George Saunders and the Monster Burger
(we had lunch)
Last week I had lunch with George Saunders, this week you can read all about it.
It’s online now, and in print in FT Weekend tomorrow. But isn’t it nice that you’re here? Inevitably, a hell of a lot of our conversation didn’t fit into the write-up. A tiny tease of beyond:
How long has he been a Buddhist for?
A long time. I should be better than I am at it. Paula went first. . . she went to a Buddhist retreat and just had her mind blown basically. Then I was watching her. She started practicing and suddenly there were just times . . . You know when you’re in a relationship, you’ll have Fight 6A or something. ‘Okay, we’re having this fight’. She just would suddenly skip out of it. We just weren’t doing it. I thought, ‘I want some of that’. So we started. I’m not doing much now. The last couple of years, for some reason I’m just not doing the daily stuff I used to do. I’m not actually sure why.
So he used to meditate a lot?
[Meditating] was the happiest I think I’ve ever been. We were doing three or four hours a night for a while. . .
All kinds of things that I thought were me were revealed to just be habits, especially negative thinking. . . I’d go to a party and instantly be trying to make fun of it. Then during that meditation period I’d be like, that’s just a habit. Could you think positively about it? Yes. Why don’t you do that? So just that release from the habit was really amazing. Some of it came in the writing, too. I think that’s what Lincoln [in the Bardo] came out of. I wouldn’t have thought I could do that and in that meditative period, more things seemed possible and more things seemed habitual. You’re like, I don't have to do that, it’s just what I do. I can choose not to do that.
It was a fun time, and I hope you enjoy the piece.
If you read the interview and still want more George Saunders online content, then read his piece from 2015 in the New Yorker: My Writing Education, a Timeline. It’s a great testimony to what it is to become a writer, what it is that people can do for you: the power of empathy and inspiration. (He describes listening to one of his Syracuse teachers, Doug Unger. “Often, hearing him talk about a story you didn’t like, you start to like it too — you see, as he is seeing, the seed of something good within it.”) It’s funny and nostalgic and sweet.
What else am I doing? Writing; trawling record shops for cheap vinyl; not having time to read; coming to terms with the fact that the nights are drawing in, moving from sun-dresses to stouts; working; not working; going to some gigs; writing; not writing; what else, I don’t know, what the hell are you doing?