Tenth of December: Stories

Perceptive, frequently hilarious, and sometimes quite moving, these stories are masterfully crafted and quite attention-grabbing. So much so that I finished the collection in just two days! Probably not the ideal way to read it; I felt some of the stories suffered a bit from the proximity in my brain to the previous ones I had just read. I might have to reread to fully appreciate some of them. That being said, I have already read my favorite story in the collection, "Sticks", several times -- easy to do, because it's only one page long! Bleak yet quite funny, it sketches a whole life story in a few brief strokes. A model of narrative economy.

It’s not that often I find myself compelled to start with raving about a writer’s style, but with George Saunders it’s kind of inevitable. His handling of language is so wonderful, creating worlds and long backstories with just a flick of the pen, shifting between voices of different narrators, writing “poor” or “wrong” language with an amazing exactness – and even flawlessly pulling off show-off stunts like letting a character’s verbal-skill-enhancing or chivalry-inducing drug take effect in mid-sentence.

But this is far from an empty show. Saunders has a razor sharp eye for the hollowness, cruelty and despair of western life in general, and American life in particular, and the bleak images he paints ring chillingly, show more and hilariously, true. But mixed in there are always slivers of kindness, the attempts at decency his clumsy, shy main characters tend to make. This last bit, the drama of human interaction between flawed, strange people is much more evident in this book than in his previous ones. Scared, flawed people still making some brave, compassionate choices when they have to populate this slim book. They leave me filled with more hope than anything else:

The suicidal man who has to choose to save a young lad who’s just gone through the ice, instead of sticking with his plan of freezing to death. The overprotected kid, who has to break the zillion house rules surrounding him to save the neighbor girl from trouble. And the lifetime prisoner in a corporate facility, where he is undergoing constant experiments with emotion-manipulating drugs, who finally finds a way to beat the system.

But of course the landscape Saunders has travelled before, the distorted, depraved, capitalist America is here as well. “Exhortation” is a long, painfully flat office memo about keeping an optimistic attitude. “Home” lets us follow a war veteran who at every losing turn is greeted by an anxious “Thank you for your service”. And “The Semplica-Girl Diaries”, exploring double standards and our need to self-justification through the idea of third world women as lawn ornaments. At the hands of another writer, it could have been just blunt. With Saunders, it is a real punch in the gut.

Tenth of December fills me with hope and anger. It makes me laugh and cry. It’s quite possibly the best book I’ve read all year. show less

Saunders's stories in this collection are imaginative and fascinating. Some are chilling, some are sad, some hilarious. He often uses the inner voices and thoughts of the characters to unveil the story lines; very little of the writing is in the third person. He masterfully captures the pitch of the thinking and expression of diverse protagonists with subtly and uncanny faithfulness to their characters. I especially liked "Escape from Spiderhead", neuro-pharmacology gone amok. One is drawn to think of big questions about the ethics of brain science. "The Semplica Girl Diaries" with its theme of "keeping up with the Jones's" has a bizarre plot element that devastates our society's obsession with materialism; how ludicrous and damaging show more can be status-seeking through the acquisition of "stuff". "My Chivalric Fiasco" is laugh out loud funny; here too mind-altering drugs are at play.

The book well deserves the high praise of its reviews. show less

What makes a short story good? I mean the kind where you get to the end and maybe sit there thinking, "What just happened?" and further "What just happened to me?" The writer took you somewhere unexpected, but once arrived, you can't avoid facing that it's the right place (often a place you didn't really want to go.) The final story, "The Tenth of December" is especially like that and I am going to keep this book around to remind me of the point it makes, which I can't take apart here or I would be spoiling it for you. You could argue that his stories and a couple of others, because they have (in a way) "happy" (not really) endings that they are sentimental, but how can a story about a boy finding his courage be sappy? Most of the time, show more in fact, people notice, say, that the baby is crawling too near the pool or about to pull the tablecloth off the loaded table; most of the time, you brake, you swerve, you do the right thing. Sometimes there is no right choice to make, they are all bad and Saunders writes about that with profound compassion and rightness. The majority of the stories are about the way circumstances can force a person to make those hard choices, to give in or to find the strength (courage) to resist, or act or do whatever the circumstances require of them. Sometimes a character does the right thing for the wrong reasons and ends up somewhere new and we watch a their surprise and we end up surprised too, but with a slightly additional (parental?) layer of knowing how hard this new resolve or insight is going to be for that person to hang onto. Saunder's writing style will either drive you mad or you will fall into its embrace, and yes, I wrote this review just slightly under his spell because that is the effect reading Saunders has; he brings out that hesitating layered way we actually think, two steps forward, one back. I've read pretty much all of these in the NYer at one time or another and was thrilled to revisit. One of my very favorites is "My Chivalric Fiasco" which is just funny-awful but somehow full of charm. ***** show less

Astonishingly assured writing of characters so hesitant and fragile that your heart breaks for them. This is George Saunders at his best. With stories so lean that each individual word is vitally important. And even the nuance is nuanced.

Every story in this collection deserves mention as both typical of Saunders’ earlier style, and adventurously striking new ground. With “Escape from Spiderhead” and “My Chivalric Fiasco” we see the satirical Saunders’ alternate future, complete with chemically induced mood, emotion and diction. These are at once lighter than some of his previous satires but perhaps (or because of that) even more cutting. A Saunders protagonist may hope for, even expect, at least within in his own mind, the show more world to bend itself to his needs and goals, but will find himself almost invariably brought back to reality, or lower, when the world insists on its own integrity.

Saunders is a master of the exorbitant monologue, here represented by “Exhortation” and “The Semplica Girl Diaries”, or the sad sack “Al Roosten”. But perhaps even more impressive are the stories which function as dualistic monologues—not dialogues, to be sure, but rather alternating monologues. Both the opening, shockingly surprising, story, “Victory Lap”, and the concluding title story, “Tenth of December”, take this form. The latter must surely stand as one of the finest, saddest, and bravest short stories I have ever encountered. With characters so vulnerable, so susceptible to destruction by themselves and others, only Saunders’ love for them can sustain them, even help them succeed beyond their own imaginings.

The writing is so swift and spare that a story almost sweeps past you. So take the opportunity to read it again and you will find that you will want to read it yet again, even. Highly recommended. show less

This collection didn't disappoint, though I did find it overall a bit darker than I remembered his writing being. So perhaps this is a change for him or I just haven't read as much of his stuff as I thought I had.

My favorite stories in here are "Victory Lap" and "Escape from Spiderhead." The latter is a sci-fi tale of a future where drugs can cause people to fall in and out of love, and the decisions a man must make while serving as a test subject for the drugs. "Victory Lap" is more interesting for its manner of telling, rotating among several perspectives. What interests me about this story is the way Saunders disorients the reader when he first begins shifting perspectives. It wasn't clear to me that the story would do this as the show more first section focuses on Allison. But soon there is a fairly jarring shift to Kyle and then to the guy who attacks Allison. One thing Saunders does quite well is mixing up the voice of the characters, differentiating one from another. It's not just in their language, but there's a real sense of being inside Kyle's head (and there's a sense that his head is not like anyone else's).

A theme I see running through many of the stories is the differences between how people view themselves versus how others view them. In both "Al Roosten" and "Puppy" this theme is at the forefront—Al Roosten is a man who thinks more of himself (or wants to think more of himself) than others around him do, while "Puppy" alternates between the point of view of two woman, one giving away a puppy and one going to pick it up. But key is how each views the woman giving the puppy away—essentially that is the story.

It was probably Saunders's sense of humor I loved most in earlier stories of his I've read, but in this collection, I find a few of the attempts at humor some of the weakest links, for example the short story "Exhortation" (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is one of the shorter pieces). The six pages are written as a memorandum from a dept. manager trying to psych his team up to perform better because of the pressure he is under from above. It seems like an extended joke, one that perhaps goes on for a few pages too long. We get it when he has lines like "Andy entered a sort of...de facto Hall of Fame, and is pretty much henceforth excluded from any real close monitoring of his numbers..." followed several sentences later with a discussion of "that troubling falloff in Andy's numbers." But I struggle to find a deeper meaning beyond the repeated easy jokes.

Overall, a very fine collection. I particularly appreciate the varying structures to many of the stories. Saunders doesn't just tell good stories, but he tells them in new and interesting ways show less

A brilliant collection of ten short stories from George Saunders – funny, poignant, and touching on things like class, aging, and the dehumanizing aspects of modern science. There is creativity and breadth here, an easy flow to the writing, and great pace. I also liked the excerpt of the conversation Saunders had with David Sedaris about the writing process itself that was present in this volume, which also talked about the semi-sacred, near-holy aspect of reading.

Favorites:
Tenth of December – the title story is actually last in the collection, but is so brilliant and memorable that I put at the top of the list. In it, an elderly man with a terminal illness elects to end his (and his family’s) suffering by hiking out into the snow show more of a deserted area. A boy with an active imagination is also out there, however, and they’re destined to meet. The imaginations of these two people, at such opposite ends of life, their struggles, and the great humanism in how the story plays out were masterful. Considering my own father at the end of his days while reading this was devastating.

Victory Lap – a story of a kidnapping attempt cleverly told through the eyes of three people – a teenage girl (the intended victim), the criminal, and the teenage boy across the street. The boy’s parents are very strict, making the description of his life pretty funny, and we hear their voices in his mind, just as we hear the criminal’s parents’ voices in his. Parenting styles are thus reflected in these people – e.g. probably loving and supporting (resulting in a fanciful imagination and maybe naively opening the door to a stranger), cruel (resulting in cruelty), and ridiculously structured (resulting in rebelling in imagined obscenities but still feeling the heaviness of their instructions within his mind). A very well-executed story.

Puppy – also very well done, and another window into parenting, this time with mom who is fully invested and supportive of her kids (tellingly a reaction to how poor her own mother had been), travelling to look at a puppy that’s up for adoption. Even in how the woman thinks of the playfulness of her husband, and the strength of her faith and optimism, we sense that the kids are in a wonderful family. Once they get to the place with the puppy, however, they get a disturbing glimpse into a family living in filth with a ‘problem child’ chained up in the back, which is quite a contrast. Saunders wisely humanizes the mother in that environment and gives her a lovely thought: “Love was liking someone how he was and doing things to help him get even better,” but still paints a pretty horrifying picture.

Escape from Spiderhead – really enjoyed this one, a tale of near-futuristic experimentation on prisoners, where scientists inject them with advanced drugs to cause specific reactions. We see a broad spectrum of drugs, including one that induce the person to see another as their deepest possible soulmate, and one that causes horrible feelings of pain and depression. I loved it because it hints at how delicate our brain chemistries are, just a little tweak here and there and suddenly our entire outlooks are changed, which rings true, and because it touches on how cruel people can be, thinking they’re acting for the greater good. Well written, and could see this one expanded and made into a film.

The Semplica Girl Diaries – a story that parodies a man through his diary entries, recounting his attempts to be a good parent and to have the better things in life like his daughter’s rich friends. It’s got some of those same elements of humor, but then the horror of what the rich friends have gradually unfolds, giving the story a very dark edge. The only thing that wore on me a bit was the semi-literate narration from the diary entries, which pushed the boundaries of enjoyability given this story’s length, 60 pages.

My Chivalric Fiasco – A janitor at a medieval theme park stumbles across his boss raping a co-worker, and in the effort to insuring his silence, finds himself promoted to playing one of the costumed roles. As part of that role he’s given a designer drug meant to make him speak as a knight would, but it has the side effect that it also makes him more honorable – thus making it hard for him to hold his tongue about the crime. It’s a creative, funny story, and the narration that’s modulated to the drug’s onset and gradual withdrawal is clever.

Others:
Sticks – literally two pages long, detailing a family ritual of decorating a metal pole in the yard, and how it reflects the psyche of the father in increasingly blunt ways as he gets older. An interesting little vignette that speaks to regret and loss, but it would have been nice if it had been further developed.

Exhortation – An email sent to the employees of a company asking them to work harder, where the humor comes from just how non-self-aware the manager is, and how he contradicts himself in his lame attempt to improve morale. Lots of fun probably for anyone who has been in a corporate environment.

Al Roosten – A middle-aged man who runs a failing business volunteers himself for a fundraising auction where people bid on having lunch with him and others, including a more successful and attractive man that he alternately envies, hates, and befriends in his imagination. It’s funny how he consistently sees himself as better than he is, e.g. during the auction or thinking he can become mayor, and so when Saunders shows him thinking he’s better than the homeless, who he refers to as “hobos” and thinks of in an old-fashioned way of stealing pies off windowsills, we see even more how out of touch he is (and how he may become homeless someday).

Home – Probably the least successful story for me; a veteran who was dishonorably discharged returns to his hometown to see his mother, who is living with a deadbeat, and his sister and her husband. While Saunders is talking about class in this story and several others, here it just felt rather dull, and I wish he had delved a little more into the vet’s psyche after what he had seen and taken part in while in the military. show less