“George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

That was the headline in the NYT.  Well, you can’t really ignore that, can you?  I guess not.  Saunders has published several books.  The first came out in 1996.  Why haven’t I heard of him?  Why haven’t I read him?  He was close to DFW.  He’s well known in certain literary circles.

Shame on me.

My new hero

So I read his latest story collection, “Tenth of December”, and yes, it may well be the best (new) book I’ll read this year.  It is extraordinary.  Ten stories.  Each in its own distinct voice.  A bit of avant-garde here and there.  But these stories all get to an emotional (if complex) truth, a place of intense feeling that can be scary, telling, funny, reassuring, and loving all at the same time.  At heart Saunders seems to be quite traditional, even if the surface is modern, or even a bit post-modern.  FINALLY, a writer that uses experimental techniques in the service of old-fashioned goals.  FINALLY a writer that is truly comfortable in the 21^st century, a writer that can use modern technique without waving the post-modern flag, and he doesn’t require the reader to enter the writer’s self-conscious ‘Creative Writing Workshop’.  We can read Saunders and relax.  We can savor our role as a reader. He’s the writer, we’re his readers.  Simple.  Also rare these days among forward-thinking writers.

A favorite and representative passage.  It comes from the end of the title story.  The characters have been through a wrenching and complicated experience:

‘They were sorry, they were saying with their bodies, they were accepting each other back, and that feeling, that feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever . . .’

There’s some sci-fi, there’s humor, there’s poignancy.  I won’t reveal details.  Just read it.  You won’t be sorry.  The writing is challenging in places.  There are times when the reader doesn’t know quite what’s what.  But it all sorts out soon enough, at least enough to be satisfying.  Some ambiguity remains.  There is no preaching, there are few judgments.  Humanity abounds.

And there is plenty of really good writing.  Each story seems to start from a particular writer’s place, a certain voice, rhythm, dialect, point of view.  And Saunders runs with it, spins it out in front of our very eyes.  He never breaks character, and he never goes for the cheap shot or the cheap laugh.

I pledge that sooner or later I will read everything he’s published.

Very happy.