During breaks, he incorporated those notes into his journals.
Years later, he used those journals to write this book.
Fighting a war is…a job.
Credit: David Levenson/Getty Image; Random House
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GEORGE SAUNDERS: Youve had a long and interesting career in the military, served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Could you quickly summarize this part of your life?
The Prowler had two seats up front and two in back.
I wound up joining that task force a few years later.
That plus the fact that I didnt have the skills to do anything else.
When did you first start writing fiction?
What were the circumstances of finding your way there?
Naturally shy and introverted, Id dream up heroics for myself.
Understand that this was radio so I had to take what I could get.
During commercial breaks, Id wonder how to make that dream a reality.
How might circumstances conspire to make the girl of my dreams witness to my derring-do?
These were my earliest experiences writing fiction.
I suppose that I wanted everybody Id served with to read what Id written and been like, yup.
It wasnt until getting it right proved impossible that I started tweaking the details.
In what way did getting it right come to feel impossible?
Fiction helped alleviate that constraint.
You wouldnt have known by looking at me because Id learned to control it.
The weird part about writing the book was unmasking that anxiety.
The stories feel so new and original, especially in their shape and form.
Our operational schedule was divided into recurring phases of Train, Alert, and Deploy.
Analysis would lead to discovery, or Find.
In other words, the end was the beginning and the beginning was the end.
Do you see the book as being in a certain lineage or tradition?
Both of those writers inspired me.
The story that kept me honest however was Barry HannahsMidnightandIm Not Famous Yet.
I love how the narrators voice projects authority over chaos.
So now, for a simple question (ha): What is your understanding of America?
How are we better than other countries?
Instead, they did what they did with the best of intentions.
This made sense back then, but I have a harder time believing it now.
In terms of progress through an individual story: How many drafts?
How radical were the changes one would see from draft to draft?
Do you spend more energy on line-to-line changes, structural changes?Each story had at least fifty drafts.
Sometimes changes were fundamental, as in two or three stories combining to form one, or vice versa.
More often though changes were gradual.
I guess thats the beauty of it.
