George Saunders: “It’s an Agitating Book for a Lot of People”

A lightly spoiler-filled conversation with the author about his new novel, Vigil, climate change, and redemption.

Last month, congressional Republicans introduced legislation to shield Big Oil companies from liability for their role in the climate crisis. This was just the latest in the fossil fuel industry’s efforts to escape accountability for delaying our clean energy transition through decades of climate deception.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are already experiencing climate-related heat waves, fires, floods, and droughts—disasters that Big Oil companies were predicting decades ago, with internal warnings of “globally catastrophic” climate harms that would threaten “man’s comfort and survival,” create “more storms, more droughts, more deluges,” and cause “death due to thermal extremes.”

In his most recent novel, Vigil, George Saunders grapples with these questions of climate denial and accountability through the story of K.J. Boone, a dying Big Oil executive who is visited in his final hours by Jill, a spirit whose task is to comfort people transitioning to the afterlife.

It’s a supernatural premise, but the question at the heart of the novel is a pressing one: How should we balance accountability and mercy, even in cases—like Big Oil’s climate deception—where profound evil has been committed? It’s a markedly different question from those I’ve focused on in my career working to make fossil fuel companies pay for their climate crimes. In my conversation with Saunders, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed this tension, as well as the value of empathy in organizing, the role of art in social change, and what comfort looks like on a planet that’s already locked into severe climate catastrophe.

Aaron Regunberg: Vigil takes us inside the head of a climate-denying Big Oil executive at the end of his life. Did you have hopes for what effect the novel might have on readers?

George Saunders: When I started, there was an overlay of, “Well, I’m 67, what’s the most urgent thing happening in the universe? Climate change.” But I realized that while climate change is in this book, it’s not about climate change. The goal, I guess, is really just to wake a reader up a little bit—to make a person more aware of the world around them, to maybe feel a little more fond of the world.

Now that I’m done with it, I can see that it’s an agitating book for a lot of people. Some people really loved it, some hated it. And that’s kind of a first for me. That’s sort of a nice accomplishment, at this late stage—to do something slightly new, even if it’s annoying.

A.R.: There was so much I loved about this book. But I was really upset by the ending.

G.S.: I think a lot of people either thought, “Oh it’s the most beautiful ending” or, “I hate it.” Tell me what got under your skin.

A.R.: We live in a world that has been so corroded by elite impunity. So........

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