This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Forgoso. Welcome to the show.

Today, George Saunders.

Time Magazine has called him the best short story writer in the English language.

He's also the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel, Lincoln and the Bardo, a recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, and a ten-year professor at Syracuse, whose lessons in creative writing

have been collected in books like A Swim in the Pond and the Rain, and his excellent substack Story Club with

George Saunders. He's also been a guest on this program twice before. His latest book,

Vigil, takes place at the bedside of K.J. Boone, an oil company CEO in the twilight hours

of his life, where he's visited by a cast of characters, real and imagined,

including, most notably, Jill D'Al Blaine, who's been sent to usher the oil barren into the afterlife,

as she has for many others. The book's clever construction, essentially a Christmas carol for the

climate age, afford Saunders the room to examine the issues of the day,

the menace of corporate greed,

the toll of capitalism,

the environmental perils of progress,

you know, all the hits.

When Saunders was recently awarded the National Book Foundation's

Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters,

he was introduced in part as, quote, the ultimate teacher of kindness and of craft. This is something to do, I suspect, with a viral convocation speech he gave in 2013 at Syracuse, where he spoke beautifully about airing in the direction of kindness. Quote, clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret, luminous place, he said.

Believe it exists.

Come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

I remember watching that speech as a senior in high school, because, of course, that's how I spent my senior year in high school.

I probably bought a copy of 10th December shortly thereafter, and proceeded to go to college,

...