In spite of short story writer George Saunders breaking the curse of G.O.A.T. by writing a celebrated, Man Booker Prize winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, it seems that title will stick with him. He’s relentless in his output, so much so that he even has a Substack (Story Club with George Saunders, of course!), which is almost too much of a good thing, where he delves into the minutia and dissection of his writing.
The joy with which he writes is not explicitly reflected in his subject matter, which is apparent after reading his exegetic book on Russian short stories, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, alongside the new collection of nine stories, Liberation Day. The striking contrast between the Russians and his own work is the artificial surroundings he puts his characters into. Nature is not within the capacity of the characters to acknowledge, who are more caught in their particular psychologies than in the bizarre trappings of their worlds. These are simulations of naturalism, as if this in itself is a component of the modern world.
Saunders’s characters make occasional observations about these half-realized worlds but otherwise, no logic is available for why they are in a subterranean theme park—with hints of climate crisis—that never has guests (“Ghoul”). Or, why a group of characters are immobilized prisoners, narrating storylines to reenact historical events—within a subtext of menace as when a group of terrorists crashes the performance—in “Liberation Day”. Overall, these stories have their moments of Saunders’ brio and brilliance, but the underlying sense of dread is inescapable.
Saunders uses a concocted high diction in some of these voices—a feature in Lincoln in the Bardo—and this humorous style has become his trademark. Here’s the contemplative protagonist of “Ghoul” in Saunders-speak:
Someday I, too, may be old, knees giving out, some group of Squatting Ghouls as yet unborn (or currently mere Li’l Demons, running around in their bright red diapers) allowing elder me, kaput like Leonard, to sit on, perhaps, this very same plastiform Remorseful Demon, in that dismal future time!
And another example, in the title story, “Liberation Day”, the imprisoned protagonist laments the limits of communication:
One may talk. But cannot Speak. How could one? To enjoy the particular exhilaration of Speaking, one must be Pinioned. To the Speaking Wall.
Otherwise, one speaks like this.
As I am speaking to you now.
Plain, uninspired, nothing of beauty about it.
In contrast to his earlier collection, Tenth of December, these stories feel less buoyed by hope. Many are less assured of their outcomes and can occasionally feel half-baked. Their resolutions are uncomfortably open-ended, with little sense that the tragedy is ending anytime soon.
Saunders has always toyed with his character’s naivete, and that innocence had a way of sustaining the reader’s faith. But the political has indelibly crept into Saunders’s work. (As evinced here). Perhaps he is channeling the despair that is lately all too pervasive in the public sphere, and the sense of redemption has become more difficult to conjure.
In an interview on KQED’s Forum program last week, Saunders discussed this new collection, and his enviable exuberance with writing, and the paradox within which he conjures the unpleasant world of his characters. Early on in the interview, Saunders talks about how a short story can become a “little empathy machine.” He goes on to say, “Where my heart is, is to say, ‘dear little character, I put you at the bottom of the well. What are you going to do with that?’” Though at times tortured, his characters are rarely self-loathing. They still exist in hope, a concept Saunders toggles and sends out like a tether. Or a fishing line.
I had an opportunity to email a question to Saunders: “Do you find it's difficult to negotiate between that sense of humanity and open heartedness that you discuss finding in the Russian stories (in your book, "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain"), and trying to make sense of our contemporary life/current political situation?”
Saunders replied, quoting Flannery O’Connor: “A man can choose what he writes, but he can’t choose what he makes live.”
He elaborated further. “It’s just a quirk of mine that I do dark, violent beginnings.”
“If I start a story in a really dark place, it’s fun. I have more fun with it. Maybe it’s because I’m not very subtle. But I can get more human emotion out of something that starts in a dark place. And my thought is, where you start a story, you know, the conditions are random.[…] Where we look for meaning and hope is in the next thing.”
Saunders’s characters still exist in hope, a concept he toggles and sends out like a tether. Or a fishing line.
“We are made by our thoughts,” he says, and, in writing, one of the first things he does is to “make up the internal voice.” Saunders is a pantser, in the lingo. He responds to that voice and the predicament and creates as he goes.
Saunders’s dystopias are possibly an acquired taste. “Ghoul” comes as close to the classic Saunders short story as there is, and he admits to attempting to channel his earlier style on this story. However, as along with the title story, death has become an addition to the repertoire, though at times it lands incidentally, and cartoonishly. It does not quite land with the impact of the horror of Shirley Jackson’s iconic short story, “The Lottery,” an analogue to what Saunders is doing. Seventy years later, Jackson’s story still seems apt and contemporary.
Though Saunders can shock in these stories in clever and surprising ways, at times here it can feel more like a commentary on the so-called real world. As such, stories sometimes skate right up to the old promise, and end mercilessly and unresolved. Though I can’t fault the flawless writing, I do have to wonder if the some of his earlier fearless, almost reckless disregard of opinion, hasn’t been tamped down a bit. Still, Saunders is unrivalled for his fascinating take on the apparent shambles of our little world.