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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm. I'm Michael Silverblad, and today you're in for part six of our

heartbreaking group of snaggering geniuses. This is George Saunders, who's published two books

of short stories, Civil Warland in Bad

DeKind Stories and a novella is available in paperback from Riverhead. Pastor Alia is his new

book, also a book of short stories from Riverhead. And of the group that we've got here, I would say that

he's the maddest and the wildest and the one who takes the gloves off most. The fiction,

unlike a lot of the books like, well, infinite jest, which clearly are books that have at their

center, someone who went mad at the university. This is a writer who went mad in mining school

in Colorado and then where? Java? A slaughterhouse.

Sumatra.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

And so I wondered what got you started writing stories?

Well, I was from Chicago from the south side, and I don't, I think early exposure to Hemingway and somehow the idea that a writer was

cool, cooler than a lot of other people.

But then being from where I was from, I didn't start till late.

And I don't know what really got me started.

...