Interesting Past Post

Novelists Zadie Smith (2) and George Saunders (3) Say Writers and Readers have Multiplicities 

George Saunders: I was thinking about something I heard you [Zadie Smith] say recently, about multiplicity. That meant a lot to me. When I think about what fiction does morally, I’m happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities—sort of fragmented. Maybe you could even think 100,000 people are inside each human being. And you drop a novel on that person, and a certain number of those sub-people come alive or get reenergized for some finite time. It’s maybe for just a few days even, depending on the book. Although there are books that I read years ago that enlivened things in me that haven’t died yet.

Zadie Smith: I think we understand this experience more from being readers than writers.

George Saunders: Yes, that’s right. I remember reading The Bluest Eye when I was a young parent, and something opened in me. That’s the highest aspiration. So A Christmas Carol  [which they had mentioned because it has ghosts like Saunders’ 2017 award-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo] would enliven a certain subset of those 100,000 internal people” (1, p. 175). “Like you [Zadie Smith], I have multiplicities” (1, p. 181).

Comment: Their opinions are apparently based on their own subjective experience. They suggest that readers of novels, like writers of novels, are more likely to have multiple personality trait than the average person.

1. Michael O’Connell (Editor). Conversations with George Saunders. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2022

2. Wikipedia. “Zadie Smith.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadie_Smith

3. Wikipedia. “George Saunders.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Saunders