The Collegian
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Q and A with: George Saunders

George Saunders was born in Amarillo, Texas, in 1958 and was raised in Chicago. He originally thought he would join a rock band after high school, but two teachers influenced him to attend college. He graduated from Colorado School of Mines, a mineral engineering college, with a degree in Geophysical Engineering in 1981. He worked his first job in Sumatra, Indonesia as a field geophysicist and began writing stories during this time. He returned to the United States after two years, and held various jobs in Los Angeles, including slaughterhouse laborer, roofer, convenience store clerk and bar-band guitarist. He moved back to Texas, and was soon accepted into Syracuse University's Creative Writing Program. He met his wife, Paula, at Syracuse. Three weeks after he met her, he proposed, and they married in May 1987. In 1997, he accepted a teaching position in the Syracuse University creative writing program. He has been teaching there ever since, along with writing several works, including "The Braindead Megaphone," "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," "In Persuasion Nation," and "The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip."

Q: How did you get involved in writing?

A: In high school I had an English teacher and she was so hot and adorable and I just wanted to impress her. She showed this slideshow of famous American writers, and she was kind of in love with every one of them and I just kind of loved that. That was the first time I thought I just want to be in her slide show.

Q: How did you get involved in teaching?

A: My first book came out in 1996 and one of my teachers at Syracuse, Tobias Wolff, called and asked me [to teach]. They had a one-year opening and he asked me if I wanted to try it.

Q: What would you consider common themes in your books?

A: I guess I write a lot about the way that capitalism crushes grace. There is a great quote by a philosopher named Terry Eagleton. He said, 'Capitalism plunders the sensuality of the body.' We have this system and once you get into it you see that it does not necessarily have your spiritual development in mind. I think that's one thing that really interests me.

Q: Why do you write about these things?

A: It's personal. We got to a point in our family where we had two daughters and we had them very quickly, and my wife and I got stuck in debt. I just kind of saw that it [the corporate system] would be happy to crush me. The system will roll over you if you don't watch yourself. I worked this engineering job for about 10 years that was very degrading.

Q: What is your favorite story that you've written, and why?

A: Most people like the story "Sea Oak" and I had a catastrophically good time writing it. You're always hoping the next one will be your favorite and that you'll be transcendent. They're all kind of fun, but they are also kind of flawed. It's funny to read these things publicly eight years later, and you'll wonder, "Why did that guy do that? I wonder why he didn't go some other direction."

Q: You've had a variety of professions in your life. If you could be one other job to have for a day what would it be and why?

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A: I'd like to be a lead guitar player in REM. REM would be fun.

Contact staff writer Marina Askari at marina.askari@richmond.edu

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