Tenth of December is alive with ideas, driven by his talent for subtly reframing the world. He looks, at 54, like a younger version of William H Macy: affably dishevelled, fundamentally amused and, in conversation, ignited by the force of his passion. We are in a meeting room in Manhattan, in a complex owned by Syracuse University, where Saunders has a residency and is down for the day from his home in upstate New York.
Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that's true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. "My habit," says Saunders, "would have been to veer towards the dark – to prove I was something edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. And while the tone and setting of the stories is often satirical, the interactions are deeply, realistically human. The stories are still extremely sinister, turning on a threat of violence all the more powerful for being withheld, but they allow also for the possibility of people doing the right thing. He calls Tenth of December, his new collection, "my least disturbing book" – a good indication of the slant of his work. And that's become my definition of art to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page." "For me," says Saunders, "the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. In "The Semplica-Girl Diaries", it is a seemingly innocent reference to a garden ornament. In "Victory Lap", it is a man standing on a neighbour's doorstep. T here is a point in every George Saunders story when the scene he has meticulously created springs a leak, an anomaly just visible in the corner of the eye, and a sign of the terror about to rain down.
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