Each of the 10 short stories that make up his fourth collection, Tenth of December, is lit up with the kind of empathy that makes a reader ache. It’s not in Saunders’ nature to be cruel or even careless in his consideration of other people, which is probably why the word “compassion” ends up figuring into so much of the writing about his work. He needn’t have worried-about the Times interviews, or about ours. “That was actually one of my biggest concerns with that piece, because we really talked very frankly and given my personality, I was so afraid I would say something that would hurt somebody’s feelings somewhere,” Saunders said. Saunders had recently done a series of interviews with the New York Times Magazine‘s Joel Lovell, resulting in a long, lovely profile with a headline unusually laudatory for that publication: “ George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year.” He’d worried throughout the process, he explained, that he would accidentally be less than gracious.
“Just don’t make me cast aspersions on anyone,” he requested, in his particular bright, polite Midwestern tenor. Just before we hung up after interviewing writer George Saunders this week, he asked a favor.
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