It was so bizarre watching him. Dave’s got great taste. (And George a good publicist, probably.) I’m just glad we got to meet him before all this “breakout tour” madness. Nicest, sweetest guy in the world. And brilliant. My favorite bit was when GS was talking about his past work experiences, how he was trying to live out his romantic, Hemingway-esque idea of working “lowly jobs,” like convenience store clerk, roofer, knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse…
Letterman: But one learns from experiences that way, right?
Saunders: One does…don’t be an idiot!
And “Old Turkey Buzzard” cracks me up every time.
A post by Jeff Parker that I found where he talks about GS showing him that one not only has to work on their craft, but also on being a good human being:
“So, what I lacked going into the MFA program there, before meeting George, was any kind of morality to the writing. I don’t mean a moral to the story, but rather I didn’t have any reason why I was writing other than for the aforementioned slutty, Meryl Streep-type women, and with that at the heart of your work it only goes so far—though some folks do very well with that distance. At best I had a journalistic view of fiction, and this is something I still believe in. But well, I didn’t understand that, like, Bukowski wrote about his life sure, but while in real life he’d be written off as scum, the work was not journalistic in its intent. Rather, it humanized him. One could read it and understand that he was a beast just like the rest of us.
I picked up there a kind of morality that applied to Me As Writer and it transferred over to Me As Person.
So I would think things like, if I go to the bar and get totally trashed and, like, get in a fight or fall into a snow bank, then I can write about it and ruminate on the hopelessness and cultural depravity that led me to this state. But after I met George, I started to think, well hey, that kind of thing usually just results in a bad hangover anyway and then two days of cloudy head, rendering you incapable of writing. So maybe I’ll just go have some coffee and spend the evening writing and get up tomorrow and try to be a decent person.”
http://emergingwriters.typepad.com/emerging_writers_network/2007/09/saunders-on-let.html
I saw him last night and LOVED him, but didn’t know who he was — I’m new to your blog. Thanks for the links. I’m sold.
Letterman is increasingly allowing himself to be interested in ideas, not just pop culture humor (not that there’s anything wrong with that). His guest the night before was Bill Clinton, and he just let the man talk without interruption. Clinton’s good on a roll. Whereas last week, Tom Arnold was on and did a long, breathless monologue about all his recent health problems which was funny enough in a bizarre way, but when he finally paused, Letterman said “Thanks for coming” and that was the end of his time.
I’ve been watching Letterman since he came on the air, partly because I hate Leno, partly because I love Midwestern humor in all its permutations, mostly because Dave will drop things off tall buildings to see how they bounce or shatter. It’s been fascinating to me see him slowly, subtly radicalize as a result of Bush’s Residency. His “Great Moments from Presidential Speeches” segment began before it was “okay” to laugh at Bush the way it is now.
Letterman is the best. We watch him almost every night (saw Clinton, he was great.) You’d have to give me a lobotomy to watch Leno.