George Saunders: Angels, Ghosts and the Moral Imagination

What if dying is not an ending, but a moment of radical clarity? In his new novel "Vigil," George Saunders conjures a strange and often comic world of bickering angels visiting a dying, deeply flawed man—debating and waiting to see whether he can face the truth about himself before it’s too late.

In this conversation, Steve Paulson talks with Saunders about the evolution of his ideas about death and the possibility of an afterlife. Dying, he says, may be “the ultimate experience of wonder,” and he believes ghost stories can open powerful imaginative spaces for novelists. Saunders reflects on his own Buddhist practice as he considers these life-and-death questions, and he tells us why he thinks fiction is uniquely suited to grappling with complex moral issues and why Tolstoy and Chekhov are his personal sources of inspiration.

Saunders is the author of such celebrated books as “Tenth of December,” “Pastoralia,” and the Booker Prize-winning “Lincoln in the Bardo.”  His nonfiction book about the great Russian writers is “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.”

This interview was recorded at the Central Library in downtown Madison shortly before Saunders spoke at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

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• To the Best of Our Knowledge — On his short story collection “Tenth of December. 
• To the Best of Our Knowledge: Reflecting on “Lincoln in the Bardo.”
• Substack Story Club with George Saunders

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00:00:00 Introduction and Reading from Vigil

00:07:50 The Plane Crash and Death Obsession

00:15:00 The Writing Process and Wonder

00:24:30 Moral Accountability in Fiction

00:32:20 Chekhov, Succession, and Accuracy

00:40:00 Kindness, Criticism, and Final Thoughts