At the beginning of George Saunders’ short story ‘Victory Lap’, a young woman named Alison Pope pauses at the top of a staircase. She is in many ways a typical teenager – she refers to one of her potential suitors as ‘Mr. Small Package’, for instance, and seems almost wholly consumed by thoughts of boys and prom – so initially, very briefly, she seems like a character propped up for some easy satirical jabbing.
But before long, something transformative happens. Within a few short paragraphs, it’s almost like she reappears – seemingly out of nowhere, Alison no longer comes across as stuck-up or shallow. Suddenly she’s compassionate, defiant; maybe even a little bit scared. She hasn’t changed, of course. She’s still talking about dates, still thinking about a thousand different words that all mean sex. But we the readers have changed – we have simply started to see her how she always was.
This is the trademark of Saunders’ work. Between his celebrated short stories, his powerful new novel Lincoln In The Bardo, and his work as an essayist, the Texas-born Saunders is defined by a crackling, electric kind of empathy; by the kind of humbling understanding that simply comes from trying to look further, understand more, know deeper.
“For me, that empathy has a lot to do with the sentence rhythm, the sounds and the jokes,” he says. “So as you improve those things, out of the corner of your eye you notice that empathetic effect. Which I suppose makes sense, because what are you doing? You’re coming back to the [characters] again and again and saying, ‘Is there anything else I should know about you?’
“But that empathy isn’t the kind of thing that comes because I’m just such an empathetic guy,” Saunders laughs. “There is an empathetic guy inside me. If I keep coming to the writing table every day, he will sort of participate.”
There is an empathetic guy inside me. If I keep coming to the writing table every day, he will sort of participate.
That is the key for Saunders: working on his fiction is a way of honing the skills that he uses in the complicated, valuable, and sometimes maybe even a little bit tedious business of attempting to become a better person. “[Writing] helps me change myself. You make a piece of writing and you feel like it’s you, and you feel like it’s everything that you are. Then the next day you come back and you see that it’s not great, and so you fix it.
“And that’s a pretty big thing. Because what that means is it wasn’t you the first time: it was a product of you, and you could adjust and improve it. So that right there to me is just invaluable. And not just in writing – in anything you can say, ‘Oh, that was me today. Hm. How did I like that? Maybe I didn’t like it so much.’ And then that produces the sort of infinitely hopeful idea that maybe you can fix yourself – maybe you can examine and adjust and be creative in the construction of your person too. It’s a powerful habit.”
Of course, that’s not to imply Saunders’ work is one long catalogue of characters occupied solely with the exhibition of empathy. His heroes can be mean too. Often not on purpose – indeed, often accidentally, as in the case of the father in ‘The Semplica-Girl Diaries’, a man who works hard to fulfil his youngest child’s wishes and fill his lawn with a chain of living, third-world migrants strung up by fibre wire inserted through their heads.
“I do have a lot of dread and darkness in me,” the author explains. “When I was younger, I would have a sudden sadness come over me, and a dread of mortality … So I think the [empathy] in the writing makes me like the person who is always sleepy so they drink Coke and jump around the room and keep themselves awake. I think awareness of darkness makes you want to fight it off.
“I think too that it always forces you to take yourself off autopilot. I sometimes go into that mode where I’m like, ‘I’m a great guy, and a good writer, and a good teacher. And now I can just stop worrying about all that.’ But that’s not a good way to be. You always want to be a little worried about it. You never want to just think of yourself as one thing.”
You make a piece of writing and you feel like it’s you, and you feel like it’s everything that you are.
Certainly, Saunders’ fiction itself never seems like one specific thing: like the souls let loose from bodies that narrate Lincoln In The Bardo, his work is always changing, re-establishing itself and always, always rising up.
“I think truth actually is a dynamic system of contradictions,” he says. “So for example if someone asks me something I know about – like say teaching – my system of truth [about teaching] is a bunch of contradictions. They don’t overwhelm each other. They just co-exist … So the truthful way to act morally is to be fully invested in all of those contradictions. But that’s difficult – it takes a real lot of concentration.
“When you’re reading a Chekhov story, for example, there’s all these contradictory notions about human beings in there, sometimes even on the same page. And he just lets them sit there. And you enjoy that. You as a reader go, ‘That’s true, that’s true, that’s true.’ That’s probably the deepest truth you’ll ever know in your life.”
George Saunders is appearing at various events during Sydney Writers’ Festival 2017, including The Singular George Saunders at City Recital Hall on Saturday May 27. Lincoln In The Bardo is published by Bloomsbury, $29.99, out now.
