If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world, then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere, too.
George SaundersTo understand any plea for further consideration of a group you don't know anything about to be some form of, quote, political correctness. These things are bubbling right under us.
George SaundersThe weird thing was that I went to Trump rallies thinking I was going to run into militant, right wing, racist people and mostly I didn't. That should have been a clue to me. The people I talked to were not, on the surface level, crazy. They were quite nice, quite normal, employed, and actually were wealthier than the press at that time would have led us to believe. At that time, the narrative was that these were all working poor but these were not working poor. That should've been a clue to me that this was a little bigger than I thought.
George SaundersIf I find myself being too earnest and sentimental and hyperbolic and simplistic, which is definitely a tendency I have, then I bring in this perverse henchman.
George SaundersAs much as we - in a revisionist way - tell ourselves that we've always been a righteous country with a couple of swerves off the path, we need to look back and see that we've always also been a racist country and have had a tendency towards banal aggressiveness. The thing that's alarming is not so much that a few people in America at the top are initiating these crazy policies, but that the middle is willing to go there too. There's a strange movement of the middle to this position of banal aggressiveness.
George Saunders