By Zack Gill
Copy Editor
“Victory Lap,” the opening story of George Saunders’ latest short story collection, “Tenth of December,” opens lucidly and audaciously. Through a lyrical, cryptic stream of consciousness, Saunders enters the mind of an adolescent girl in under 10 pages. But that’s only half of the story. Then she gets abducted by a knife-wielding man dressed as a gas meter reader.
Saunders never fails to surprise. His newest collection is simultaneously haunted and human, often surrendering his signature technobabble for something more personal. In past works, Saunders dazzled with his vision of a world doomed by capitalism, and he touches on some of those themes in this collection. Saunders accomplished what few writers can; through his distinct voice he can enter the minds of others at will.
Point-of-view seems to be Saunder’s key focus of observation throughout the collection. He describes the differences and similarities between all of us, and how they drive us in interaction and in life. Saunders re-uses “Victory Lap”’s narrative mode in the title story, this time examining two characters instead of three, namely, an anti-social child playing in the woods and the suicidal brain cancer patient he finds there. Saunders is masterful with voice; in a clever authorial device, the cancer patient repeatedly minces words and corrects himself in his inner monologue, denoting the progressed stage of his illness.
Saunders also focuses on socioeconomic class, as he has done repeatedly in the past. “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” one of the collection’s funniest stories, features Semplica Girls, indentured servants from the third world (complete with anglicized names; the Somali semplica becomes “Lisa”) that the American wealthy literally hang up in their yard for decoration and that act as perfect metaphors for American entitlement and exploitation of the developing world. “Puppy” chronicles two mothers from disparate economic situations and their approaches to parenting .
Still, though, Saunders’ work rooted firmly within his wheelhouse is the best of the collection. Saunders’ past collections, such as “Pastoralia” and “In Persuasion Nation,” take place in skewed, dystopic mirrors of the world where capitalism drives mad science and product development are national pastimes.
“Escape from Spiderhead” would feel more at home in one of those collections, then, in its portrayal of a prisoner in a facility where convicts are forced to test cutting-edge chemicals that make inmates fall in love, speak with enhanced vocabulary, and feel agonizing pain. The story reiterates Saunders’ oeuvre, but he refrains from stealing from himself. Saunders tells largely the same story, but he has found a better way to do so, and “Escape from Spiderhead”’s conclusion is one of the most arresting in literary short fiction in quite some time.
“My Chivalric Fiasco” also returns to Saunders’ past, but in a lighter manner. It tells the story of an employee of a living medieval museum (think Colonial Williamsburg, but with knights) where the actors are given pills that “enhance” their performance. In yet another inspired bit of authorial invention, after the protagonist takes his medication, the story’s prose shifts to a comical medieval dialect, and then shifts back to modern language as the medication wears off.
Saunders is more magician than writer, then, in his newest collection, “Tenth of December,” an inhibitor of psychic spaces both foreign and distinctly his own. Critic Michael Silverplatt recently plodded Saunders for not having written a novel yet, but Saunders’ overwhelming brilliance might actually be too much in such a concentrated dose; it might be simply maddening. “Tenth of December” is available in bookstores and for download.
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