SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Author George Saunders thinks a lot about death and the afterlife. It was the focus of his 2017 novel "Lincoln In The Bardo." He vividly remembers the first time the topic entered his mind. He was about 7 years old visiting his grandparents in Amarillo, Texas.
GEORGE SAUNDERS: But I just was awake, and I could hear them breathing. And it just struck me that, you know, they seemed, to me, quite old, and I knew old people died and that when that breath stopped, then I would lose them, you know? And I had nobody to ask about that, and I just lay there thinking about it.
DETROW: As a kid, he says he developed a love-hate relationship with how finite life is, and he has continued to explore the world of ghosts and death in his new book, "Vigil," which takes place in the final hours of K.J. Boone's life. He's an oil tycoon who undercut the science of climate change. As Boone dies, he is visited by a series of ghosts, everyone from the French inventor of the internal combustion engine, who has arrived at Boone's deathbed seeking justice, to an earnest woman named Jill with one primary task.
SAUNDERS: Her self-appointed mission is to go around comforting all these different people who are at death's door. She feels like she's supposed to come into these rooms and somehow help these people with the transition.
DETROW: This is our first time talking, but it feels very natural for me to talk to you about your stories because I'm one of the many people who reads your "Story Club" Substack, where you break down short stories and talk about the writing process. And as I read this book, I kept thinking of the fact that about a year ago, "A Christmas Carol" is one of the stories that you were focusing on there, and there are a lot of similarities to me. And I'm wondering how top of mind "A Christmas Carol" was for you as you wrote "Vigil."
SAUNDERS: Yeah, that story is in my mind probably with everything I've ever written. But also, I had in mind another one we did a "Story Club" called "The Death of Ivan Ilyich."
DETROW: Yeah.
SAUNDERS: You know, these stories where a character basically is confronted with this question of, like, how did you do? And it kind of interests me because, in a sense, you know, we should be asking that all the time. But in that last instant, I'm sure the question looms even larger.
DETROW: So all of this story takes place in the final hours of life of K.J. Boone, who's this guy who rose from modest means to make a fortune in oil and gas and really establishes himself. You frame it as he's one of the foremost climate deniers in the world. He's given a series of speeches over the years that seem to move public opinion on injecting some skepticism into whether or not climate change was happening. Why to you was climate change the big sin of the book? Why the focus there?
SAUNDERS: It seems to me that that's something that if you put it on the table, it's going to give the book a certain clothesline to hang all the fun on. So that was really my thought, is that that's an existential crisis. It's also - in his case, it's a sin that he could commit that sin while appearing fairly normal, you know, fairly benevolent to the outside world, very successful, very rich. And I'd been in the oil business myself, so I thought that might be a nice way in to sort of write about something that I had some familiarity with and even some affection for 'cause I was in the oil fields in Asia back in my 20s, and it was a wild adventure and this feeling of being part of a - kind of a special tribe and so on.
DETROW: You talk a lot about how the writing changes the story and how you'll surprise yourself as you write. And I will say, you make a pretty compelling case for the fossil fuel industry in the pages of this book, as he argues, you know, modern convenience, medicine, food supply, standard of living. Did you convince yourself at all as you wrote that?
SAUNDERS: Well, I mean, in a sense, you know, a book like this, I think is - it's kind of an orchestrated argument. So we have his point of view, which certainly has some validity. I mean, you know, when we go to protest, we usually drive there. But also, this woman, Jill, has a very big-hearted, almost unrealistically compassionate view of the world. So she's allowed a place at the table. So, to me, it's not so much about what I feel but about giving the characters a chance to have kind of a good argument. And ideally, at the end of it, the reader comes out with kind of a - you know, maybe even a little bit of benevolent confusion. Like, wait a minute. In that moment, the argument can kind of come up a notch from the way we would normally have it.
DETROW: I wanted to talk through some of the big themes that come out of this book that the characters wrestle with, that the plot wrestles with. One of them is this idea of inevitability. There's a lot of back and forth about this idea of - are our actions clear choices or are we sum of our background and experience? And curious what your starting point was thinking about that idea and how it shifted over the course of the writing and thinking.
SAUNDERS: Right. So for me, the starting point was an idea I had since I was a little kid. And it happened when I was in maybe first or second grade, and we were just starting to read. And I just happened to be a good reader. And a friend of mine just was not as good a reader. He was really struggling. And I just looked over at the end of that school day, and he was at his desk almost in tears, you know, with this thing. And even then I thought, oh, that's so weird. I didn't in the womb, you know, check off a box saying, make me a good reader. So I thought that - then and I think now that to some extent, this whole adventure in living we have could be softened and improved if we realize that a lot of things are predetermined. Even our ability to alter ourselves is somehow baked in. Then, on the other hand, you can't live that way. We have to take responsibility for our actions, even if they can sometimes feel somewhat predetermined.
DETROW: 'Cause you have a lot of other ghosts floating through, telling Jill that she's basically giving him a free pass for every individual choice he's made in his life.
SAUNDERS: Right. And I think they're right, as well. It's sort of like - philosophically, it's the absolute versus the relative. So, in an absolute sense, I think Jill - she's right. And if we all were a little more like Jill, there'd be less blame and less victory dancing. But on the other hand, given what K.J. Boone has done and given even Jill's stated intention to comfort him - she doesn't do it very well, actually. She just keeps telling him, you're fine, you're fine, you did nothing wrong. Meanwhile, the Frenchman says he did, in fact, do something wrong, and as readers, we agree with him. But for his part, the Frenchman, I think, comes in a little too hot. So when I was finished with it, I thought, the book is kind of a contemplation about, how do we actually help somebody? How do we actually - if we see somebody who's done wrong, is it even possible to convert them?
DETROW: You know, I've been wondering, reading this book, thinking about this interview, given how much you write and think and talk about stories and storytelling, and given how it is just a very dark and bleak period for a lot of people in the country right now, like, what you think the value of fiction can be in moments like this.
SAUNDERS: Yeah, I mean, I know - sometimes, you know, as a fiction writer, you have the feeling you're kind of painting the baseboards as the ceiling crashes in. But what I think is that on a very fundamental level, stories put us in a more solid relation to truth. So I think one of the crises we're in right now is that we're getting so many lies (ph) from on high that ask us to deny the evidence of our senses. So in that situation, to keep coming back and getting in relation to the truth is actually a pretty positive form of alertness and resistance. You know, it's kind of like if you were at a restaurant and a waiter brought in three turds on a tray, well, what's basic sanity in that moment? It's to say, hold on a minute, this is not right. I know what truth is, and you're lying to me. So I think fiction, for me, is just sort of a - maybe a training wheels way of every day putting yourself in relation to truth and allowing your mind to say, does this strike me as truthful? In a time of crisis, it's a relatively small thing to do. But I think, like prayer or, like, being in connection with somebody you love, to return to a sort of basic sanity is almost, like, the foundational thing of living well in the world.
DETROW: That is George Saunders, author of the new book "Vigil." Thank you so much for talking to us.
SAUNDERS: Thank you so much, Scott. I really enjoyed it.
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