cheryl strayed

So I have this wonderful mentor, the writer George Saunders. He’s the author of so many beautiful books. “Lincoln in the Bardo” is his most recent one, “Tenth of December,” “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” “Pastoralia” and several others. He was my professor when I was getting my M.F.A. at Syracuse University. Now it was more than 20 years ago that I met George. And I didn’t really even read his writing before I applied there. What’s interesting about it is so many people were applying there because they wanted to work with George. And I didn’t. I hadn’t read his work. But what happened is he called me up and he accepted me into the program. And we had these long conversations, and I was so struck by how wonderful he was that I went and read his books. And I was like, oh, he is a great writer. I’d love to work with him. So I did that. I accepted. And there was this graduate school picnic — this sort of opening picnic, and I met him and his wife Paula and their two daughters who were really little kids at the time. I have this vivid image of George putting his hand on top of one of their heads. And now they’re in their 20s and all grown up. But I knew that I was meeting somebody who was really, at essence, a really wonderful person. I think he’s an extraordinary — a great, great writer. But he’s an even more extraordinary man. So I was thinking about George in this moment, because he has been such a guiding light to me and to so many. His humor, his compassion, his generosity, and his ability to take the long view, I feel like that is the voice I need to hear right now on the phone. So I’m going to give him a call.

[phone ringing]

george saunders

Hello?

cheryl strayed

George.

george saunders

Cheryl, how you doing?

cheryl strayed

Hi, it’s Cheryl.

george saunders

I know.

cheryl strayed

How are you doing?

george saunders

Good. We’re hanging in here.

cheryl strayed

Oh my gosh. I’m really so excited to get this chance to talk to you in the middle of a pandemic.

george saunders

Yeah. It’s a once in a lifetime.

cheryl strayed

I hope so. How are you? First of all, where are you?

george saunders

I’m in Corralitos, California. So we’re just between Santa Cruz and Watsonville — so kind of up on a hillside. And from the front of our house, you can see Watsonville and some of the ocean.

cheryl strayed

Wow. So you’re looking out over — do you see trees? Do you see houses? What do you see?

george saunders

Well, we’re up in Redwoods, and so we see that. And then if you look far enough out, there’s berry fields. And then beyond that, kind of dimly, there’s the city of Watsonville. So it’s really beautiful. And you’d never know there was a problem.

cheryl strayed

Yeah, isn’t that interesting? That’s fascinating to me.

george saunders

Yeah I was staying off media so much, and then I got back on it. And I just was kind of stunned by the numbers that they’re talking about now. And I just can’t imagine 100,000 people. That’s just literally beyond my capacity to imagine it. And it’s such a weird disconnect to have that in your head and your heart and then look outside and everything looks, from this perspective, normal. It’s really strange.

cheryl strayed

Yeah. There is this sense we’ve been lucky not to be sick, at least yet. But beyond us, there are really painful and hard and difficult things happening to a lot of people around the globe. And that, to me, I have to say, has been terrifying. And it’s been distracting. And I’m curious how you’ve been responding to that emotionally.

george saunders

Well, I think in some ways, I don’t know, it’s always happening. There is always misery. But I also think I’ve noticed about myself that in times like this, my mind wants to have answers for everything. It wants to have a take on things to give myself comfort. I think of it like when you slip on the ice and in the split second before you’re about to hit the ground, that’s really having no take. You’re just out of control and the pavement’s rushing up. So I think sometimes you just go, yeah, we’re in that moment. We can pretend we can stop time and have a take on hitting the pavement or being mindful as we hit the pavement. But in fact, it’s really unknown what’s happening. And I think, especially for writers, us type A people, it’s kind of difficult to be in a state where you just say I really don’t know what’s going on I have no control over it and no say over it and actually, very little influence at this point. That’s a strange set of thoughts for anybody to have. But I think maybe for those of us who interpret for a living, it’s especially both confusing and important, I think, to say, yeah, we don’t know. We have to keep our sensory apparatus as open as we can so we don’t miss any actual data. And to do that in the face of one’s own anxiety is kind of difficult.

cheryl strayed

It is. And as you’re talking, you’re reminding me, you told me about an email you wrote to your graduate students at Syracuse University, and I’m wondering if you could read to me what you wrote to them.

george saunders

Oh. Sure. Sure. No, I’d be happy to. Yeah, it just goes like this. Dear, S.U. writers — jeez, what a hard and depressing and scary time, so much suffering and anxiety everywhere. I saw this bee happily buzzing around a flower yesterday and felt like, “Moron! If you only knew.” But it also occurs to me that this is when the world needs our eyes and ears and minds. This has never happened before here — at least not since 1918. We are, and especially you are, the generation that is going to have to help us make sense of this and recover afterwards. What new forms might you invent to fictionalize an event like this, where all of the drama is happening in private, essentially? Are you keeping records of the emails and texts you’re getting, the thoughts you’re having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living? It’s all important. 50 years from now, people the age you are now won’t believe this ever happened or will do the sort of eye roll we all do when someone tells us about something crazy that happened in 1960. What will convince that future kid is what you are able to write about this. And what you’re able to write about it will depend on how much sharp attention you’re paying now and what records you keep, also, I think with how open you can keep your heart. I’m trying to practice feeling something like, ah, so this is happening now. Or hmm, so this, too, is part of life on Earth — did not know that, universe. Thanks so much, stinker. And then I real quick tried to pretend I didn’t just call the universe a stinker. I did a piece once where I went to live incognito in a homeless camp in Fresno for a week. Very intense, but the best thing I heard in there was from this older guy from Guatemala, who was always saying, “Everything is always keep changing.” Truer words were never spoken. It’s only when we expect solidity, non-change, that we get taken by surprise. And we always expect solidity, no matter how well we know better. Well, this is all sounding a little preachy, and let me confess that I’m not taking my own advice — at all. It’s all happening so fast. Paula has what we are hoping is just a bad cold, and I’m doing a lot of inept caregiving. Our dogs can feel that something weird is going on — no walk? Again? But I guess what I’m trying to say is that the world is like a sleeping tiger, and we tend to live our lives there on its back. We’re much smaller than the tiger, obviously. We’re like Barbies and Kens on the back of a tiger. Now and then, that tiger wakes up, and that is terrifying. Sometimes it wakes up when someone we love dies or someone breaks our heart or there’s a pandemic. But this is far from the first time that tiger has come awake. He she has been doing it since the beginning of time and will never stop doing it. And always, there have been writers to observe it and later make some sort of sense of it — or at least bear witness to it. It’s good for the world for a writer to bear witness, and it’s good for the writer too, especially if she can bear witness with love and humor and, despite it all, some fondness for the world, just as it is manifesting — warts and all. All of this to say, there’s still work to be done, and now more than ever. There is a beautiful story about the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Her husband was shot and her son arrested during the Stalinist purges. One day, she was standing outside the prison with hundreds of other women in similar situations. It’s Russian cold, and they have to go there every day, wait for hours in this big, open yard, then get the answer that today and every day, there will be no news. But every day, they keep coming back. A woman, recognizing her as the famous poet, says, poet, can you write this? And Akhmatova thinks about it for a second and goes, yes. I wish you all the best during this crazy period. Someday soon, things will be back to some sort of normal, and it will be easier to be happy again. I believe this, and I hope it for each one of you. I look forward to seeing you all again and working with you, and even in time, with sufficient PPE, give you a handshake or a hug. Please feel free to email anytime for any reason, George.

cheryl strayed

George, that’s so beautiful. I mean, I know it’s been now a couple decades, really — has it been that long since I was your student?

george saunders

No. Three years. Three years.

cheryl strayed

But I feel like you wrote that to me. And I love this — how do you say her name — Akhmotiv —

george saunders

Akhmatova.

cheryl strayed

Akhmatova. I love how Akhmatova says — or the person standing with her says, poet, can you write this? And she says, I can. And I think, obviously, that is our job as writers, and it’s the job of the artist to write that moment. It has been through all time, and it will be through all time. And I think that that also translates outside of the arts. It translates to, really, every human on the planet who has something to contribute about the story of us. And I think that that’s what’s so powerful about that moment of that understanding that, yes, we can bear witness, as you say. We don’t have to be a novelist. We don’t have to be a poet. We can do that even as a person.

george saunders

Yeah. And also you get the feeling that she — I think you’re actually right. I think she says, I can. I don’t have the text in front of me. But the beauty of that is to say, I hear her saying, I think I can. I think I can try. And that idea that if you’re going to describe a moment like that, you’d really have to sort of keep moving the fences out. That’s a beautiful story, because she includes the woman who’s interrogating her. If she had just stopped at describing the weather in the jail, somehow it’s not the full reality. So I think that, for me, is a beautiful challenge is to keep saying everything that you think or feel or perceive, even if it seems totally trivial, might be part of the larger picture. It might be that in 100 years — or not 100 years, but say when we’re old people, you look back and it might be some totally trivial detail that actually encapsulates the whole thing. But you won’t know until you get there. And to know, you have to record it along the way, I guess.

cheryl strayed

So this idea — one thing I’m struck by that both of us keep sort of circling around and saying, this control. And I think both of us as writers who have invented characters and made them do things, we know that, actually, this idea that we can control really anything is just an absolute illusion. And yet, it’s incredibly hard for us to wrap our minds around, right? How are you absorbing that reality that you don’t know if you’re going to be able to go hang out with your friends in a month. You don’t know if you’re going to be able to do that in six months. We don’t really know when we can all make plans again. So I’m wondering, what sense do you make of that?

george saunders

Well, for me what’s interesting is I was really enjoying canceling things. Even before the pandemic, I was just like, I’m going to say no to everything. And I was getting a little bit ecstatic about that — that I could just be a family person and sit in my room and write. And I’m like, that’s what I really want to do anyway. So in a way, it’s weird, I’m still kind of in the place where, for most things, the canceling of plans doesn’t really make me very anxious. Except the one weird thing is I can’t see my parents or my kids. And that bothers me, because they’re both in different cities — my kids aren’t. So that’s bad. But actually, I think it just caught me at a funny moment where I’m happy to stay home. And then I think for me, the control thing has to do with it’s a personality disorder that I have. I found a way, I think, in my work to use it kind of beneficially. In that little world, you’re absolutely responsible for controlling every line. I think that’s what I’m finding out. I don’t know if that resonates with what happens when you write.

cheryl strayed

Well, and I think too, there is this sense of — I don’t know, there’s something about paying attention too. When you’re writing, you’re so focused. And that has been one of the primary challenges for me is distraction, I find that it’s very hard to focus unless I become absorbed in something. And writing surely does that. But what about other stuff? Are you baking bread and taking up new things? Or are you and Paula just laying low?

george saunders

Well, I mean, Paula has been a little sick. So I’ve been kind of the inept caregiver, as I said in that letter. And that’s been going on about eight or nine days. And so I really was working pretty well. But now I had a story in The New Yorker, so I closed that and did some of the peripheral stuff. But I’ve just been kind of cooking and cleaning in my comical American male way. So the thing I’m starting to notice — just micro notice — is I think I’m a little reliant on that state of concentration that you’re talking about. That when you go into a story, what it feels like to me as I’m just obsessing over the small details of the text. I’m starting to think that that’s some kind of neurological state that’s akin to, but not exactly equal to, meditation. And it really makes me happy in a kind of not euphoric, but it makes me solid. It makes me a little more positive as a person. But having found out the writing in that state of mind increases my happiness, then it’s kind of my responsibility to get into that more — as much as I can.

cheryl strayed

Do you meditate?

george saunders

Yeah. Yeah. And we’re doing some prayers during this. And yeah, so that’s been part of our lives for a long time and a very reliable one. And that’s one of the things about this moment that is interesting is that the anxiety that we’re talking about is basically people saying, I want things to be the way they were. I want to live. I want to not be sick. I want to not have to worry about getting somebody else sick. I want to go to a bar. But really, what occurs to me is, why? What was it that you want to do once you are free again? And for most of us — I think for me, it’s just, I want to assume my old habits. Why? Because they assuage my anxiety, essentially. And so it does present a little bit of a moment to look afresh it what we do with our energy when we’re healthy. And I know this is a trivial example — we live kind of about half an hour out of town. So it’s kind of a big trip to go into the store. But we go just about every day, I would say — just out of habit. Well this last period, we haven’t been in two weeks. And we’re eating better probably, you know? So it does make me think so many of the ways that we live are kind of just lazy and habitual from that small example to the larger things. So I’m trying to be optimistic and think that maybe each of us having a little enforced spring break and if we’re healthy, god willing, it might make us look a little differently at the American life that we all live — the innate laziness and violence of it and the habitual part of it — that most of us just accepted and try to make the best of it. So maybe a little bit of a breather for the world to go, wait a minute. What are we doing? That would be nice. We’ll see.

cheryl strayed

I think you’re really right. I think you might remember that I grew up in rural Minnesota without running water or electricity or indoor plumbing. And my mom was really this incredibly kind of self-sufficient person and my stepfather, incredibly self-sufficient, grew a lot of our food. And she preserved and canned and pickled everything. She baked bread. She knew how to do everything in the domestic realm. And I refused to learn any of that, because I wanted to. Because I didn’t want to be a domestic goddess. I wanted to be a great American writer. And I wanted to sort of mark my space in a place that wasn’t traditionally sort of defined for women. But, boy, have I thought about my mom so much in these last couple of weeks where I am not getting dinner from the grocery store kind of deli counter. And I have these old books of my mom’s — Stocking Up and these kind of food preservation books. And I’m opening them for the first time. And so that’s been kind of interesting. And you’re right, it’s been a little bit of a corrective, because I don’t necessarily want to be somebody who has to spend two hours making dinner every night. But it’s kind of been good for me to have to stretch in that direction.

george saunders

Yeah, that’s a beautiful story. It’s almost like your family kind of enacted the last 80 years of American history in one generation, where at some point, people could do all that stuff. And then I remember as a kid in Chicago, it was so cool to get Jello or to go to Burger King. It just seemed like canning your own food was so last century. But yeah, no, that’s a beautiful — that’s a beautiful idea.

cheryl strayed

It’s true.

george saunders

I don’t know if you’re — are you a Wendell Berry fan?

cheryl strayed

I am, yeah.

george saunders

Well, I just was thinking how prescient he is and he had this idea that, as his one book is titled, “It All Turns On Affection.” And it’s made me think how many hours of our day, of our working lives are spent doing something that we feel connected to, that’s really ours, you know? And I think that his words, Berry’s words, are really speaking to me now and saying, well, maybe this is a moment when we could at least a little bit investigate moving backwards on that arc and taking a little more responsibility for the way we live in the world and also minimizing the small violences that he talks about — the kind of inquisitiveness and the idea that what we’re going to do in this world is exploit whatever’s out there to make it easy on ourselves. But I thought I’d read his poem. He wrote this for his wife, I assume, and it’s called “The Wild Rose.” Sometimes hidden from me in daily custom and in trust so that I live by you unaware, as by the beating of my heart. Suddenly, you flare in my sight — a wild rose looming at the edge of thicket — grace and light where yesterday was only shade. And once again, I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before.

cheryl strayed

Wow. Beautiful.

george saunders

Yeah, just the idea that this — I was out. I took the dogs on a walk. And I mean, it sounds kind of corny, but I was like, oh, trees. They really hit me in a different way than they had before. And when I was a kid, I read “Walden” for the first time on the south side of Chicago and then had this kind of cheesy experience of walking through a forest. But suddenly, the whole landscape was different because Thoreau had written about it. And I think that’s happening a bit now. You’re like, the clouds — the clouds are still there. They still like us.

cheryl strayed

And we can still commune with it. I mean, I think that that’s something really powerful about this experience you’re talking about is that, OK, we have to take a step back from each other, but there are these other things that we can step closer to.

george saunders

Yeah.

cheryl strayed

Maybe it’s the thing we refused to learn in our childhood.

george saunders

Right.

cheryl strayed

Like me learning from my mom how to pickle a cucumber or really those things I wrote so much about in “Wild” — the way that the natural world can feel like our home, that we are not in opposition to it, and that we can — I had a similar experience when I was on a walk the other day. And I was looking at the trees and I thought, they don’t have this virus. They’re impervious to this virus. And I felt some sort of connection, some sort of sense of comfort emanating from just the fact that they were safe from this and that they would stand watch over us as they always have. That there is a way that they do that.

george saunders

This is a funny look at the difference in our minds, because I was going to say you felt resentment. Bastards.

cheryl strayed

Well, no.

george saunders

No, I think that’s exactly right.

cheryl strayed

For the record, George Saunders, you’re the only one calling a bee a moron. I would never do that.

george saunders

Yeah. You have to meet this bee. This particular bee was really bad. No, the other thing that I was struck by too is just that maybe it’s nice to think that this will adjust things in a positive way. But it sure is making clear how ridiculous our economy is and the wealth differential. And you think about people who have to take a week off of work and can’t afford it. And I think it’s underscoring so many pre-existing problems with our country, from the top to the bottom. And it’s stressing every aspect of what we are, and that’s disconcerting.

cheryl strayed

Well, and it’s asking us to also then define who we are. And I think that the opportunity here is to move in the direction of empathy and compassion. And the question is, will we take it? Will those who have privilege and power use it for good or use it for, I hate to cast it in this way, but for evil? And I do think there’s evidence in both directions about the path we’ll take. What do you think is going to happen?

george saunders

I don’t know. For me, what comes to my mind is sort of like, well, in a sense, we’re asking how did we get in this position in the first place? And my fear is that people are going to be so relieved when it’s quote unquote “over,” I’m sure we’ll just jump right back into the same water. So I don’t know. So it could be that maybe something good will happen. And I’m certainly rooting for that. But I don’t know. I don’t know.

cheryl strayed

So, George, I read something on Twitter — you’re not on Twitter, are you?

george saunders

No.

cheryl strayed

Oh my god.

george saunders

Or should I say, no. No. I’m not on any social media.

cheryl strayed

I know. You were for a while, and then you disappeared. And I was glad to hear it wasn’t you unfollowed me because I’m insufferable. It was because you actually —

george saunders

Oh, no, no. I had a little Facebook author page, and even that drove me up the wall. The joke I always make is I trained myself for years to write slowly for a lot of money, so I have no interest in writing quickly for free.

cheryl strayed

Yeah. Well, see, I’m one of those sort of superficial simpletons who I’m on social media. I love social media.

george saunders

Yeah, but again, you do it so authentically that it’s lovely. So I think everybody has to assess their own power.

cheryl strayed

Thank you. But let me tell you — one of the best things, as you probably are aware, there are some really cool things on social media. And one of my favorite things on Twitter is to follow Carl Reiner. He’s absolutely brilliant and sweet and hilarious. He turned 98 just a few days ago. And he —

george saunders

Happy birthday. Mazel tov.

cheryl strayed

Can you believe this? He tweeted this, and it really stopped my heart. This is what he said — for the first time in memory, I see nothing in this world about which I care to joke. And it felt true to me, and it felt so sad to me that this 98-year-old man, this funny man, this comedian was saying I see nothing about which to joke. And I’m wondering what you think of that. Your life is full of so much humor, your work is full of so much humor.

george saunders

I think — when I was doing all the research on Lincoln, I found something interesting. He was majorly depressed. And the only way he could get himself out of it is to just joke — just consciously say I’m going to tell some jokes, and that’s going to make me feel better. So I think we used to think that jokes or humor is a response to being happy. You’re happy so you make a joke. And that’s sometimes true for me. But I’ve also noticed for myself that to allow myself to make a joke in a given situation does something to my disposition. It just lightens it in a certain way or it activates it, I guess I would say. So my hope would be that Carl Reiner, who I adore, was having a bad day. And if you got him into a situation, I’m hoping — I’m hoping and praying that he would still find the joke, because it would be there for him. I think too, part of it is if you think about the way we’re processing this thing, most of us are seeing no direct evidence of it. I saw it. The other day I was driving out of my house, and I saw this beautiful little Rockwellian picture — these two couples were standing across from each other on the road I was driving down, shouting out to each other and laughing and having a conversation — with the road being their social distancing. So most of us aren’t seeing this. It’s just sort of theoretical. We’re seeing it in the media. We’re sympathizing from afar, and so on. And so I think for me, I’m trying to remember that it’s OK to feel whatever you’re feeling. If you find a joke, go ahead. Or if you find yourself forgetting about it for a couple hours and feeling happy, of course. But I hope he feels differently. And if he doesn’t, that’s OK too.

cheryl strayed

I just want to say, George, rest assured — of course, two days later, I went on Twitter, and there was Carl Reiner, and he made me laugh. There was a joke. He made a tweet. He tweeted a joke.

george saunders

So he was being beautifully honest about what he was feeling at that moment. And I love that. That’s fantastic. Yeah. I would argue that even during the worst time, there are pockets of beauty and pockets of pleasure. And it seems to me one thing that is a danger in our time of social media and cable news is that we accept the world’s, meaning the media’s, narrative as all pervasive and correct. And that bee that I talked about, that was a real bee. And he was having a good day. So in a certain way, I think for a writer, the complex chore of imagination is to say the world is not a complete fabric of misery right now. It’s pockets of incredible misery. And so to sort of hold that complexity in the brain is difficult. But I think it’s a form of moral responsibility to say, I don’t have to accept an outside interpretation of what’s a very complex reality, especially if it makes me more anxious and less helpful and depressed. But I think to be mindful of what pleasures there are is a really good way to make sure that when you’re needed, you’ll be ready — something like that maybe.

cheryl strayed

And there’s beauty in every day. We know that for certain, no matter what is happening. And so yeah, I think it is about being able to hold many complex ideas that seem sometimes to contradict themselves in one hand. And probably this moment simply amplifies, again, what was always true. There was always sorrow. There was always violence. There was always death and disease and destruction and loss. And there’s always beauty. And if we choose to be there to see that, we get to be the one to see that.

george saunders

Yeah, we can hold a lot of those ideas at once. I mean, we theoretically can — I can’t, but one could. I think Fitzgerald said something like that — that’s the mark of an intelligent person is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in mind at the same time. So I think that’s another thing that reading and writing helps us train us. It’s like training wheels to almost like a plate-spinner. At the beginning, you can’t even spin one plate. Well, with training, you could do a few. And I think for me, that’s what reading and writing both do.

cheryl strayed

Yeah, I really think that story is an essential part of our ability to survive and thrive. I really do. We use that phrase a lot — books will save us or story will save us or art saves. And it sounds trite or sort of self promotional, especially when we writers are saying, no, stories will save us. But the fact is, it’s true. This is the reason I’m calling you, because, really, when I search my soul and think, how have I reckoned with the things that were most difficult? How have I learned how to be brave and accept and move on and grieve and carry my burdens with maybe a tiny bit more grace? And the answer is, no question, it’s story. And I do think that’s the genuine power.

george saunders

Yeah. We go through this life so fast, and we don’t really have time to learn the lessons. But some of them are enshrined in stories. We had a thing — a couple of weeks ago, my dad and I were e-mailing about this epidemic. And he said that in Chicago in the 1918 epidemic, something like 8,000 people died in that, at that time, smaller city. And he said that in the family lore, there was a story that his grandmother had had a son who died in the epidemic. And sort of his idea was that the body had been left on the street, because things were so crazy. So we started talking about that, and my dad and I and a cousin and my aunt kind of put our heads together and started doing some research. And it turns out, yeah, the kid actually, we always heard he was eight. In fact, he was three. And his name was Leroy Gendrow. And the story was that he suffered. And so the family could hear, and his mother — my father’s grandmother — screamed and wailed at his death. And then because the system was so overwhelmed, they had to wrap this little boy up in a sheet in which he died and take it out to the street. And one of the details we found out was the truck would come by every morning, which gives you some sense of the scale of this thing. And so my dad wrote this beautiful email to me saying that basically, he’d lived with that story all his life — kind of half heard at a family party. And I think it was painful for the family and they suppressed it. And it was during World War I, and so people kind of moved on. But the kid never got a grave. It was a mass burial, you know? And my dad said how moving it was it now that little boy had a name. He had a name — Leroy Gendrow. He had an age. We were able to find out that he was buried at Mount Olivet cemetery on the South Side. So I was thinking about why that additional detail was important. Now, when I was doing the Lincoln book, I read somewhere that the dead actually like to be remembered. They like to be verbally recalled, they like their picture to be up. But even leaving that aside, why was that satisfying to my family to be able to speak this kid’s name aloud? And I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if you have thoughts on that. But it was just, as Carver said, a small good thing to be able to speak that kid’s name, you know?

cheryl strayed

Well, and I think that’s everything about what we’re saying about the power of story. Because, of course, what is a story but that we get to hear one report of a human existence or a human experience? And I was just saying to my kids the other day, some number of people who have died of the COVID-19, I was saying OK, that’s, the equivalent of this entire portion of the city of Portland — that they’re all dead. Because it’s abstract. Even this family story you’d heard, like, oh, my father’s grandmother’s son — who is he to you? He’s nobody. But then he becomes Leroy, and it becomes that family in that apartment and that truck that comes every day and that body on the street. This is how we build empathy and compassion is that we listen really hard to the stories all around us. We see the people around us. So there’s this grand scale experience, but maybe we live it on the human scale, maybe we look again at the people around us with maybe more love.

george saunders

Yeah. It’s funny how the challenge of this moment is similar to the fictional challenge, which is can you extrapolate from someone else’s experience to your own viscerally? And it’s kind of hard. What is that quote about 100,000 deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy. I’m probably getting that wrong. Especially in this way that we’re isolated, now to say, OK, I’m going to actively work on it as part of my ethical spiritual life to try to imagine that not everything is fine everywhere. And it’s the great human struggle, but maybe exaggerated at a moment like this. I don’t know, it’s kind of amazing. It’s just stunning in a way to think about what’s happening, even as we speak.

cheryl strayed

So, George, are you afraid — one of the things that’s come up for me — I’m 51 —

george saunders

You’re a baby.

cheryl strayed

I’m a baby. How old are you?

george saunders

61.

cheryl strayed

61. OK. So we’re not — yeah, we’re just a decade apart here. But my mom died when she was 45. I was 22. And I thought, OK, I’m going to die young. I’m not going to be 45. I’m not going to reach that age without dying. It was kind of like a little superstition that I share with a lot of people who lost parents young. They have that same thing. When they reach the age that their parent died, it’s always a thing, right? It’s a passage. And here I am, I made it to the other side. I’m 51 and here I am. And then this pandemic came along, and one of my thoughts when I am in my kind of scaredest place, which I’ve gone to a few times over this last couple of weeks, is I think, see, I was right. I am going to die young, and my kids are going to be orphans — or at least motherless, like I was. That they’re going to suffer like I’ve suffered. And I have to admit, I don’t think of myself as somebody who’s anxious or much thinking about — I’m not afraid of things very often. And yet suddenly, I felt like I’m afraid I’m going to die of this COVID-19. I’m afraid. Are you afraid?

george saunders

I mean, in my gut, I’m kind of a Pollyanna. And we’re being super careful. We’re basically like Clarks watching the birds as they fly by our house, you know? So in my gut, I don’t think so. But I think this maybe ties in with what we’re saying about stories is you look out at the world and you read these accounts, even though they’re quick and they’re sort of at this moment kind of surface accounts. And you have to start saying it’s possible. It’s possible. So I think that’s part of the responsibility is to be careful, but also go yeah, you can read his accounts of people who, two weeks ago, were high functioning people running around happy and they died. So I think part of it is to try to get that into your body and your mind on a daily basis that it’s temporary.

cheryl strayed

Hmm. I think the thing is that we keep circling around is everything that’s scary about this moment has existed all this time. This whole 51 years I’ve been alive and the whole 61 you’ve been alive, this has always been true.

george saunders

Yeah.

cheryl strayed

Right?

george saunders

Right.

cheryl strayed

I think what’s happening for me and you and everyone right now is it’s amplified, and suddenly it’s on our doorstep. So in some ways, it functions as it’s this real thing that’s happening. It’s also a metaphor — a metaphor, really, for the truth of human existence, which is that we’re mortal, and that we don’t have control, and that we have to simply try our best, keep the faith, and maybe pray to the divinity in each other and honor the divinity that is within each of us.

george saunders

Yeah. I think it does remind me so much of 9/11 and that feeling — I think it’s called sympathetic compassion where you’re not in danger yourself, but you can imagine the fear and danger someone else is in. And that longing to want to do something, or really, in its most profound, you’re longing that that person not suffer, you’re longing that that person be happy. And that’s very profound. And I think if we can cultivate that feeling of wishing the best, that’s such a powerful thing. And I think that’s what we’re here to do all the time. But in these situations, you feel it. We talk about anxiety — the anxiety of the moment — and I’ve been trying to think that some of that is useless. Some of it is just neurosis. But part of the anxiety is kind of like I read somewhere that there’s a meditation you can do where you imagine a person that you love very much drowning just beyond your reach. And that feeling that comes up when you do that is actually compassion. I’m sure another part of that meditation is you imagine somebody who isn’t so close to you drowning out of your reach, and you could actually grow your love in that way, I think. That part of this, I think, is I’m trying to think about the usefulness of that — the fact that you could cultivate a feeling of concern for other people, and that that concern could get larger. So I suppose if you’re looking for something that this moment conveys that isn’t negative, the potential for that might be, as you said, to pray and to try to lure out the better parts of ourselves.

cheryl strayed

Yeah — to rise to that. OK, well, George, you know what? It has been enriching to my soul to hear your voice and to chat with you and to catch up. That’s what I think has been so striking to many of us is, like, how certain it is that we need our friends during this time and that human connection. So thank you. Thank you for talking to me and being here with me today on the phone.

george saunders

It’s been such a pleasure for me. We miss you so much, and can’t wait to sit down in person and get within the six-foot radius and all that.

cheryl strayed

You know, and I’m going to even look out further than that to the day that we can actually give each other a hug.

george saunders

Now, let’s not get crazy. Let’s not get crazy here. No, and give my love to your family. Thank you so much for asking me. I enjoyed every minute. I always come away from conversation with you believing that much more in writing. So thank you for being out there.

cheryl strayed

Oh thank you. Love to your family too, George. Bye bye.

george saunders

All right. Bye bye.

cheryl strayed