George Saunders stopped by the Late Show to discuss his latest novel, Vigil, with Stephen Colbert.
Saunders’ novel, published Tuesday by Random House, follows Jill “Doll” Blaine, a dead young woman who is sent from the afterlife to guide the hateful oil baron K.J. Boone through his death. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times.”
Colbert noted that Saunders has won the Booker Prize and a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation. “Right now, I’m about to bestow on you the highest prize any book could possibly get, because I’m excited to announce that Vigil will be the Late Show book club’s February pick.…It comes with a mug, which I don’t think the Booker Prize comes with.”
He then asked Saunders if he meant to write about ghosts and the afterlife again, after his similarly themed 2017 novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, or “do you start writing and a ghost just wafts into the room?”
“It’s more like that,” Saunders said. “I think the writer is basically like a roller-coaster designer. In the beginning, I don’t think you should know what you’re trying to do, but you’re trying to thrill the reader, somehow or another. I think you love Flannery O’Connor.…She said, ‘A writer can choose what he writes, but he can’t choose what he makes live.’ You might have the idea, I’m this kind of writer, but if you do it and it’s boring, you’re not that kind of writer.”
He continued, “If you think you’re going to be a string-quartet writer like Shostakovich, and you write one and everyone falls asleep, that’s not it. But if you start playing a polka and they dance, then you’re good. So for me, if I have a realistic story with a couple having a serious discussion about their marriage…I can’t do that. But if I let her dead mom drift in, and also the dead mom doesn’t like the husband, then I’m in heaven.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
