Author talks accolades, expectations and kindness

Three days into 2013, the New York Times proclaimed: “George Saunders has written the best book you’ll read this year.” It was the opening bell for what proved to be a festival of fanfare for “Tenth of December,” a funny, often jaw-dropping collection of short stories from the “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” author. The love fest intensified with countless starred reviews, a convocation speech that went viral and a National Book Award nomination. Time magazine included the author on its 2013 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

For Saunders, who comes to Atlanta next week to promote the book’s softcover release, the accolades haven’t exactly fueled an ego trip, but they did cause serious reflection — with a dash of self-effacing wit.

“I will say, it’s been a little confidence enhancing, as in, maybe the new things I tried in this book, maybe I should try more of that,” says the 55-year-old Texas native who teaches at Syracuse University. Then again, he adds, the ballyhoo can go the other way.

“When I come to an event and there are more people than ever before, I sometimes think, ‘I’ve got to remember not to [mess] this up.’ But that’s just anti-artistic. You can’t function out of fear.”

AJC: How did you respond to the praise from The New York Times?

George Saunders: It was sort of like, gosh, this is going to be an interesting year — because that's such a throwdown. But I thought, since they said it, I'm going to enjoy it. My standard joke at the time was: Let's all try not to embarrass the Times. Just don't read anything else this year. Next year, you can start reading again.

You previously worked as a geophysical engineer. How has that background served your writing?

Science teaches you about merciless rigor. I went to engineering school at the Colorado School of Mines, a famously difficult place. They don’t care how hard you tried, how late you stayed up. If the answer’s wrong, you get a zero. That was terrible for me as an engineer. I wasn’t a great technical person. But when I started writing, this idea that after 15 drafts, it still might not be good — I get that. I never had any sense of entitlement about the work required.

Some have called 2013 “The Year of the Short Story.” Do you agree it was a watershed year for short fiction?

I don’t really think so. I think if you took any year and picked out the top five collections, you’d go, “Holy [cow], what a great year for the story!” Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize, but she’d been writing short stories for 40 years, with each collection as good as the next. Way back when I first started writing in the ’80s, there was a [Raymond] Carver-inspired motif, “The story is back!” I’ve noticed with some amusement over the years, it’s sort of like the Cosmo [magazine] thing, like, “Red! We’re wearing red again!” I don’t take it too seriously. I’m happy for it if the short story gets some cred.

In her Nobel interview, Munro was asked, “What is important to you when you tell a story?” How would you respond?

The honest answer: I’m really just trying to get some life in it. When I hit a certain sentence, it’s somehow communicating with me so vividly, that I’m there, I want to go on to the next thing. There’s that sense of constant life. Of course, what that really means is language, the magical combination of image and language and humor and all that. There must be the sense of the story responding to itself.

Your stories have been called “dark morality tales.” Do you agree?

No. Part of my process is not to think that way at all. You tend to manufacture some answers about your stories after they’re published. While you’re doing them, it’s almost like somebody planted some seeds and you’re just watching them to see what comes up. You’re not saying, “These better be roses.”

The convocation speech you gave at Syracuse University is being published in book form this spring. It hinges on an idea that I don’t often see expressed: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”

I was just saying what I feel. I wasn’t planning on it going viral. I’d done a version of that speech for my daughter’s middle school graduation. At that time, I thought, Here’s a bunch of kids who know me, and I know them, and I care about them, let’s not [fool ourselves]. None of this ‘to-thine-own-self-be-true’ [stuff]. I’m not smarter than them, so what do I have? I’ve got these 40 years of difference. All [bull] aside, what is it you wish you wouldn’t have done? And all the mistakes I’ve made, I didn’t really regret — really embarrassing mistakes, five-year blunders. The ones that still had some sting were the ones in which through my own anxiety or fear or inattention I’d been hurtful to somebody. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was true.