With Love from St. Louis

Hi everyone,

What a thrill, to be meeting so many of you on the road. And friends from high school (hi Paul P.)! And grade school (hi Joanne D.)!

Since my last post, I’ve been in Chicago, Madison, and St. Louis. I’ll be in Baltimore tonight (Thursday) and then on to New Orleans to spend a few days with my parents.

Then on to London.

Speaking of London, tickets are still available for my event with the brilliant Richard Ayoade, and you can get them here. Richard and I have been working on a film adaptation of The Semplica Girl Diaries and that has been a great occasion to get to know him and have access to his kind spirit and his deep knowledge of cinema.

In other book-related news…

I had a mind-blowingly good talk with Sam Fragoso on his podcast Talk Easy about the book and many other things. Sam and I have talked several times before and he always, somehow, gets me going a little deeper into things than I’m expecting, which is a tribute to his interviewing skills, and also to his deep sense of curiosity. You can listen here:

And you can watch my interview with Sam here.

I also had the pleasure of a revelatory conversation with Ezra Klein when I was in New York a few weeks ago. He is a great mind and we were able to talk deeply about Vigil and what it really means (which, in truth, I am only gradually discovering). You can find that interview here.

Vigil was NPR’s Book of the Day on Tuesday and they’ve featured a replay of my All Things Considered interview.

I also wanted to share two interesting essays on the book that have made their way to me.

I really appreciated this take on the book by Tess Callahan, at Electric Literature…(I shared this last time too but just in case it got lost).

And this one (below), by Myles Werntz, associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University, at The Metropolitan Review:

The Metropolitan Review

How to Love a Monster

George Saunders has spent a career unpacking one of the central contradictions of life: that we are loving creatures capable of creating monstrous worlds. Since his debut collection in 1996, Saunders has become something of a secular saint, a writer whose sense of the world’s abounding