George Saunders (writer)

George Saunders (2007)

George Saunders (born December 2, 1958 in Amarillo , Texas ) is an American writer and university professor .

Life

Born in Texas and raised in Oak Forest , Illinois , a suburb of Chicago , Saunders studied engineering at the Colorado School of Mines , where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in geophysics in 1981 . After graduation, he went to Sumatra for an oil exploration company . After his return to the USA, Saunders earned his living by changing jobs as bouncer, roofer and slaughterhouse assistant.

In 1985 he was accepted into the creative writing program of Syracuse University , which he graduated with a Masters in 1988. He then worked as a technical writer for a company in the field of environmental engineering .

Since 1997, Saunders has taught creative writing in the Syracuse University program.

Saunders published several short story books, a volume of essays and a children's book between 1997 and 2014. In his home country he is considered to be one of the best short story authors today and enjoys cult status. His short stories appear regularly in magazines such as The New Yorker , Harper's Magazine and GQ . His admirers include fellow writers such as Zadie Smith , Thomas Pynchon , Jonathan Franzen and, until his death in 2008, David Foster Wallace . Saunders was close friends with Wallace and is often compared to him.

In 2017, Saunders made his novelist debut with Lincoln in the Bardo . The work focuses on the American President Abraham Lincoln during his mourning for his late son William Wallace (1850–1862); it won the British Man Booker Prize the year it was published . The jury president praised the book as "an extremely original novel in form and style, which brings to light a witty, intelligent and deeply moving narrative." What is particularly striking is the book's unusual narrative style. The story is told in the manner of an ancient choir of a group of ghosts who exist in the cemetery in an intermediate state between life and death, supplemented by passages from historical and fictional sources.

George Saunders is married and has two daughters (born in 1988 and 1990). He lives in the Catskill Mountains ( New York ).

criticism

• to: December 10th : "These stories are so good that we have to warn about them: They hurt, they cause fear, leave behind confusion and create anxiety ... He is not a narrator who takes his readers by the hand ... In any case, this book is a bit better than the other four ... " Andreas Isenschmid , Die Zeit 24, June 5, 2014, p. 53

Books

• CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Stories and a Novella. Random House, New York 1996.
  • Civil war country almost at an end. Translated by Dirk van Gunsteren . German publishing house , Stuttgart 1997.
  • Bounty land. Narratives . Translated by Dirk van Gunsteren. Berliner Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-442-76066-6 .
• Pastoralia. Stories and Novella. Riverhead Books, New York 2000.
  • Pastorals. Translated by Frank Heibert . Berlin Verlag , Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8270-0394-6 .
• The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip . Random House, New York 2000.
  • The terribly stubborn Gapper from Frip. Illustrations by Lane Smith. Translated by Frank Heibert. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 978-3-8270-5033-5 .
• The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. Riverhead Books, New York 2005.
• In Persuasion Nation. Stories. Riverhead Books, New York 2006.
  • I can speak! Stories. Translated by Matthias Müller. Liebeskind Verlag , Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-935890-89-2
• A Bee Stung me, so I killed all the fish (Notes from the Homeland 2003-2006). Riverhead Books, New York 2006.
• The Braindead Megaphone. Essays. Riverhead Books, New York 2007.
• Tenth of December. Stories. Random House, New York 2013.
  • December 10th. Stories. Translated by Frank Heibert. Luchterhand Literaturverlag , Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-630-87427-2 .
• Congratulations, by the way. Some thoughts on kindness. Random House, New York 2014.
• Lincoln in the Bardo. A novel . Random House, New York 2017.
  • Lincoln in the bardo. Novel. Translated by Frank Heibert. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2018, ISBN 978-3-630-87552-1 .
• Fox 8. A Story . Random House, New York 2018.
  • Fuchs 8. Translated by Frank Heibert. Luchterhand Literaturverlag, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-630-87620-7 .

Prizes and awards

The New Yorker named him one of the best writers under 40 in 2000 . Saunders has won the National Magazine Award four times for its fictional short stories:

• 1994 for The 400-Pound CEO ,
• 1996 for Bounty , each published in Harper's Magazine .
• In 2000 he received the award for the short story The Barber's Unhappiness , published in The New Yorker .
• 2004 for The Red Bow , published in the men's magazine Esquire .

In 2006 he received one of the World Fantasy Awards and both a Guggenheim Fellowship and the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius Prize" . In 2014, Saunders received the British Folio Prize for Tenth of December and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 2018 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

In 2017 he received the Man Booker Prize for his debut novel Lincoln in the Bardo and in 2018 Lincoln in the Bardo was awarded the Premio Gregor von Rezzori .

Others

• Donald Antrim : The Truth Finder. Novel. Introduction George Saunders. Translated by Brigitte Heinrich. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2015 (rororo 27079)

Web links

• Literature by and about George Saunders in the catalog of the German National Library
• George Saunders in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (English)
• Works by and about George Saunders at Open Library
• George Saunders in the Science Fiction Awards + Database (English)
• CV at BookBrowse
• US satirist Saunders: The Cruel Joke Cookie , Der Spiegel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ JOEL LOVELL: George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You'll Read This Year . NYT Magazine, Jan. 3, 2013
2. ↑ ^{a b c} George Saunders . In: International Biographical Archive 24/2014 from June 10, 2014, supplemented by news from MA-Journal up to week 12/2017.
3. ↑ Syracuse University - George Saunders ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Man Booker Prize: George Saunders wins for Lincoln in the Bardo at bbc.co.uk, October 17, 2017 (accessed October 17, 2017).
5. ^ ZEIT ONLINE: Literature: Man Booker Prize goes to George Saunders . In: The time . October 18, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed on March 16, 2019]).
6. ↑ George Saunders Stories - Byliner ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 20, 2013 
7. ↑ Harpers Magazine, 45
8. ↑ Harpers Magazine, 37
9. ^ The New Yorker
10. ↑ Esquire, Jan.
11. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 10, 2019 .