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George Saunders in 2023. (Photo by Shawn Miller\/Library of Congress) <\/p>\nGeorge Saunders in 2023. (Photo by Shawn Miller\/Library of Congress) <\/p>\n
NEW YORK \u2014 George Saunders\u2019 path from obscurity to acclaim began some 30 years ago, not long after he finished a novel his wife could hardly stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to think the job of serious fiction was to be completely impossible to understand,\u201d he explained during a telephone interview. \u201cBut one day I just started to work on these Seussian poems, just to have fun with them. I showed them to my wife, and she thought they were very funny, and she said to me it was about time that anybody got enjoyment out of my work.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up on TV and \u2018Jaws\u2019 and Dick Cavett,\u201d he said. \u201cI valued entertainment and I once thought maybe it didn\u2019t belong in literature. And then I thought, of course it does.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the world\u2019s most highly regarded authors, Saunders has now been welcomed into an elevated \u2014 and most dignified \u2014 pantheon. The National Book Foundation announced Friday that it has named him this year\u2019s winner of a National Book Award for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters, a lifetime achievement medal given to Toni Morrison,Robert Caro and Edmund White among others. The $10,000 prize is awarded to \u201ca person who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saunders is the author of more than a dozen books and is the rare short story writer who has earned the adjective \u201cbestselling,\u201d notably for the collection \u201cTenth of December,\u201d a National Book Award finalist in 2013. He has also become a genre unto himself \u2014 his name synonymous with twisted humor; poignant, unpredictable narratives and acute social commentary. Ruth Dickey, the foundation\u2019s executive director, said in a statement that Saunders had forged an \u201cextraordinary\u201d legacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough immersive world-building, deeply human characters, and compassionate curiosity towards the most pressing sociopolitical issues of our time, George Saunders\u2019 writing exemplifies the power of fiction to unite us despite \u2014 and perhaps because of \u2014 our fractured and complex world,\u201d Dickey said.<\/p>\n
Youngest recipient since 2004<\/p>\n
At age 66, he is the youngest recipient since Judy Blume in 2004 and his mindset is more in line with a mid-career author in transition than an eminence looking back. While he established his name as a short story writer, he more recently began forging a career as a novelist. His first published novel, \u201cLincoln in the Bardo,\u201d is a surreal, polyphonic meditation on the late president that won the Booker Prize in 2017, a rare honor for an American author. Early next year, he will publish \u201cVigil,\u201d in which an oil company CEO confronts his final moments on Earth.<\/p>\n
\u201cA tank. His wife had once called him that,\u201d Saunders writes in his new novel. \u201cHe rolled right over what life had put in front of him. He\u2019d worked his way up. Step by step. To the top. Very top. CEO. About as a high guy could go. If he did say so himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman will present Saunders his medal during a Nov. 19 ceremony in Manhattan, when winners in six competitive categories will be announced and author-editor-publisher Roxane Gay will receive the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. Treisman and Saunders have worked together for decades, in what Treisman described in a recent email as \u201ca truly intuitive and ego-less collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the uniqueness of George\u2019s work comes from his ability to combine humor, sometimes quite pointed and dark humor, with a deep-seated faith in humanity,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHis work can be satirical without being mean; hilarious but also heartbreaking. It\u2019s hard to say what American letters would be like without him because he\u2019s such a one-off. If he didn\u2019t exist, we wouldn\u2019t have known or imagined what we were missing!\u201d<\/p>\n
Teacher sparks thoughts of becoming a writer<\/p>\n
With influences ranging from Chekhov to Groucho Marx, Saunders describes his background as \u201coff-kilter.\u201d Born in Amarillo, Texas, in 1958 and raised in Oak Forest, Illinois, he doesn\u2019t remember himself as a prolific reader in childhood and didn\u2019t attend a liberal arts college; he majored in geophysical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.<\/p>\n
But even in high school, thanks in part to a \u201cwonderful\u201d American literature teacher, he was thinking of becoming a writer, whether or not he wanted a degree to go with it. Saunders read for pleasure in college and beyond, supporting himself as a door attendant, a roofer and a slaughterhouse knuckle-puller among other jobs. In 1988, he received an MFA from the creative writing program at Syracuse University, where he met his future wife, Paula Redick, a fellow student at the time. He has been on the Syracuse faculty since 1997.<\/p>\n
Once he had tapped into his inner laughter, his work soon caught on. His first story collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” was a PEN\/Hemingway finalist for best debut fiction and four of his stories won National Magazine Awards. In her statement Friday, Dickey also noted Saunders\u2019 \u201cgenuine enthusiasm\u201d for the process of writing, citing his book on the pleasures of studying Russian literature, \u201cA Swim In a Pond in the Rain,\u201d and his Substack Story Club.<\/p>\n
He is, at least, unofficially, a \u201cgenius,\u201d a 2006 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation \u201cgenius\u201d grant. Saunders is also, unofficially, a proponent of something not known to align with genius \u2014 being a nice person. In 2013, he gave a widely shared convocation address at Syracuse, urging the audience to try and be kinder, to \u201cerr in the direction of kindness.\u201d Books may be a solitary pastime, but he also believes they can guide us as social beings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never understood literature as anything but that thing to help us live better, something that allows me to cut to the chase,\u201d he told the AP. \u201cCommunication and kindness \u2014 this radical idea that other people are as real as we are.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"George Saunders in 2023. (Photo by Shawn Miller\/Library of Congress) NEW YORK \u2014 George Saunders\u2019 path from obscurity…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":202604,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,111934,13711,111935,111936,67,132,68,111937],"class_list":{"0":"post-202603","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-george-saunders","11":"tag-library-of-congress","12":"tag-library-of-congress-prize-for-american-fiction","13":"tag-national-book-festival","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-walter-e-washington-convention-center"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115152330974941907","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}