NEW YORK (AP) — Syracuse author George Saunders ’ path from obscurity to acclaim began some 30 years ago, not long after he finished a novel his wife could hardly stand.

“I used to think the job of serious fiction was to be completely impossible to understand,” he explained during a telephone interview. “But one day I just started to work on these Seussian poems, just to have fun with them. I showed them to my wife, and she thought they were very funny, and she said to me it was about time that anybody got enjoyment out of my work.”

“I grew up on TV and ‘Jaws’ and Dick Cavett,” he said. “I valued entertainment and I once thought maybe it didn’t belong in literature. And then I thought, of course it does.”

One of the world’s most highly regarded authors, Saunders has now been welcomed

See Full Page