Try To Read Your Own Work As

Something In Me Was Changed By Lincoln In The Bardo, And The Great Sublime/grotesque Risk Of [george Saunders'] Ghosts Was A Part Of It.

Everything Shrinks. Individual Character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

I Used To Take That God's-eye View As A Comfort When I Was A Child. I'd Think, "well, We Couldn't Find The World Meaningful At All If It Weren't For Death." Of Course, That Is The Smuggest And Most Intolerable Of All Perspectives Because I'm Not Suffering From The Death Or The Pain.

It Seems That If You Put People On Paper And Move Them Through Time, You Cannot Help But Talk About Ethics, Because The Ethical Realm Exists Nowhere If Not Here: In The Consequences Of Human Actions As They Unfold In Time, And The Multiple Interpretive Possibility Of Those Actions.

Those Beliefs About The Essential Goodness Or Beauty Of The World Are Fundamentally Paper-thin Bullshit. There's Not An Essential Belief That Isn't A Contingent Belief. It Could All Be Destroyed In A Second, At Any Second. And I Have An Issue With That.