This is from George Saunders’ latest New Yorker piece, chronicling his days on the campaign trail talking with Trump supporters and protestors: The tragedy of the Trump movement is that one set of struggling people has been pitted against other groups of struggling people by someone who has known little struggle, at least in the material sense, and hence seems to have little empathy for...
Recently Abbe and I went to the beach for the week. It was wonderfully and kind of terrifyingly remote. A good place to write, I hoped (although it was really a working vacation). Sometimes I think I’m a loon. Three years ago we went to the Outer Banks and I wrote one story (“Jellyfish”) and came up with the idea for another (“Grandfather Vampire”). They...
One way that writing is strange: the best feeling in the world is the feeling you have when you finish writing something you love. The worst feeling in the world is right after that, when you have no idea what you’re going to do next. When you question if you will ever writing anything else that will be any good at all. Or anything else at all, ever. You think: Fuck, maybe that was it...