"In his nonfiction book 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”' (2021), about reading the Russian masters, he described 'people who’ve put reading at the center of their lives because they know from experience that reading makes them more expansive, generous people.'"

"This is pleasant to imagine, and I suppose it’s true up to a point, but who doesn’t know a lot of big readers who are jackasses from head to toe? One thing’s certain: The writers who insist on the morally improving nature of fiction, and who robe themselves in the folds of wisdom or beneficence, tend to be the ones to avoid. 'If there is any test that can be applied to movies,' Pauline Kael wrote — her test applies to books, too — 'it’s that the good ones never make you feel virtuous.' Saunders’s new novel, 'Vigil,' is slim, about the size of Mitch Albom’s memoir 'Tuesdays with Morrie' or Richard Bach’s novella 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull.' It’s not as soft and shallow and saccharine and strenuously earnest as those books, but it’s not impossibly far off. It’s a hot-water bottle in print form. It’s going to be an enormous best seller for depressing reasons.... [I]t’s about an angel named Jill who presides at the deathbed of an oil tycoon and determined planet despoiler named K.J. Boone...."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "George Saunders Serves a Heavy Helping of Virtue in a New Novel/In 'Vigil,' an oil tycoon on his deathbed receives a visit from an angel" (NYT).