The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with Lincoln In The Bardo and is an award-winning author of short stories. His new book A Swim In A Pond In The Rain explains how short stories work with the aid of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dorian Lynskey is a fan. George Saunders talks to Dorian about his “shovel in the fictive graveyard”, being a working class writer in a middle class world, the value of “looming catastrophe” in life and art… and why reading fiction is the best training for spotting lies in loved ones, colleagues and politicians.
“I had the idea that literature was a beautiful gilded mansion and I had to leave all my real shit at the door. And it’s not true.”
“Our basic storytelling gland has to do with curiosity”
“My job as a writer is to get to a place where the world doesn’t surprise me.”
“A story isn’t a monolithic whole that comes from the writer’s moral qualities. It’s a magic trick made out of fragments of language.”
“When you’ve got an administration that rejects enlightenment values they’re not susceptible to satire. And I found that with Trump.”
Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production
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