we're just scrambling. Every paycheck was a scramble. And so that was, I mean, it was tough in some ways, but it was also so beautiful, you know, to have all those kind of, I don't know, like as a younger person, I'm very ambitious and was really feeling my lack of accomplishment. You know, I was, why am I, why are people pulling away from me? Why are they getting it and I'm not getting it?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe there's something wrong with me. And in this new period. Because Because your stuff wasn't hitting. Like you had an idea of what you wanted your career to be by certain ages or benchmarks, and it wasn't lining up the way you wanted. Or at that point, even, I just hadn't written a story that I liked for a long time. You know, and I thought, oh, that's weird, you know. And for a young artist, you know, to have a period where you're not in touch with your essentialness is really painful. You know, like you write something anybody could write that.

Where's my specialness or where's my, you know? So that was rough. But then the kind of upside was I just couldn't worry about. about that at that point. You know, we had, we were really scrambling. Every month was, we're bouncing checks and we were, you know, you'd have that, I still had this kind of, um, ingrained credit card flinch, you know, where you hand the credit card over and you just make yourself look very respectable and then, you know, and when it clears, you try not. And then when it does it, it's so embarrassing. Oh my God. And then if it does, you feel like hugging the person, you know,

so, so it was, it was that kind of a period. And, um, but I guess the thing that was, it was, so, what I found it was to be in over your head is kind of clarifying. Yeah. Because there were no distractions. It was just pure work, you know, and it... And you were still young. I mean, there's... So you imagine this will, this two shall pass.

Like, this chapter will end. Like, I'm working towards something where things get... Yes, but also, you know, it was nice, Rachel, at that point. And this was the first time it ever happened to me was I thought it might, it will end, but it might not end well. In other words, the little, the boat with my writing, dream on it might just sail out of sight and I'm gonna be fine you know that was uh and I think in the past I just couldn't really imagine myself without some accomplishment to tie my ego to yeah but in

that case with the kids and everything I just thought well and you know it's all right this you're not the first person that that's whose artistic dream didn't come true so man up and you know and there's something very sweet about that and also I think in a kind of paradoxical way it was really good for my writing because it was like abandoned a whole You know, and when you abandon hope, it's kind of amazing. You don't, you... Well, you surrender expectation around it, and you just get back to doing it for the love of it. Exactly.

And you also, in that mode, you're able to see what you really do well. Yeah. Whereas I think when you're in a more luxurious, like in grad school where, you know, seem like success was right on the cusp or right on the horizon, then you do things, there's a lot of discretionary effort. Maybe I'll write like Faulkner this week. Maybe I'll try to do a song cycle, you know. know. And then once the shit hit the fan, it was kind of like, oh, no, no, no, you see if there's

anything you can do that has any charm in it. And most days there isn't, but if there is, do that, that was really, that was really good. It was really simplifying. Do you remember what you wrote when you, after you came to that revelation? Do you remember the first thing you wrote that was like, oh, there it is? No, I've told the story a lot, but I had written a 700-page novel about a wedding in Mexico that was a train wreck. And I gave it to Paula, and she, you know, she can't lie. And so she just got about five pages in and just had her head in her hands. And so I went into work the next day, really having a band on a whole, just whatever.

And there was a conference call, and I was supposed to be the note taker, and there was nothing going on. So I just wrote these kind of scatological Sucian poems that were pretty funny, you know. And I draw an illustration and then brought those home, and she read those and loved them. She laughed out loud at them, you know. So then I said, okay, I'm going to write a story like that. And I went and wrote the story called The Wavemaker Faulters, which is in our first book. And the only, like, instruction was be funny. That's it.

Be funny. And then what I found out was if I'm trying to be funny, the meaning will arrive. But I never knew that before. I thought I had to know the meaning and have it all figured out. And then the meaning. And then the jokes come in. The funniness comes in at the periphery. But.

Yes. It was the other way around. So if I was funny, then. And it weirdly, all the stuff we're talking about, this kind of economic challenges, that all came into the story as well, just unsummed, you know, because I was concentrating on trying to be entertaining in some way. Worked out, George Saunders? So far, so good. Knock on wood. Okay, three new cards.

One, two, or three? Three, please. Three. Has ambition ever led you astray? Um. Well, I hate to say no, but I think the answer is no. Say no. What a lovely thing. I don't think it has.

And I tell my students, you know, if you have ambition, the worst thing you can do is deny it in an attempt to be a good, you know, a good person. Yeah. Because ambition is, you know, ambition, that word sounds like Gordon Gecko or whatever that guy's name is. But ambition, if you took the name off it, it's kind of a love for life. It's kind of a life energy. It's kind of an aspiration to bring out the best in yourself. I don't think it's really led me astray much. You said denying it is dangerous.

How does that manifest? If you are an ambitious person and you don't acknowledge it. It's kind of like, you know, if you were, I mean, not to invoke a violent metaphor, but if a person is in an alley getting beat up and they notice they're only using one hand and the other hands behind their back, that's really silly. You bring up both hands, you know. So ambition, because it's such a source of energy, I think, for, all of us, you know, I mean, just natural. So to say, yeah, I'll take it, I'll use it. And I'm not

going to completely bow down to it. I'm not going to treat it as God. It takes so much, you know, to make a work of art that matters or that even not matters, that expresses who you are. It takes so much energy, you know, like you can say, I'm going to let the ambition in, I'm going to keep it on a short leash, I'm going to use it to get through this writing session, and I'm going to let it dissipate. Yeah, that's the key, though, right, is like Let it take you, let it take you, let it be productive, and then let it go. Send it on its way, exactly. I mean, it's funny, the state of mind year in when you're writing, I am, it's like kind of, you can be really beautiful and pure and concept-free, and I'll be hit a nice moment in the story, make a nice fix, and a little voice will go, oh, the New Yorker's going to love that, you know.

And then, yeah, okay, welcome to the table, now get out of the way. So I think to sort of say, like, well, whatever your mental process is. I bless it and I'm going to use it and then I'm not going to get. But I'm also not going to, I guess, go on autopilot. You know, if you say ambition is it, I'm always going to be ambitious. That's nice because you don't have to worry anymore, but it's dangerous because now you're on autopilot and you just become that guy. Yeah. Last one in this round.

One, two, or three. One, please. Is there anything you long for? Oh, God, yeah. I long to write the book I was meant to write, which I feel like I haven't done yet. Wow. I'm going to, but I haven't feel like it. But mostly I think I mean, this is kind of a cheesy answer, but I've had moments in my life, sometimes through meditation, sometimes just through good fortune, of feeling myself recede, you know, in a really pleasant way.

Those moments in the church when the mind would go quiet, that happened. And I really long for that. and, you know, that feeling of like, it's really, in the Catholic Church you used to say, the masses ended, all go in peace, we must diminish and Christ increase. And I think with that feeling of having your ego and your active mind be quiet, I would like to get there sooner rather than later. So I think longing applies to that, yeah. That's just part of, that's built into your profession, right?

You have to come out and you have to be this esteemate. deemed writer and people read the intros and greatest writer ever and you get all these laudatory phrases thrown your way and it's a lot and and and and so it makes sense to me that after you love it. And you love it. Yes, you love it. And it's important. It's the validation feels good and it keeps you going and then I I can understand the impulse to then need to disappear and yeah the word diminishment is interesting. It's kind of a sugar buzz and, you know, and like a sugarbubal, or like, it's like having your birthday every day. And then when it's not your birthday, like, huh, nobody brought me anything.

You know, so, but then again, you know, after all these years of doing it, part of it is to go, and I'm sure you experienced this too. Like you have all that validation and that good feeling. And then if it stops or pauses or diminishes in some way, then there's a moment there where you can say to yourself, oh, yeah, that's normal. You know, I ate a butterfinger every day for the last six weeks. Now I don't get one. There's going to be some adjustment, you know. And so that, I suppose it's just like grounding yourself in the particulars of your work as opposed to the kind of, you know, looking for approbation or whatever. Right.

The payoff. It has to be about the actual work and not the payoff. Beliefs, last round, three new cards. One, two or three. Two, please. Who or what is your moral company? Well, I mean, my wife, Paula, is for sure. Did she?

Yeah. Yeah, we've been together a long time through a lot of things. And, you know, she's honest with me. And she has that, I think it's a beautiful quality of being able to see you clearly, critique you, praise you, and come out on the other side with affection no matter what, you know. So for me, that was kind of a, I think when I was younger, I had the idea that love meant someone always liked you 100 percent. or always praised you 100%, you know. And so to meet her when we were younger and it kind of, oh, actually love means she sees you and she trusts that if she gives you her honest opinion, you'll know that she still cares,

which is kind of obvious. But for me, it was, I always thought if you disagreed with somebody, it must be no good, you know. Did you luck out with that, or did you recognize that quality? in her when when you went. Yeah, that's a good question. I think both. I think I, I must,

I think at some deep cellular level, I recognize it because there were times when we got engaged really quickly and it was quite, you know, beautiful in fireworks, but also like, you know, it wasn't always easy. And I remember just at one point thinking,

do not lose this person because you'll regret it the rest of your life. It was almost like my 40-year-old self was communicating to my younger self saying, no, no, no, no, no. now stop the bullshit you have some ability to discern truth here

this is the most interesting person you've ever met so you stick here and so that was yeah that was great you know it's interesting there was one of the time because I like this idea that

you know a person is many different people at once and there's a chorus of us you know inside our heads and I've had that that occasion was one where an older wiser person spoke directly to me and said now put all the nonsense aside and married this woman.

And then the other time was I was in Pakistan, and I was getting ready to, I was trying to go into the war. I had met these Mujahideen and was negotiating with them to take me into Afghanistan. What years are we talking about? They're fighting the Soviet war. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had, and they said, okay, I'll take you. And the only thing you said was you can't wear your glasses because the gunships,

the Russian ships will see the glint. Yeah, well, okay. But I was all set. I was going the next morning. Yeah. And I was in the hotel, and I just had this dark night of the soul. And what this older person said to me, two things. One is, if you go in there and get killed, your mom's, you're going to break your mother's heart.

You know, because she doesn't even know you're there. Okay. And then I said, yeah, but Hemingway, you know, he would, he would do it. And that wiser voice said to me, okay, smart ass, why do you think Hemingway is famous? Because he was in a war? there were a lot of people in a war, that First World War. Why do you think he's as well? Because he was a great writer.

Exactly. Do you want to be a guy who had been in a war? Or do you want to be a great writer? I said, well, the latter. Okay, then write great. You know, kind of the... And so I didn't go. I bravely ran away.

And for me, at that age, it was so hard to chicken out, which I definitely did. But that wise voice was like, no, okay, you can... Go ahead and go. You know, it won't help. Wait, who was that person again? It was me. Wait, no, but the guy who said that. No, was you?

Me. It was me in my head. Yeah, no. This is a separate you. I was sitting in that room alone obsessing, and I could feel this source of some kind of wisdom saying, wow. And what really was, the real mantra was be honest for once. Let's hone in on what you really want, which is you want to be a good writer. And so there was some kind of no-nonsense voice that I had access to those two on those two occasions.

even though my actual 28, 25-year-old self was just a mess, you know, kind of confused. Oh, my God, can I just tell you? I had that same conversation, but I was the jerk who just went anyway. Literally. Where did you? Afghanistan. What did you do? You went to Afghanistan?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like in the U.S. war. But I remember the phone call with my parents and my dad saying, I wish you would make a different choice, which is the what would happen to me, and I would break my mother in my father's heart, and I still went. Also, it was a total ego thing. Like, that was how I thought I was going to be a great journalist and reporter. And granted, war reporting and conflict reporting, it is, it's an important thing to do. It is incredibly valuable.

But there was also just so much ego attached to having been a person who did it. You know what I mean? Not even the doing of it. To be a person who had done it. Yes. And I always wanted to be someone who had done it and got slightly injured, but not too bad. So I had to, you know, that was it. But on the other hand, you know, you're making a beautiful case because you're here where you are,

partly because you took that path. And people do have to go do that, you know. The one thing is I at that point was not any kind of journalist. I just was a person going in there. So it was with me, there was no way that that was going to turn into a piece of journalism or reportage. It just was me. You don't know what you could have written as a result of it. Well, I might have, but I wasn't writing at that point.

I was, you know, and I had no. You were in the headspace of accruing experiences that you thought were going to build you into the kind of person who would be a great writer. Yeah, or even that and also even that to have done it. I wanted to come back and say, yeah, I just came back from Afghanistan. It was gnarly. And, you know, I got a little bit of a hitched my ankle. That's right. Do you want to see the splinter I got?

I'm sure that was a beautiful, deep experience for you and made you the person that you are. It did. Indeed. So I'm glad you went and came back safely and I'm glad I didn't go. It worked out the way it was supposed to. Yes. Okay. One more in this round.

One, two, or three. I'm still thinking about that conversation with your parents. Oh, it's really hard. Yeah, yeah. And now I'm a parent. And so, of course, I imagine my kids saying that. Yeah. Did they bless it at the end?

Okay, you have to do it? Yeah. They weren't mad, but they were. It's terrifying. My parents had no concept of what that wasn't part of their world. Like, they, you know, southeast to Idaho. They had lived there for most of them. their life. They didn't have examples of people who did this. And so it was utterly terrifying.

You almost have been relieved when you came back safely at them. They were. And of course, in the moment, I didn't, I was like, of course I was going to be fine. And only in retrospect. And when you grow older, do you realize, my God, what stupid risks? I mean, I took so many stupid risks. Absolutely crazy things. Well, that's a crazy part of life. As you do get older, you see that there is a huge level of luck that as a young person, maybe for a Darwinian reasons, you don't really want to believe in luck. You believe in destiny. You know, you're, I remember one time being up in Wisconsin with my cousin.

There was a, I was, it was in high school, and there was a cliff in this river down below. And like, oh, we should jump in. That's cool. That'd be cool, you know. And again, this sort of macho thing. And he's like, I don't, we don't know how deep that water is. I'm like, oh, I'm sure it's fine. And so he said, that's really stupid.

We don't know how. And so we start walking out of the car. And I turned around, I sprinted and went off the cliff. Oh, my God. I mean, luckily, it was deep enough, you know, but I mean, that was the kind of. That's that same kid who's like, I will fight all four of you, chicken stealers. It's stupid. But the only reason was the ego said nothing negative can happen to you, you know.

And as you get older, like, no, everything negative can happen, you know. And so every day that it doesn't, you should be grateful. That's right. That's right. Yeah. One, two, or three? Three. How have your feelings about death changed over time?

Oh, I like that one quote. I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens. You know, that. They've gotten, I think, probably, in some ways, gentler because I can see that it's going to happen and it's going to happen in the way that everything happens, you know. I mean, it's going to be gradual and then all at once. So I think I'm more interested in it than I've ever been, you know, maybe from writing these books. Like, you know,

it'll be a big joke, you know, when I get to the end and it's nothing. It's not interesting at all. Or it's the pearly gate. So it is an an increase. fascinating thing for you to think about because of its inevitability in your life, but it sounds like it is not a harrowing kind of mental preoccupation, no? No, no, it really is. I mean, from reading my work, you would think so. But to me, it's just kind of, every so often I'll just have it feeling like, wow, it seems impossible that that's true that we're going to die. Yeah.

Yeah, it seems, I've always been here, you know, and it's been fine. So that is, I mean, I think at this point, honestly, I'm struggling more with the deaths of, you know. Your love people. Yeah. Other people, yeah. That might have aunts and uncles and pets, you know, that have gone on. And that, that is rough. But yeah, what are your, let me flip.

Let me flip. I mean, I'll flip, but I'll just ask you. What do you think? How have your feelings about it changed? I think about it quite a lot. And I've said this before. I even go so far as I sort of, this is so dark, but I do sort of imagine. I try to imagine the not being.

And I try it on for size, which is impossible. But I still try. And then I imagine, because where my thoughts go are to my kids and my husband and my family and they will feel sad. And so I think about them and then I think about them then being okay. It's like I work through the whole thing and I'm like, it's going to be fine. That's nice. And then it makes me feel better about the whole thing. Right.

Because that's true, actually, it will be fine. And trying it on for size, I've taught myself that that's not a grim thing. Not at all. No. Because then the day is, I mean, what a day when you say. What a day. It is going to happen, but it hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet.

We're still here. We get to live this day. Yeah. Last one. One, two, or three. I'm going to do two, unless you advise otherwise. No, I'm going to, we're letting the cards control the conversation. What's an answer you've stopped searching for?

Hmm. I... I don't think there is one. Skip it. Really. Yeah, skip it. We're not even going to... Okay, now I have to...

Okay, now I am editing here. All right, fine. I'm going to do this one. Okay. It's very earnest, but I like this question. What's an experience you wish you could give every person? Hmm. Be, I don't know why I'm saying, being forgiven.

That I think, you know, or accepted. In other words, having somebody, because I've had so many people like this in my life who took me just as I am and accepted me and loved me, and especially when I was young. and that, I mean, first and maybe most formatively when I was young. The story I was going to tell you earlier about my mother, and this is a, she did this over and over, but one time when I was about 13, I got the responsibility of going out with an uncle and an aunt to cut down a Christmas tree and bring it home. That was like my first manly, you know, like, Zhao. So I picked out this total hunker of a tree.

It looked great in place, and when I got it home, it was just full of gaps, you know. Yeah. And my mom was, oh, well, that's, yeah, yeah, that's good. You know, and it was so, it was like a Charlie Roundtree, but four times bigger. And so what she did was she, she sat up at night and she repaired it. She literally took, she cut it part of it off, drilled holes, and retrofit the branches in to make this beautiful triangular-shaped tree. Wow. And now on the one hand, it was, I mean, she was trying pretty hard for me.

Maybe should have just let me, you know, but what I really felt from that was that she really didn't want me to have that first experience be a bad experience. And this sort of idea that, well, things are workable, even mistakes are workable. That was what I took from that. You know, so I wish that everybody would have experiences like that were, you know, just because it seemed like so many painful or even violent experiences come from, you know, a person's feeling that nobody could accept them or forgive them or like them. And so I think if you had the experience even once of somebody abiding with you, I love that word, abiding with you through some difficulty, then you come to at least nominally expect that from the world. So there's something more meaningful.

Abiding is more than just accompanying. Abiding. What do you love about that word? Well, I think it's accompanying with hope, you know, or with, or even like, you know, I'll give you another example of what I'm talking about. I had a high school, I was a really bad student. I didn't study at all. And like the grades reflected it. And I didn't really, I wasn't really planning to go to college, but I had this high school teacher, two of them, Joe and Sherry Limbaum, who kind of saw something in me and were encouraging me to try to go to college. So as part of this process, Joe, who was a geology teacher, invited me to the, this Chicago citywide science fair. and, which I had nothing to do.

I, you know, I had no entry at all. So we go, and it's just amazing. Like, you know, these kids my age were like, I don't know, building nuclear reactors and, I mean, they were doing amazing things. And I, we walked through there and I was so, I really loved him and idolized him. And I was kind of feeling a little bit like, oh, God, look at, why is he with me? I'm such a, you know, I haven't done anything. These kids are years beyond me, you know.

I haven't even tried. And the beautiful thing that he did for me is we spent that two or three hours together, and he never once, in the slightest way, intimated that I was less than those kids. We just gone. And what he did was he praised individual, and he explained why this was a particularly good project. And he said to the kids, what a great job they had done. So he knew that I was internalizing all this. And what he was really, I think, trying to show me was, you know, you've got some work to do.

But he did that in the most loving, compassionate way with not a trace of shame about it. We had a great day, you know, and went out to lunch. And I fully internalized that message, and he knew it, and he knew he didn't have to say a single thing about it. And then he got me in the college after that, you know. So what I wish for is that everybody has somebody like that. And otherwise, you know, to – because he could have crushed me with one thing, you know, with one line about my recalcitrance or my laziness, but he never would go there. We end the show the same way every time

with a trip at our memory time machine, okay? In the memory time machine. You revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. It's just a moment you'd like to linger in a little longer. Oh, boy. Wow. That's a gift. Wow. Wow. You know what's funny about that question?

Actually, Rachel, is I can come up with a bunch of moments, but I can't find, I can't quite, I always want to change something. I want to do something better. Yeah. Nope, changing not an option. Yeah. Oh, that's really an interesting one. Because the idea is that you just want to experience it again.

That's right. Yeah. Well, I can tell you one, just a selfish one. I mean, the one that came to mind just as kind of a funny thing is I had a, when I first had the story in The New Yorker, that was a very huge deal. And I think what I would kind of take with me is a little more understanding of what a big deal it was. Because I, you know, to get a story in the New Yorker probably now, but certainly at that time, it was harder than getting a novel out. It was really rare.

And it changed a whole trajectory in my life in a way that I don't think I knew it would. So if I could go back, I might just, you know. Can you tell me about the moment? Well, I had been, I had gotten two of these nice rejection letters that were like, this isn't quite it, but send us more, which was unheard of. So I was actually working as an environmental engineer, and I was up at Watertown, no, yeah, Watertown, New York doing an investigation of a DOD facility that had groundwater contamination. So we were working these 13, 14-hour days, and I came back to the Microtel where we were staying, and there was a note, and it said something, it was kind of malapropistic, like New Yorker editor,

says thumbs up or something like and I'm like what do you what and I and the person that took message wasn't there but it was sort of cryptic it was a little too cryptic for my taste so I had to go back into work the next day and I think at lunch break

I managed to call this before cell phone managed to call and got the confirmation and then I came home and um and it was it was a little bittersweet because I've been away from paula and the kids for longer than I ever had before and I felt very sorry for myself but then when I got home

She had gone around to, it must have been 10 dental offices to get New Yorker covers. And she made this kind of Tibetan prayer flag of New Yorker covers. And we had a little a cake and a little celebrations. Yeah, that would be fun to go back to that. That's a lovely thing. See the kid's little again. Yeah. Yeah.

George Saunders, his newest novel is called Vigil. It is out now. It's been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this. I had such a good time. Thank you very much, Rachel. If you like this episode, check out my conversations with Ocean Vong. or Zadie Smith. Those are two of my very favorite wildcard conversations ever, and both of those

writers have got this kind of wisdom and realness that George Saunders also has in spades. You can watch those conversations along with this episode with George Saunders or any of our recent conversations on our YouTube channel. Just search for at NPR Wildcard. This episode was produced by Elisa Zhang and Summer Tomad. It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Becky Brown. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolanda Sangwenny, and our theme music is by Romteen Arablewee. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.