63 Comments

Hi George. Thanks for all you do and your unfailing generosity of spirit. For the record, I didn't place your book at the bottom of the shelf on purpose. It was just the way the photo came out. Regards, Adrian... https://adrianconway.substack.com/p/books-like-white-elephants

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I love that you are willing to help us understand writing and stories. It’s amazing to me the effort that you put in consistently and I so appreciate it. You are a master teacher. Those students at Syracuse must feel so blessed. I know I do.

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I'm glad you dialed back this week, George. I've been amazed at the generosity you consistently manifest. I had a mentor tell me to "guard my gifts". From where I sit, that's happening this week.

Since coming to SC a few months ago, I've learned of how stories can change us. They have the potential to make us better, kinder, more compassionate people. That's a takeaway that is very present for me. Just gotta say "thanks" !

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GS/TPR

Dialing back the fireworks. When in doubt, shock. Or, When in doubt, oppose conventional thinking.

Love this from TPR. And was fascinated by your description of having to “dial back the fireworks” for LitB and used letters from the Civil War to redirect your language brain. I had 80 CW letters from my multiple ggf, a nephew of Jeff Davis, who was shot through the bowels at Peach Orchard just before the Battle of Gettysburg. I also inherited Jeff Davis’s sword given to him by the Continental Congress. He gave it to his nephew who took it to battle. I sold the sword to finance my MFA. With it, I gave three letters to prove provenance. I transcribed the letters. Hard to do as every millimeter of the paper was written on, including margins. The language was so poignant & heartfelt & so unlike how we speak today. Isaac had been a lawyer & was eloquent. He told his wife Mary that if he survived his sword would be a souvenir but if he died it would be his only legacy to give his two surviving daughters. They had two other children who died in infancy. He also told Mary to get that saber if he expired. She did and got his body exhumed a year later and when the train broke down, she got a horse and wagon and drove the body back to Woodville, Ms. She later moved to New Orleans and opened a school for girls. I have the handle of her walking stick, inscribed with her initials as thanks from her school.

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The Paris Review interview is great.

"It’s going to be as hard as it needs to be, and my job is to not chicken out."

Story Club is impressing upon me the importance of patience and hard work in writing. Patience is the hard part for me. I'm no stranger to hard work--after 25 years of a detail-oriented day job it's something of a habit--but I tend to expect it to pay off quicker than it does.

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Thoroughly engaged with all of George’s writings, insights, and teachings...

Reading about him(you) is as much of a pleasure as learning about process ..

The Paris Review interview and the afterward essay... all more chances to dive into this “George”character... who seems bigger than life!

Not sure if I am enjoying the stories as much as the man!

Or is the man the story?

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Well, we'll see how long this stays up.

I've been "requested" (with extreme prejudice) to stop plugging my Substack here. There are apparently others among you that also have Substacks, and apparently (according to theory) if we all spend a few lines promoting our efforts, CHAOS WILL ENSUE!!! and the SS Story Club will be "sunk." (First time I've ever heard that about my writing. Never knew us Stackers were powerful to torpedo a Booker-winner's efforts.)

This really doesn't make sense to me, since I had the idea that this "Club" is supposed to help writers write, otherwise it's just a lit survey course. It's certainly not the way we were taught at Clarion, where we wrote, read, and ripped apart each other's efforts. (It wasn't fun, but you Learned the Craft wth the explicit aim of publishing, and learned having a thick skin and a good comeback is helpful.)

So instead of encouraging us to strike out, create, and read what other people are creating, we're supposed to find each other with dosing rods, I guess. If some of you do have Stacks, let me know.

It is a good teaching moment though. George is an open Socialist as are many of you, which is merely shorthand for thinking people have too much freedom and too many choices, and that these must be curtailed for "the common good," and of course, Socialists are the ones who are going to determine what "the common good" is, (men can be women, free speech is "disinformation," the Covid "vaccine" was "safe"- all the 20 and 30 year olds dropping dead of heart problems nowithstanding, and the '20 election was the fairest, and most honest election ever) and if you don't toe the line, there's always a nice courtroom and cell waiting for you, right?

So I'm going to shut up and let others speak for me from now on, and if I vanish, (for the Common Good, of course) you'll know why...

In Friendship,

M.

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It all comes back to figuring out how to make our own sparks, doesn’t it? Reading Benjamin Nugent’s piece makes me think of George’s stories about trying to write like Hemingway and only breaking through when he gave up trying to emulate the writer he most admired. George, how do you feel about being someone else’s Hemingway? :)

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George, talking about seeing Jaws for the tenth time: "The last time I saw it, I was by myself, seated between a really old man and a pregnant woman, and just before the first time the shark appears I was thinking, We’re either going to lose one or gain one."

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Has anyone asked yet about the title? I like it, it's the rhythm, it's a tom-tom, it's a commitment . . . .it's . . . but why and how?

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Great article on GS: Here's the kernel, for me. "In fact, one of the most important aspects of the Saunders aesthetic is something that might be termed “bonelessness.” A boneless story doesn’t begin with an idea for a central conflict, or with an outline, or with any other structural design. A boneless story has no skeleton. That doesn’t mean that there’s no action. To the contrary, Saunders’s stories are packed with incident. But the stories accumulate beat by beat. As a general rule, Saunders doesn’t conceive of plots in advance, but rather tries to write one funny, interesting moment, and then another funny, interesting moment, and so on. A Saunders story grows like a fungus. It wouldn’t be totally accurate to say that it grows sentence by sentence. To use Saunders’s words, it grows “bit” by “bit.” A bit is often a joke, but not necessarily. It can be a tragic occurrence, an incisive observation, a grotesque shock. It’s anything that administers a stimulus to the reader."

And yet - every story of George's I've read is how focused it is. And that is magic!

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Mr Saunders: Would you please discontinue my substack subscription with you? I love your stories but I do not have enough time right now to read your columns even though I like them.

Thank you,

Janice McDermott

mcdmcd@ptd.net

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While George is having fun and wondering WTF he got himself into with this Substack, come check out this week's edition of mine. It has the tiniest baby horse you've ever seen, the handsomest, best-dressed Lawyer-criminal, and a YouTube compilation of AI-driven robots, including backflipping robots, hunter-killer robot dogs, a 60ft high Gundam mecha they're teaching to walk, and a tiny demo robot that can turn from solid to liquid and back again - a baby T-1000. Come visit if you want to know what's coming...

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