Book author: George Saunders

There is nothing particularly surprising about what George Saunders writes about the process, but it is delightful to explore these stories alongside an intelligent and attentive mind, encouraging the reader to pay as much attention as he does and showing how essential that meticulous attention really is to the process of writing, reading and generally existing in the world as a human striving to understand others and the world around us. 

Continue reading A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Lincoln in the Bardo is a strange and remarkable book. Set against quotations from documents written in the time of Lincoln’s presidency – quotations which privilege the elusive nature of fact and truth in the face of multiple perspectives – are excerpts of the voices of the dead residing in the cemetery in which Willie Lincoln, President Lincoln’s son, is interred. We see the Lincolns hosting a party while their son lies sick upstairs. We watch the funeral. And we witness Willie Lincoln rise up from his grave, missing his father.

There is something delightful, playful, about the mixture of fact and invention, especially when both are shown to be questionable. The President’s eyes change colour depending upon the account and most of the ghosts think themselves merely sick, despite having to return to their rotting bodies every night. Continue reading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Tenth of December is a kind of monstrous collection – monstrous in that it acts as a portent, a warning of what life has in store, of how soon life is over, of how easy it is to exploit others and take a misstep along the road of social cohesion. The way that Saunders happily throws genres into the blending pot and creates stories with surreal, dream-like edges that can send a reader into labyrinths of possible actions and paths is reminiscent of Borges. What he adds to all of this is humour. This is a writer you want to meet, someone who you feel has truly written themselves onto the page, someone prepared to tell the truth about what they see in this world of ours.

In ‘The Semplica Girl Diaries’ his narrator is writing about his life for future generations. Not long after winning money on a scratch card, he writes:

“Have been sleepingwalking through life, future reader. Can see that now. Scratch-Off win was like wake-up call. In rush to graduate college, win Pam, get job, make babies, move ahead in job, forget former feeling of special destiny I used to have when tiny, sitting in cedar-smelling bedroom closet, looking up at blowing trees through high windows, feeling I would someday do something great.” (location 1786)

Saunders writing is a like a “wake-up call”. It is innovative, anarchic even. He isn’t afraid to play with language or grammar if it better tells his story and this playful fearlessness is wonderfully refreshing.

I’ve read one other George Saunders book and was struck then in the same way. Here is a unique, embracing voice. A voice that would flounder in England without the kind of accolades Saunders work comes with from America. I can think of several English short-story writers who have a similar mix of the bureaucratic-bizarre – Guy Ware, Adam Marek, Paul Blaney – but we don’t seem to grasp and reward these writers. I wish we did.

I don’t want to summarise the stories. I don’t want to say, oh, in this one… I just want you to read this collection.

Next week I’ll be reading Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson.