God forfatter interviewes i talkshow!

 - og værten har læst hans bog!
og forfatteren er MÅSKE FAKTISK værtens yndlingsforfatter!
Og har knust værtens hjerte på hver side!

The Late Show i i aftes!

Romanmodstand og spøgelseslicens

- fra samtale mellem Zadie Smith og George Saunders i det nye nummer af Interview:

"SAUNDERS: From the beginning, I actually had it in mind not to write a novel. I'd kind of gotten past that point where I felt bad for never having written a novel, even to where I felt really good about it, like I was a real purist. And then this material was around and I approached it, but almost warning it, like, "Do not try to bloat up on me because we're not doing that; we're not writing a novel. We're not going to suspend all the usual rules of composition that I have accrued over the years just to get past the 130-page mark."  There were several points where I would kind of turn to the book and say, "Get thee behind me." I don't think real novelists do that. But I make a distinction between prose that's very efficiency-minded (like, the minimum I can get away with), versus loosening the screws and letting the words spill out beautifully and so on. I don't really write beautifully naturally, unlike some people in this conversation. I don't feel like I have the intelligence to really inhabit a consistently high level of prose. I have to really squeeze it to make it into something. It blew my mind, reading Swing Time (Smiths seneste roman LB)  that I could take any sentence in the book, and it was one of the most beautiful sentences written in English, and you grafted all those sentences into this incredible, multi-continent, epic. Such a vast and expansive book. It made me a feel a little bit like when I used to read David [Foster] Wallace. Like, "I can't play that game. I wish I could, but I can't do it."

SMITH: The young people have a phrase for this now, which is "slay in your lane." [both laugh] That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.

SAUNDERS: Yeah, that was the first 40 years of my life. But what was fun for me with this book was to start out with the principle that went, "We're going to fight every day to make this not a novel; make it too short to be a novel." And then with that principle in place, the book sort of starts to say, "Okay, but I really need this. I really need some historical nuggets." And you're like, "All right, but keep it under control." Or the book says, "I really need this sci-fi device of a ghost inhabiting another person." You say okay kind of begrudgingly. So the structure seemed informed by need and efficiency. There's not a lot of whimsicality in the form, not a lot of indulgence allowed. Like when I was younger, I would sometimes go, "Oh, every other section will be narrated by a chair." [Smith laughs] Or, "It will be a double helix shape!" That never really worked. I guess what I'm trying to say is that whatever weirdness was going to be in there, I felt, had to be earned. And it had to be required by the emotional needs of the book.

SMITH: What interests me in it is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half. For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book. Even the concept of talking ghosts is, from an aesthetic point of view, grotesque. It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel. [Saunders laughs] But you seem compelled by that risk in order to get to the other end of the equation.

SAUNDERS: I think it's also a kind of a psychological thing. As a kid, I had a real fascination with perverse, off-color, and kind of risky things, and I also had a very sanctimonious Catholic, purist side. For me, things were either very sullied or very pure, very controlled or very under-controlled. One of the big breakthrough moments was to realize that you aren't going to be able to excise one of those. But you are going to be able to use them against one another or in support of one another—almost like two people on a motorcycle. One tendency has to aid and abet the other, in a certain way. So if I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.

SMITH: There's something very Catholic about that.

SAUNDERS: Right. And in my personal and spiritual life, I reject that. I don't believe in that. I'm always trying to get my mind into a less judgmental place, making less rigid judgments about things like "perverse" versus "pure." But in terms of prose, those sorts of oppositions seem to work. This book scared the shit out of me for many years because it seemed to me not all that open to the perverse or funny or naughty. And I knew if I evoked that stuff too easily or gratuitously, as a way of assuaging my fears of not being edgy or whatever, the writing would fall apart. This book was going to have to have some earnestness in it. "

Om varigheden af skærildsophold for mindreårige afdøde

Fra George Saunders' debutroman Lincoln in the Bardo, der udkom i tirsdags og som jeg lige nu læser på min iPad - to ældre sjæle samtaler i det biddhistiske venteværelse, der titlens Bardo (den talende står under replikken):

  "These young ones are not meant to tarry
roger bevins iii

  Matthisson, Aged Nine Years? Tarried less than 30 minutes. Then dispersed with a small fartlike pop. Dwyer, 6 yrs & 5 mos? Was not in the sick-box upon its arrival. Had apparently vacated in transit. Sullivan, Infant, tarried twelve or thirteen minutes, a crawling squalling ball of frustrated light. Russo, Taken in her Sixth Year, & Light of a Mother's Eye? Tarried a mere four minutes. Looking behind stone after stone. "I am investigating after my schoolbook."
hans vollman

  Poor dear.
the reverende everly thomas

  The Evans twins, Departede This Sorry Vale Together at 15 Years, 8 Months, tarried nine minutes, then left at precisely the same instant (twins to the end). Percival Strout, Aged Seventeen years, tarried forty minutes. Sally Burgess, 12 years & Dear to All, tarried seventeen minutes.
hans vollman

  Belinda French, Baby. Remember her?
roger bevins iii

  The size of a loaf of bread, and just lay there, giving off a dull white light and that high-pitched keening.
the reverend everly thomas

  But in time, she went.
roger bevins iii

  As these young ones should.
the reverend everly thomas

  As most do, quite naturally.
roger bevins iii

  Or else.
the reverend everly thomas

  Imagine our suprise, then, when, passing by an hour or so later, we found the lad still on the roof, looking expectantly about, as if waiting for a carriage to arrive and whisk him away.
han vollman

  And pardon me for saying so - but that wild-onion stench the young exude when tarrying? Was quite thick already.
roger bevins iii

  Something neede to be done.
the reverend everly thomas

At skulle glæde sig i MEGET lang tid

TIL FEBRUAR 2016 (og Præsident H. Clinton we hope)!:

Here’s what we know about George Saunders’s first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.

The title of the novel was revealed earlier this month, in an interview Saunders did with Susan Sarandon. Saunders’s bio revealed that, “His novel Lincoln in the Bardo will be out in 2017.”
A description of the book is now on BookNet Canada and Bloomsbury’s website. These sites indicate that the book will be published on February 14, 2017, in Canada and March 1, 2017, in the U.K. (A source in the U.S. tells me that Random House also has the book slated for Valentine’s Day, though all of these are subject to change.) While Bloomsbury’s website does not contain descriptive copy, Random House describes the book like this:

On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son’s body. Set over the course of that one night and populated by ghosts of the recently passed and the long dead, Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief, the powers of good and evil, a novel - in its form and voice - completely unlike anything you have read before. It is also, in the end, an exploration of the deeper meaning and possibilities of life, written as only George Saunders can: with humor, pathos, and grace.

The book’s tentative Canadian cover: