AMERICAN WRITER GEORGE SAUNDERS’ LATEST NOVEL VIGIL, RELEASED EARLY THIS YEAR, PLACES the idea of compassion in its crosshair—what does it truly mean and what are its limits? The book concerns two protagonists. There’s Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine, best viewed as a guardian spirit or an afterlife attendant. Her calling is to “comfort” the near-dead, without any judgement on her part, until they transit from here to eternity.
Vigil takes Jill to the Texas home of KJ Boone, a captain of the oil industry and the story’s other anchor. Not only did he accrue all his riches through a tenacious mendacity, but he also made it his mission in life to cosset Big Oil from any accountability for climate cataclysms around the world. Saunders sinks readers into Boone’s mind, in the final hours before his death, with Jill for constant company, as they intersect with other funny, wise and tragic apparitions.
Boone’s unrepentant aggression may ring a few bells in 2026, when ruthless mascots of wealth dominate the American media landscape. Saunders, however, isn’t too bothered with “slavish real-life representation”. “I didn't have any interest in portraying a specific person because that’s inherently anti-novelistic,” says the author, speaking from his home in Los Angeles over Zoom.
By modern standards, Boone’s diabolism appears quaint, Saunders offers. “KJ Boone is version 1.0 of the people running my country now. He lies, obfuscates and misleads, but he does so within the rules-based order. His ilk shares a lot of the blame for the present because they invented the language for denial and nurtured this mentality that ‘power is everything.’”
Young Saunders once worked in oil exploration in Sumatra, Indonesia. In retrospect, he sees that experience as an “imperialist immersion” from which he has drawn some of Boone’s ideas. “I had a double moral vision, of understanding the politics of oil, but, from my limited perspective at the time, riding the high of a great adventure. I was, at my low level, complicit.” He finds the KJ Boones of today are strikingly one-dimensional. “I have a feeling that the inner monologue of some of these people in power now would be dull because they seem vacant from the inside.”
Vigil’s inner monologues are colourful, mostly shifting between the consciousnesses of Boone and a cast of deceased characters: the always-peaceable Jill or a comically dramatic Frenchman, who finds fault with Jill’s judgement-free approach to comforting souls. The space between life, death and afterlife also loomed large in Saunders’ 2017 Booker Prize-winner Lincoln in the Bardo, and remains a continuing fascination for him. “As a writer, the device gives me wings. It opens up time, space and philosophy, fully engaging my imagination. Besides, I always found the finiteness of life greatly enriching. Almost as if you were at a fabulous party, from where you are likely to be kicked out at some point. That makes the party seem more alive.”
Unlike the ancient ghosts of Bardo, this time Saunders turns a polite married woman from Indiana into a spirit. Having died in her 20s, she has now “elevated” to a higher state. Elevation allows Jill smooth passage into the minds of souls awaiting their salvation. No matter the life they lived, she considers each one of them with a detached grace. Until Boone puts her stance to test. “The Buddhists call it ‘idiot compassion’ wherein compassion is often confused with being sweet,” says 67-year-old Saunders. Jill’s elevation, perhaps a form of enlightenment, has made her deterministic. People are “inevitable”, she says, their mind-body “a lavish jailing”. From the time they are born, they will become who they were always meant to be. Saunders oscillates on this notion of personhood. “I'm sceptical. On some level, I believe it, but you can't live that way. We have to believe that we have choice.”
Literature, as Saunders had explained in the A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (2021), is not about what to think, instead, “a story means, at the highest level, not by what it concludes but by how it proceeds”. He began writing Vigil in the Joe Biden presidential years, looking for a challenge. A new undertaking, of course, is never without apprehensions, even for Saunders. “At this stage of my writing life, I may have more to lose. So, any fear I have about writing is rooted in my love of the form, which I never want to disappoint. It keeps me aesthetically alert,” he says. At the time, Saunders had been thinking of Anton Chekhov’s Gooseberries, which he had analysed for A Swim… and had taught at New York’s Syracuse University. “In that story, the text suggests that happiness is important but that it is also somewhat self-centred and wasteful. What I love about that piece is that Chekhov never resolves the question. I don’t think I have ever written a story in that vein.” Vigil, he hopes, illustrates this Chekhovian attempt. Inhabiting Boone’s “wicked” identity was fun for him, he says. “But then there is the question, is any softening of a person like him legitimate?”
Saunders doesn’t write books and then disappear for long stretches of time. He embraces the public face of writing, whether it’s a podcast with Dua Lipa or his Substack newsletter Story Club with George Saunders, where he regularly publishes stories from readers and engages in conversations with them. “I thought I would do the newsletter for one year and then quit. Well, I got addicted to the community, especially in the last few years. I have been so cheered by this group of generous and smart people because, in America, much of the social communication has turned angry and strident.”
After his initial success as a writer, Saunders says he tried to cultivate elusiveness, worried that being too visible or available might compromise his art. “But I realised that you don’t have to turn people away or pull out of life. Seclusion is a mental state. When it’s time for my art, I simply switch states.” Overthinking his writerly persona only made him more anxious, he reveals. “I kept messing up. Then I said to myself, just be open and friendly. Don't worry that you might contaminate your art. Trust the work.”
Lately, in interviews, he is often designated a benevolent literary lama for these tumultuous times, which he gently pushes back against. “I am just a little sensitive about this reputation as a ‘salesman for literature.’” Partly because, for Saunders, literature’s virtues are fundamental and self-evident. “It’s a cliché to say that literature saved me. I will, however, say that it did—I am going to use the word—‘elevate’ and expand my world. I don’t know if it’s the cure for what ails us in this current moment, but we have paid a price for not valuing it enough.
To read more stories from Esquire India's May-June 2026 issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest newspaper stand or bookstore. Or click here to subscribe to the magazine.