A discussion of the mind of Abraham Lincoln, the art of creating historical voices, verbal improv and writing the afterlife.
Granta’s online editor Luke Neima talks to the writer George Saunders about his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. They discuss the mind of Abraham Lincoln during the civil war, the art of creating distinctive historical voices, verbal improv and writing the afterlife.
‘Art is the human mind fully operative.’
–George Saunders
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘The way I write in general is basically just to move, in as a quiet-minded a manner as I can, toward what I feel as heat.’
‘Must I deny my predilection, and marry, and doom myself to a certain, shall we say, dearth of fulfillment?’
‘One purpose of art is to get us to wake up, recalibrate our emotional life, get ourselves into proper relation to reality.’
George Saunders talks about allowing his characters access to goodness, why he avoids ‘auto-dark’ in his stories, and the death of David Foster Wallace.
‘Once, early on, before he learned such things were never said, my brother approached a white boy in his class with my mother’s maiden name and said they must be cousins. The violence in my family’s home started a year or so later.’
