The essence of human nature, is it good or evil? Can people's actions and emotions expressed in an instant reflect their own hearts? These are eternal topics surrounding human nature. One of the functions of the novel is to provide the reader with a delicate observation of human nature, either clear, or vague, or changeable, or fixed. The American writer George Sanders is undoubtedly the kind that tries to provide readers with a clear observation of human nature.
In different environments, people can not avoid making unavoidable moves, these actions are sometimes inadvertent, sometimes they are decisions made after hesitation, these small actions may bring unavoidable harm to others. George Sanders' novel places the characters in such an environment and observes human nature. His work not only writes about the motives of good and evil, but also criticizes the indifferent corporate system and working environment in the United States in a metaphorical way, suggesting to the reader that the environment that guides human nature exists.
For his short story brevity and condensation, Sanders won the National Book Award, and in 2017, he won the Booker Literary Prize for his novel "Lincoln in the Bardo". His observations and descriptions of human nature will provide us with a guide to good and evil, allowing us to understand the moments of hesitation and the final choices we make.
Although George Sanders's collection of short stories is highly fanciful, the activities of the characters allow the reader to be directly connected to the current situation of life, and the story told in the novel is obviously not in the future of the writer's framework, but in the present. The description of the dilemma seems to make people dream back to the human society of the last century or even earlier, and Sanders seems to imply to the reader in this way that the primitive troubles of human nature and the mechanism of good and evil will not change.
This article is from B04-B05 of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly's January 7, 2022 feature "Investigation of Good and Evil: George Sanders".
"Theme" B01丨 Investigation of Good and Evil: George Sanders
"Theme" B02-03丨Jorge Sanders The working mechanism of good and evil
Theme B04-05 | George Saunders Interview "Now or Never"
"Social Science" B06-07 丨 "Ants in the Elephant Herd": The "Untouchable" in Indian Society
"Vision" B08 丨Zhu Tianxin and the cat
Written | Beijing News reporter Gong Zhaohua
George Sanders
George Sanders lives in a small town in California called Corral lithos. His home was on a hillside, and then in the woods not far from the hillside, Sanders set up a shed where he wrote novels. Looking out from the window of the shed, you can see some redwood trees, and in the distance is the sea. The environment was very pleasant for Sanders, who, in his own words, "had no reason not to write beautifully."
01
The American Tradition of Reading and Writing
Beijing News: In the years when you won the Booker Prize, there was some literary controversy in Europe, and they believed that American writers should not be allowed to win this award. Do you have anything to say about the cold eyes of American writers at the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature? In your opinion, why are they so resistant to American literature? (I regret that writers such as Derry Rowe, Pynchon, McCarthy and others have not been involved in this award.)
George Sanders: I think the most important job for an artist is to maintain a habit that allows you to think about the world in a more creative way, and obviously, logical thinking about how to win an award doesn't do any good about that. I can only say a little bit about how I really feel, when you get an award, it feels really good, and when you don't get any awards – that's fine too.
Beijing News: What traditions of American literature do you think you have inherited?
Sanders: I feel from the Hemingway and Carver traditions that writing should be understated and concise and effective, yet from Nathaniel West and Donald Baselm, I feel that writing can be over-embellished and playful. I've been trying to resolve the contradiction between the two.
Sanders: I come from a working-class family and study engineering rather than literature. So when I read from one writer to another, there are a lot of stumbling blocks in between. If I read a writer I like in between, I try to figure out what books he's read – so this thread of reading recommendations is entirely constructed by myself.
Beijing News: When you were young, you used to like Ayn Rand's novels, but then it seems to fade. Why?
Sanders: Basically, when I actually stepped into the real world, I saw that Ayn Rand's idea of how the world works was wrong. In my opinion, it lacks a generous heart. I was reading Ayn Rand's novels and was captivated by his vision and sense of superiority—"I'm an Objectivist, and I'm always right!" "But then I started traveling and saw more and more difficulties, and it was then that I realized that a world in which wealth equates with virtue is not just oversimplified, but that it can be cruel.
Beijing News: It's interesting to note that you like Russian novelists, but compared to their preference for long works, your works tend to be short and fragmented.
Sanders: When I first started reading, I really liked the Russian short stories —Chekhov, Babel, Gogol, and so on. They were more attractive to me than the tomes—I didn't start reading the long works until later.
02
Challenging writing
Beijing News: When writing, do you have any literary rules that you must break?
Sanders: I'm more inclined to say that literature itself doesn't have any "rules." But there are rules of literature that we should respect, or should keep in mind, and these are the "laws of physics" that apply to that art form. For example, so I would say, "Be specific" is good advice, and "specific" tends to attract readers. And then there's the "try to upgrade" – but these are really just observations of how people read. If the emotional power of a story needs to be achieved in a different way, then doing it this way is a good trick, like Waiting for Godot — it's in line with our expectations of escalation (by constantly denying it). The effect of its upgrade is so powerful that it is even thought that the promised event will never happen.
Another common saying is that if you're going to break a rule, it has to be when you're already very familiar with it. This is another way of saying it. We must be responsible for the attention that the reader spends on us while reading. If you want to write very difficult, very complex prose, you can, and literature allows you to do so—but you shouldn't be surprised to learn that readers are struggling to read.
Beijing News: After reading "Lincoln in the Bardo", I am curious about how long you have been preparing. How many books have you consulted?
SANDERS: I conceived it for about twenty years, and if I wrote it, I should have written it for four years. Over the course of twenty years, I've read hundreds of books about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, and when I finished writing it, I think I had a good, amateur-historian-level understanding of Lincoln and his world. Now, a few years later... I've forgotten a lot.
George Sanders original book cover
Beijing News: From knowing this story in the basement of Washington, D.C., to writing it formally, there was a full 20-year interval. Can you tell us exactly what you're afraid of?
Sanders: Before that, I (as an "old writer" who had published a lot of things and was also highly qualified) already had a fixed reputation, such as a writer who was good at writing short stories, which was funny, short, offensive, and sometimes appeared in his works with futuristic science fiction themes. So I'm worried about messing things up. That said, I couldn't think of a way to complete a story that told the true part of Lincoln's life without destroying my previous writing style or jeopardizing my reputation.
But then, I got older. I perceive three things:
1. Either now or never.
2. I've been married, I've had children, and I've lost people – I've had enough to write this story, as long as I have the courage to try.
3. I don't want someone to put an epitaph like this on me in the future – "He's too afraid to try something he's eager to try." ”
03
Self-renewal of fictional characters
Beijing News: There are more than a hundred characters in this novel, of which there are about a dozen main characters. I wonder if this is a particularly laborious task in the writing process – you need to give them the right scene, the timing, the right personality and atmosphere, and remember their respective characteristics.
SANDERS: Yeah, well, that's all true. But I found it interesting and (relatively) easy. I just try, at least once a week, to read the book from scratch and then... Use my intuition to make the next thing happen. I tried to put myself in the mindset of reading for the first time. I want to keep the characters engaged and alive. I also had to keep in mind the structure of the cemetery – which ghosts were in what position, at what time, and so on. But really – the process is mostly a pleasure, and every day I can feel the world being shown to me more.
Beijing News: In addition to the Lincoln father and son, which character in the book you yourself are more interested in, can you say?
Sanders: I like Elson Farweer – he used to be a slave, and at the moment of his death, he was filled with anger and brought it into the afterlife. The way he spoke was funny, and it occurred to me that his voice would be perfectly interpreted by Keegan Michael-Key in an audiobook.
Born unfortunate, can only bear the tragic fate without complaint. If I could recognize this, what a temptation life would be. However, it should be, but it is not. I always rejoice in the harshness of responsibility, never extinguishing any chance of self-glory, such as stealing wisdom from books (the fragments of the broken shorts and humble movement notes that I have long immersed in Mr. East's abandonment), and I have to explore the best corners of my soul, such as: clean sheets; gentle movements (like dances); shining knives and forks held high when laughing and talking.
—Elson Faweer (Lincoln in the Bardo)
Beijing News: Why did you choose such a religious concept as "bardo", after all, in Western culture, the concepts of "hell" and "purgatory" are already very rich, and when did you come into contact with the concept of "bardo"?
SANDERS: Well, my understanding of purgatory (from my years in the Catholic Church) is that once you're there, you'll be there almost always (i.e., until Jesus returns). You don't have a surrogate. You have sinned and there is nothing you can do about it. So, it's very static. However, in the bardo (at least in my imagination) there are still possibilities of enlightenment, liberation, and change. In any case, I am really creating an afterlife in which one soul is likely (and still possible) to be improved and developed. And, in fiction, variability is important.
Beijing News: Have you gained any new understanding of Buddhism in the past two years?
SANDERS: It's just that I have to work harder.
Beijing News: Next, I would like to talk about the personality of the characters in your novel. I read your Article in The Guardian, "What Writers Really Do When They Write," which has a BOB example. So, are you gradually fleshing out the characters in the process of revision every time and making them show a more well-intentioned side?
When I wrote, "Bob is a jerk," and then, feeling that this might be a bit lacking in concreteness, I modified it to "Bob yelled impatiently at the barista," and then asked myself, seeking a more specific reason, why would Bob do this? Then went on to revise to, "Bob yelled impatiently at the young barista, who reminded him of his dead wife," and then paused and added, "He misses her terribly, especially now, at Christmas," and I did it because I wanted it to be less lame.
But it's more compassionate. Bob has gone from being a "pure jerk" to "a sad widower, so grief-stricken that he behaves rudely to a young man who, normally, would be nice to him". Bob changed.
—George Sanders, "What Writers Really Do When They Write"
SANDERS: No, it's not. I guess I'm trying to make the prose interesting and vivid, which in turn gives the impression that I like the character. I focus on him or her by making sentences about him or her more specific. So, in this model, caring for people equals attention, and increasing attention makes sentences more thorough and honest, right?
But, as mentioned above, the process is actually quite spontaneous and intuitive, and involves multiple modifications and updates – just gradually making it better (hopefully, anyway). But I've found that as prose becomes "better," it can feel more intimate; that is, more curious and focused on the human heart, and ultimately more benevolent.
Beijing News: If so, how different will the initial version of the story be and the final revision, and can you give an example of a specific work?
SANDERS: Very different. My story, The Diary of a Seprika Girl, took eighteen years to complete. Every draft changes a little (sometimes a lot) – new events and so on. For me, that's the whole game: rewriting so that deeper parts of yourself appear on the page, you set aside your original ideas about the story, succumb to what the story wants to do... If I could, it would be more exploratory than propagandistic, or so it goes.
Beijing News: In your novel, dialogue is a very important point to understand the heart of the character and promote the image of the character, however, there is a big difference between the daily dialogue and the dialogue of the characters in the novel, and for many novel writers, the dialogue is the most difficult part to deal with. I wonder how you handle this? How can you make a character's dialogue poetic?
Sanders: I try to think that dialogue is no different from other texts in its ambitions — I hope it forces the reader through it, to be interesting, to be vibrant, and so on. But I do like the idea of dialogue as a poem – we can feel the rhythm in it, and maybe the changing dramatic tension, and so on. It looked good, it surprised us with its sound and direction, and so on.
04
Futurism, reality, and others
Beijing News: When I first read works such as "Paradise Theme Park" and "The Diary of a Semprika Girl", I felt that I had entered a vague scene, and then in the process of reading, I gradually clarified the living environment and special settings you set. I want to confirm that why this particular environmental pattern is not written out from the beginning (like Vonnegut) is because of the fear that once explained, the exploratory nature of reading will be limited?
SANDERS: My feeling is that a person in that world has learned about the environment and taken it for granted — just as we do in our world. Therefore, he felt that there was no need to comment or explain. For example, if someone were reading a novel set in today's world, one character said, "I'll call Bill on my phone, a small handheld communication device that can take pictures!" "Well—that's not right; it's unnatural. So, I believe that readers who see the world through characters can understand complex realities – that's part of the fun.
Beijing News: What kind of problems do you think it will be to become a "futurist"?
Sanders: I don't really consider myself a futurist, I understand that it's about correctly predicting how the world is going to go, but I don't really care about that, I care about what they're actually doing right now. To solve this problem, it may sometimes help to tell the story of how humans behave in strange, fictional environments, or in similarities to us but... More diverse ways of behaving in the world.
Beijing News: In these stories, you can read your dissatisfaction with enterprises, corporate systems, and quantitative management, when did you start to have this tendency to write?
Sanders: I worked for two large companies where the average age of employees was between 30 and 40 and then found it interesting how people behaved in those environments. We were all working there to support our families, but were also exploited by a group of wealthy people in the distance to increase their wealth. Of course, it's good for us too – we get paid, we get insured, and so on. But it struck me that it's a very special and strange way of organizing life — traveling through towns, away from the people you love, doing unimportant work, not even that much fun, while people who are far away and you've never met are getting richer. It's weird. Then the company has to treat you in a certain way and train you to maximize your use of them – again, weird and unnatural. however...... That's our world.
Beijing News: You once worked in an environmental engineering company and an oil exploration team, are there any unpleasant memories of that experience? Do you feel like you're completely unable to adapt to this kind of work, or are you looking for interesting inspiration from it?
Sanders: No, I love it, and I'm good at it. I have a wife and two children at home and I am proud to be able to support them, buy my own house and so on. At the same time, as I mentioned above, I do suffer in that humble, collective way – missing them when I'm away and feeling like what my heart really wants is to be with them. And I found myself doing strange things, such as (very detailedly) counting all the items left behind in a large Air Force residential area that had been abandoned (including some nerve gas barrels, which were placed in the living room for some reason!). But that's the world —we have to feed ourselves.
Part of me feels (and still feels) very grateful that during this experience I could provide a good life for our little family without suffering from poverty. So, like many things in life... It's complicated. But now that I'm older and have earned enough money, these things certainly look sweet and funny, and I miss it (even when I found nerve gas, haha).
Beijing News: After seeing that you were interested in Miyazaki's films, I suddenly felt that some of the atmospheres between your works are indeed very similar. I wonder which of his works has influenced you the most, will it be Howl's Moving Castle?
Sanders: That's right, I like that movie, and Spirited Away.
Stills from the animated film Hal's Moving Castle (2004).
Beijing News: Besides him, which other directors' films do you like? Do you usually watch some dystopian American dramas?
Sanders: I love Monty Payson's films and Grapes of Wrath, and... Well, there are a lot. I try to watch all kinds of shows, even very silly ones, just to get a better idea of our culture and bring all these crazy sounds into my head in case I need to use them one day.
Beijing News: There is a saying that good novels cannot be adapted into good movies. Do you agree with this statement?
Sanders: I think that in art, nothing is impossible.