A New Story...
...in The New Yorker ("Thursday")
I thought we’d take a break from a Q&A this week so I can share a new short story, “Thursday,” that’s running in The New Yorker as we speak.
Here’s a link to the story…
…a link to me reading the story…
…and a link to a discussion about it that I had with Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the magazine.
This process is always rich - the editing, especially, during which, guided by Deborah, I always learn so much about my own story, even into the last moments. And then, of course, it’s a thrill to have a new thing out in the world.
Hope you enjoy any or all of it. :)
Warmly,
George
P.S. Over across the paywall, we’re still in the midst of a great discussion about Gogol’s masterpiece, “The Overcoat.”
To me, George's words here sum up the purpose of both writing and reading: "As I increase the specificity in a piece, I’ll find that a character becomes not necessarily morally better or more forgivable but just somehow more complete. His sins become higher-order sins, so to speak. (And his virtues become higher-order virtues.) My judgment of him gets tempered." Deborah Treisman calls this thing George does a form of "mind melding" (which, as a Star Trek fan, I love). I like to picture all of us across the planet, reading "Thursday" together, our minds melding with George's, David's, Gerard's, and each other's--and our judgments of one another becoming increasingly tempered. George Saunders, you are a man of Love. (And as I said in previous post, this is just a great story. Thank you for writing it.)
Amid so many delights: "On clotheslines strung between them danced the garments of our fellow-poor, flailing about in the wind, as if to say, Yes, though we are the clothes of the poor, we dance, and what of it? A shirt threw an arm up merrily. A pair of boxers inverted itself in joy, leg holes briefly opening upward."