George Saunders ’ write up have always been fairly uncheerful — there are decrepit and hapless themeparks , multitude trap in miserable and demeaning situations , vicious company memos and awful experiments . Buthis latest book , Tenth of December , feels more barren and horrible than ever . And it ’s like a hilariously drear status update from twenty-first century America , where everyone is sputter and becoming complicit in the awful system .
Spoilers forrader …
Top image:“Semplica Girl Diaries ” by Martin Ansin .
Saunders is pretty well known for his dystopian storytelling , in which personal humiliation is link up to cooperation in a morally bereft system . What ’s fresh in Tenth of December , though , is the flavors of degradation that he manages to divulge , and the many types of complicity that he expose . These are people who participate in their own demolition , or who attempt to keep their header above water even if that means push others underneath . The main constant , as always , is a good sense of absurdity and its cheeseparing neighbor , futility .
And these are definitely stories of “ first world problems . ” Given that this has become something of a meme recently among the elect and the extremely educate — the very sort of people most potential to pick this book up in its current hardcover version — it ’s interesting that Saunders shows just what it mean to live in the first earthly concern and have problems .
All of these stories take situation in a United States that ’s either some fantastical reflexion of the present - Clarence Shepard Day Jr. U.S. , or a slightly more forward-looking , more charge one . And the default Assumption of Mary in these stories is that everybody ought to be doing okay — we ’re Americans , we ’re heavily - make for multitude , we ’re all say to be vaguely middle grade even if we ’re drowning in debt or getting evicted from our homes .
The more fantastic tale in Tenth of December are also the ones which seem to have the most to say about complicity . Saunders does n’t reach for science - fictional plot machine , by and tumid , as a means to illuminate something about his graphic symbol or to drive his plots , as such — rather , he ’s interested in the manner applied science and weird skill both force us to enter in oppression and give us a degree of interactivity that lets us accede in our degradation . His whiz - bang innovation are often inessential to the story as such , but let an additional degree of tongue - twist .
For example , in the narration “ The Semplica - Girl Diaries , ” you could well murder the one fantastic chemical element : the titular S.G.s , who are a miracle of engineering and post - colonial exploitation . ( I wo n’t give away just what the S.G.s are , since it ’s a uncanny thing that sort of snitcher up on you over the course of the story . ) But the surreal , skill - fancied nature of the S.G.s adds a whole supernumerary layer of weirdness to the story of a family who are scarce acquire by , crushed under a load of debt , until they have a windfall that finally lets them show a too big for one’s breeches family in their townsfolk a fancy meter .
And “ Semplica Girl Diaries ” is plausibly also the best example of what I intend when I say these are stories about first - world problem . Like a passel of Saunders ’ protagonists , the main character of “ Semplica ” is a solve schmoe who ’s got aspirations ( or sometimes delusion ) of fanciness in spite of his credit cards all being maxed out . And you feel his desperation to make his two little girls glad , and be a good Father-God , and provide for his daughters not just corporeal well - being but societal status . And part of the way he negociate to do this is by participating in totally heinous handling of some lady friend from various third - humanity countries .
Part of what piddle these fib so painful , and so funny , is the direction that Saunders commingle together the awe of total economic unsuccessful person with the fear of just not being good enough , of social annihilation . He drag the reader into the head of his pitiful grapheme , through their neurotic internal monologues and imaginary conversations with people who are n’t present , until you have no alternative but to sympathize with them even as they make ( in some case ) terrible choices . Saunders gets compare to lots of classic American writers , from Twain to Vonnegut , but he ’s also forthright in the British tradition of can’t - bear - to - search abasement comedy , from Tom Sharpe to John Cleese .
I feel like I sympathize with these characters a lot more than I did the heroes in Pastoralia , the last Saunders volume I read — but that degree of identification does n’t leaven the irony in this book . If anything , it just take a shit the sarcasm more vicious . This is also some of the most powerful written material Saunders has ever bring forth , rival the visual acuity of his old mentor Tobias Wolff .
The other big risky element in this script that jump out out at you is the uncanny drugs that produce eloquence , or feeling of love life , or despair , or the ability to do really good improv , that get administered in a couple of the stories in this book . “Escape from Spiderhead”is probably the most fascinating , memorable chronicle in the Quran , as a prisoner gets dosed with various intellect - vary drug that ways that seem random at first but become more and more obviously sinister .
As with a lot of Saunders , these stories feature a sort of nattering glibness , especially from authority shape who want to shell your individual while maintaining the slight pretense of being your protagonist . I suspect a braggart lump of Saunders ’ popularity come from the way he entrance so absolutely the voice of the “ sympathetic ” middle coach , and the tang of embodied double - speak . One story in the young bulk , “ Exhortation,”is literally just a memoranda from some faceless team leaders to their underlings , encouraging them to keep bringing a positive position to some bodily process that — you may notice a trend here — comes to feel more and more sinister .
Perhaps sense that we need to be eased in and out of this cheerless world , Saunders commence and ends the volume with two fairly more bright stories . In both stories , someone breaks through his inner soliloquy of nebbishy despair , and in reality manages to save someone else ’s life sentence .
But for the most part these stories are as staring , and as beast , as any of the dystopias that Saunders has produced . The best of these stories contain prototype and weird turns of phrase that linger in your head after you ’re done reading , along with a sense of uneasiness that you ’ve glimpsed something you really should n’t have seen , something laying underneath the surface of your first human beings liveliness .
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