George Saunders

The author, most recently, of “Lincoln in the Bardo” on his favorite genre: “I love reading anything about gigantic animate blobs of molten iron who secretly long to be concert pianists.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

I am finishing up Michael Chabon’s miraculous “Moonglow” and picking away at Woody Guthrie’s strange “House of Earth,” which contains one of the best, slowest, hottest, yet most quotidian sex-in-a-barn scenes ever. Loving “Ghettoside,” by Jill Leovy. Although it’s too large for my night stand, I am lingering with pleasure over Nick Offerman’s “Good Clean Fun,” which is not only instructing me in a calm yet passionate view toward life and art, but also might eventually help me to build a bigger, more capacious night stand.

What’s the last great book you read?

I loved Zadie Smith’s “Swing Time” for its scale and heart and moral ambition and the high-wire act she does (and yet so casually) with language. “The Argonauts,” by Maggie Nelson: mind-blowingly heartful and had me weeping on a plane. “Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates: a beautiful proof that the truth told urgently always yields poetry. Mike Royko’s classic “Boss”: a sketch of Richard J. Daley and his Chicago that reads like a crazed postmodern novel and brought back all kinds of happy memories of my Chicago childhood. “The Attention Merchants,” by Tim Wu, reconfigured my understanding of what our time is really about; i.e., the conscious theft of the individual’s privacy and self-possession in the name of moving product and empowering shareholders. I go back to David Sedaris’s “Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls” before trying to write anything ostensibly comic, just to recalibrate myself to greatness. Philip Glass’s memoir, “Words Without Music,” had a powerful effect on me — made me resolve to believe in the power of art more fully and be less hesitant to take chances.

What’s the best classic novel you recently read for the first time?

I had somehow missed “Sula,” by Toni Morrison, and what a delight that was: a page-by-page walk-through of the way a truly great human mind thinks and reasons and invents and celebrates and mourns. I was thrilled by the genuine but meaningful strangeness of Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle.” Tolstoy’s “Resurrection” might be the darkest novel I’ve ever read — basically, a slow descent down from privilege and power into the terror and cruelty that comes of poverty and ritual oppression. (I know, it sounds bleak but. . . .)

What’s your favorite book no one else has heard of? 

While researching my novel I came across two quirky, powerful books on Lincoln, both consummate labors of love: “The Physical Lincoln,” by John G. Sotos, M.D., is a catalog of every description of every part of Lincoln’s body ever recorded. “The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln,” by Larry Tagg, lists all of the many negative, hateful and/or threatening things ever written about Lincoln. These had the effect of destabilizing my view of history, underscoring the notion that any history is just a selective sampling, and that reality is always eluding our attempts to reduce it. Edmund Wilson’s “Patriotic Gore” is a real mind-rearranger re the Civil War: sobering to think that such intelligent, literary people could get themselves into such a blood bath. While I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “no one has heard of” the poetry of Hayden Carruth, I think it deserves a lot more attention than it gets — never fails to speak to me and alter my mind-set for the better.

How do you organize your books?

I like to leave them lying around half read, go to another city, buy a new copy, leave that somewhere, come home, be unable to relocate that first copy, then buy a third copy, which I then spill some coffee on.

Tell us about your favorite short stories.

Some stories that are really alive for me right now are “The Stone Boy,” by Gina Berriault; “A Thousand and One Knives,” by Hassan Blasim (from his wonderful collection, “The Corpse Exhibition and Other Stories of Iraq”); “Gooseberries,” by Anton Chekhov; “Hunters in the Snow,” by Tobias Wolff; “The Gilded Six-Bits,” by Zora Neale Hurston; “Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern,” by Richard Yates. I’m also excited about the work of two new writers: Will Mackin, who had an unforgettable story called “Kattekoppen” in The New Yorker a few years back, about the war in Afghanistan, and Mariana Enriquez and her collection “Things We Lost in the Fire.”

What moves you most in a work of literature?

Depictions of goodness that are not fraudulent or sentimental.

What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

I love reading anything about gigantic animate blobs of molten iron who secretly long to be concert pianists. It’s not a particularly well-populated genre, but in particular I’d mention, “Grog, Who Loved Chopin,” as well as the somewhat derivative “Clom, Big Fan of Mozart.”

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

When I was in third grade, a nun on whom I had a crush (hi, Sister Lynette!) lent me a library copy of “Johnny Tremain,” by Esther Forbes. That was the first time I’d ever noticed style as a thing in itself — the thing that made the fictive world seem more real.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain? 

I like the first-person narrator of Isaac Babel’s classic story about class, “In the Basement,” who, at the end of the story, completely humiliated, tries to drown himself in a rain barrel, but is saved by his grandfather, who tells him: “Grandson, I go now to take castor oil, so I’ll have something to lay on your grave.” A really upbeat family story. As an antihero, I think I’d take Edward Casaubon, from “Middlemarch,” who, if he’s “bad,” is bad in the way real people are bad; i.e., starts out himself and then is perfectly content to stay that way, no matter what happens around him or how miserable he’s making everyone.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

I read a lot of popular books about baseball and war, that shared a sort of upbeat “can-do” ethos. Shortstops and fighter pilots were always gritting their teeth in order to come from behind and so on, after which they would modestly deflect the credit toward someone else. A great life lesson! If you’re a pilot or a shortstop. I was also a big “Peanuts” fan, and believed for a time that the “Mr. Magoo” version of “A Christmas Carol” was the original, and that Dickens had been “riffing off of” the TV special.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? 

I’d recommend that 18th-century classic on political strategy by the Count deRinchy, called “A Tim’ly Resignation Doth Suit a Gentleman Well.” There is also his lesser-known classic, “Labor Thee Always to Not Insult or Afright Those Thou Wouldst Leadeth.” DeRinchy also was a poet of some repute, and his little volume “The Truth Remains True, Even Amongst a Sea of Deliberate Falsehoods” is a timeless classic.

But the president is a busy man, so I might just have him read this, from “A Christmas Carol,” in a spooky Jacob Marley voice: “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

I’d game this one by inviting Julia Child and Anthony Bourdain, putting them in charge of the menu, the cooking, the serving and the cleanup, then naming myself as the third writer.

Whom would you want to write your life story? 

Me, as a memoir, on the occasion of my 300th birthday.

What do you plan to read next?

I’ve been saving “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead, in order to read it just before our event in New York City in February. “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Exit West,” by Mohsin Hamid; “10:04,” by Ben Lerner; “Big Machine,” by Victor LaValle; “Sweetbitter,” by Stephanie Danler; “The Girls,” by Emma Cline; “The Strange Case of Rachel K,” by Rachel Kushner; “Zinky Boys,” by Svetlana Alexievich; “A Manual for Cleaning Women,” by Lucia Berlin; “The Sellout,” by Paul Beatty; and “Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Christ’s Teachings About Love, Compassion and Forgiveness,” by Wendell Berry, for a shot of clarity and hope.