His days are different now. Years ago when he wrote, it was always about not getting caught, ducking into empty offices at work to peck away at the keyboard and punch out a page or two.

If geophysical engineering was his profession, then writing was his passion.

But even after one of his stories won the National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1994, George Saunders stayed at his job. He had to pay the bills somehow.

More than a decade later, the ardor is still there, even if his job has changed.

‘I treat it like a love affair,’ he said. ‘I love to write.’

Saunders laughed sheepishly.

‘You might not want to put that down.’

Saunders, now a professor of creative writing at Syracuse University, has emerged as a major player on the literary scene, an absurd and moving fiction writer who specializes in short stories. In the past year, he’s become a Guggenheim fellow and received a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation, the famed ‘Genius Grant.’

Twenty years ago, when he was working in the oil fields of Indonesia and only able to write at night, the idea of being a creative writing professor, Guggenheim fellow and certified genius seemed far away.

‘At night you were just stuck and a lot of the guys would just get wasted, really wasted, like so drunk you know they’d pass out and wake up in the morning and take speed,’ Saunders said. ‘I was like ‘Whoa.”

A graduate of the Colorado School of Mines and former engineer and technical writer for Radian International, an engineering firm in Rochester, N.Y., Saunders has a background as eclectic and bizarre as some of his fiction.

He worked on oil crews in Sumatra (along with Indonesia), spent time as a roofer in his home town of Chicago and earned a master’s degree in creative writing at SU in 1988.

Writing has been a constant companion for Saunders, whether he is living among speed-addled oil crew workers or with his wife and two teenage daughters in suburban Central New York. When he was offered a job as a professor at SU in 1997, he jumped at the opportunity. Writing is no longer something to do in his spare time, it’s his job.

Over the years, Saunders carved out a reputation for himself as a powerful voice, one who understands that humans are complex individuals and takes the time to give his characters depth. As the MacArthur Foundation wrote about Saunders on its Web site, the writer excels at ‘satirizing and humanizing the moral dilemmas faced by Americans in the twenty-first century.’

He won the National Magazine Award for Fiction three more times since 1994.

‘He’s got my vote for best living short story writer,’ said David Foster Wallace, acclaimed author of ‘Infinite Jest’ and ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.’

What sets Saunders apart from the pack, critics and peers said, is his ability to weld humanity onto the bizarre characters in his work, a humanity that is difficult to fake.

Wallace, who teaches creative writing at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and received a Genius Grant in 1997, said the compassion of Saunders is unique among writers.

‘One thing about his writing is that for as absurd and funny it is, it’s without artifice,’ Wallace said. ‘It’s reasonably sincere and comes from who he is.’

Mary Gaitskill, a colleague of Saunders and fellow professor of creative writing at SU, agreed while it may be easy for a writer to be funny, it takes someone of Saunders’ talent to add an aspect of emotional depth.

‘I think that his writing has a level of life to it that is unusual in modern fiction,’ said Gaitskill, a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2002. ‘He mixes emotions in a way that is unusual in modern fiction.’

Saunders’ work straddles the line between comedy and tragedy – readers laugh at the obese protagonist of ‘The 400 LB. CEO,’ yet feel empathy for his plight. The saga of the theme park attendant in ‘CivilWarLand in Bad Decline’ (the movie rights of which are owned by Ben Stiller’s production company Red Hour) as he battles roving gangs of teenage hooligans and tries to find time for his family is typical of Saunders’ multifaceted narratives.

His first drafts are always more snotty, Saunders said, but as he reworks stories, the characters become more developed.

‘As you recognize that you’re puppeteer-ing, you realize you want to be a kindly puppeteer,’ Saunders said. ‘You know, if you can do it, you want to make it a little more life-like. And some of it comes naturally.’

Saunders’ basic writing ethos – write short, be funny, get the point across quick – comes from his family.

‘In your house as a kid, you carve out a place for yourself, you know, ‘how can you hold the room?” Saunders said. ‘And I think that affects your writing style. And I think in my house, it was kind of loud and there’d be people at parties and there were always people joking, and if you were fast and quick-witted and funny, then you’d fit in.’

His creative process is one of a craftsman, of trial and error. Saunders throws his ideas at a wall and goes with what sticks.

‘I think you’re sort of like a starving person in a war-torn country, ‘What do you do for food?” Saunders said. ”Anything. Go in a dumpster? Sure. Rob a rich guy? Yeah.’ So when you’re looking for a story idea, you really can’t be choosy.’

Even with his success, Saunders still wants to develop, still wants to grow as a writer. He said he always wants his style to evolve.

‘It has to,’ he said. ‘There were times when I thought I had a style and that’s when you know you’re writing a clunker.’

On leave from SU for the year as a result of the Guggenheim fellowship, Saunders now has his time to write. He can take breaks, take out the garbage, surf the Internet or do meditation, whatever he feels like. The checks come in from the MacArthur Foundation every three months, so money’s less of an issue now.

‘Really, I’m just trying to write two good stories a year,’ Saunders said. ‘If I can do that, I’m good.’

Published on February 8, 2007 at 12:00 pm