Author George Saunders discusses writing process, themes in new book ‘Vigil’ at Chicago Humanities Festival Author George Saunders discusses new book ‘Vigil’ in Chicago
Booker Prize-winning author George Saunders discussed his latest novel “Vigil” with moderator and journalist Peter Sagal before a sold-out audience Monday for the Chicago Humanities Festival at the Francis W. Parker School.
After a brief introduction by Chicago Humanities Festival Co-Creative Director Michael Green, Saunders and Sagal took to the stage.
The author and professor of English at Syracuse University grew up in Oak Forest, Illinois. While he wasn’t much of a reader throughout his childhood, Saunders said his father influenced his outlook as a creative.
Saunders’ visit marked his first return to Chicago in several years. Despite the time he’s spent away from the city, Saunders said growing up in the South Side has had an enduring impact on his storytelling.
“Anything that happened to him (my father) — even if it was weird or dark or strange — he had a way of infusing it with the telling (of the story),” Saunders said. “So I watched that, and it seemed very powerful because he never came home and said, ‘I’m so depressed or so discouraged.’ We always had a way of making even the darkness of (the story) celebratory.”
Saunders’ latest book hit shelves Jan. 27, almost a decade after his experimental novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” won the 2017 Booker Prize. “Vigil” is Saunders’ fourteenth book and follows Jill Blaine, who exists between the living and the dead. She is tasked with guiding the dying over the threshold into death.
When assigned to comfort the once powerful oil tycoon K.J. Boone, Jill finds her job unexpectedly thwarted by the stubbornness — and complexities — of her charge. Saunders reflected on the initial stages of his drafting process, saying that the book underwent many iterations.
“If you’re going through something and making choices, that’s really the only way you can get yourself into the manuscript,” Saunders said. “Craft is just setting yourself up so as to make the maximum number of choices.”
He said the key to finishing a draft is to first eliminate the pressure to write by making definitive decisions about the story. This step involves having a clear idea of the story’s strengths and weaknesses, he added.
“Get familiar with the idea that, yes, your opinions are so much finer than you think, and by constantly going, ‘Do I like this? Do I like this?’ you can get in touch with a very beautifully opinionated part of yourself,” Saunders said. “For me, that kind of bliss of it is to go, ‘If I look at this long enough, I’m going to find out that I have very, very strong opinions that are so infused with me-ness that (when) I work on it, the book will have my stamp on it.’”
“Vigil” became a serious endeavor when he was satisfied with the “voice” of the story, Saunders said.
The author added that the novel’s basic idea was that “(a) stinker dies.” Once he was able to envision his characters’ voices, he said he was interested in writing from the point of view of a villain. The novel’s pivotal character, Boone, fulfilled that, he said.
“I never have any allegiance (to a story) until somebody starts talking in a voice that I can replicate — that seems full,” Saunders said.
In a similar process to writing “Lincoln in the Bardo,” Saunders said he started with research. In addition to reading books about the oil industry, he also built his narrative on personal experiences.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines, Saunders said he worked in the oil business overseas in Indonesia. This allowed him to imagine how someone like Boone could rise up the ranks of his company.
Saunders also talked about the motif of ghosts across his work. During a period in his career when he was fixated on imitating Ernest Hemingway’s writing style, Saunders said the idea of engaging with ghosts in his stories allowed him to pursue his own narrative style more freely. He added that Chicago, in particular, is “full of ghosts,” which inspired him to write from a more “temporal dimension.”
Sagal then asked Saunders about the book’s political themes. Given its central character is an oil tycoon, “Vigil” interrogates the environmental impacts of climate change and global warming.
However, Saunders said he was more intent on letting the story tell itself, rather than be constrained to a single message. Saunders said he wants to connect with his audience through shared understanding.
“What people want in fiction or art is genuine connection,” Saunders said. “What we have at a local level is we know truth and we can recognize it … Human connection is actually the gold standard for everything.”
The two speakers rounded out the night taking questions from the audience, followed by a book signing.
Among those in attendance were James Beard-award winning pastry chef Gale Gand and her husband Jimmy Seidita, a retired professor. Since her daughter was a fan of the author and owned several of his books, Gand said she was excited to see Saunders in person.
Seidita, who read several of Saunders’ books himself, said he enjoyed getting to know more about the author.
“All of his (Saunders’) books are special to me,” Seidita said. “(His stories) are quite remarkable, and they’re different from everybody else’s stories. It makes you want to hear what else he has to say.”
Seidita added that “Lincoln in the Bardo” was a “life-changing book” and that, despite living outside the city, Saunders is someone he and his family “would always travel to see.”
Like Seidita, Liz Logan (Medill ’08) had also been a longtime fan of Saunders. Logan said she was excited to see the author make his way back to Chicago.
“I was asking him at the book signing about this short story called ‘The Semplica-Girl Diaries,’ which appeared in The New Yorker,” Logan said. “It’s so wacky — like his work is just so bonkers, and you’re like, ‘how did he come up with this stuff?’ I love that story.”
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