Unconditional love, something we all yearn for, though not all of us in the end deserve it.

George Saunders' new novel Vigil is about how to account for this at the end of a life.

Saunders, of course, is a titan of contemporary fiction, who has come to function as a kind of public

guru on the craft of writing

and living. And in this latest work, he asks us, what's all this for? The story is a little

like a Christmas carol. There's a kindly woman angel who shows up at the deathbed of a fossil

fuel executive, intent on comforting him while his end

comes, and then whisks him through moments in his past, which makes us, the readers, ask,

how much loving comfort has this guy really earned?

And the way he takes us through that question is quintessential Saunders, inventive, funny, more than a little

weird, while also feeling totally rooted in details of everyday life. This is what I love about

George Saunders writing, this mix of big creative swings alongside an attentive appreciation for the mundane.

That's also how you could describe George Sonders' life. He also worked in oil exploration.

It was one of his first jobs out of college. He was born in Texas and grew up in a suburb of Chicago.

He considered playing with his high school band after graduation, but instead studied mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and worked a series of jobs, including in Indonesian oil fields, before going to Syracuse to get his MFA.

He's 67 now and has taught at Syracuse's prestigious writing program for nearly

three decades. But before that, during early marriage and fatherhood, there were years of working

to earn money at a day job to support his wife and kids. And as we talk about in this episode,

years of not knowing whether his big artistic ambitions would ever get expressed.

To suddenly go, oh, oh, okay, so I understand now why certain people I know are miserable,

are bitter, are drinking. I understand why people go off the rail sometimes because the system doesn't really

give a shit.

...