Daily: Read fiction to save democracy, with writer George Saunders

The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with Lincoln In The Bardo and is an award-winning author of short stories. His new book A Swim In A Pond In The Rain explains how short stories work with the aid of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dorian Lynskey is a fan. George Saunders talks to Dorian about his “shovel in the fictive graveyard”, being a working class writer in a middle class world, the value of “looming catastrophe” in life and art… and why reading fiction is the best training for spotting lies in loved ones, colleagues and politicians. 

• “I had the idea that literature was a beautiful gilded mansion and I had to leave all my real shit at the door. And it’s not true.”
• “Our basic storytelling gland has to do with curiosity”
• “My job as a writer is to get to a place where the world doesn’t surprise me.”
• “A story isn’t a monolithic whole that comes from the writer’s moral qualities. It’s a magic trick made out of fragments of language.”
• “When you’ve got an administration that rejects enlightenment values they’re not susceptible to satire. And I found that with Trump.”

Presented by Dorian Lynskey. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers: Jelena Sofronijevic  and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. The Bunker is a Podmasters Production

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices