Tenth of December

Author: George Saunders

Rating: ⭐ 5/5

Date Read: 2013/09/30

Pages: 251

George Saunders is a freaking genius. This isn’t particularly surprising, given that he won the MacArthur genius award and all, but it’s worth reiterating.

Here’s the thing about short stories: there’s no time for sloppy technique. Short stories are most effective when they’re written so that readers immediately latch on to some aspect of the story: the plot, the characters, the emotion, the style. In a novel, readers sometimes need to toil through the set up to get to the good part. With a short story, it all has to be the good part.

That Saunders can write a technically perfect short story while still being weird and experimental is pretty cool. That he can make this all hilarious, and at the same time toy with your emotions, is almost unbelievable. I’d like to describe the stories a bit, but they’re kind of indescribable. Saunders sometimes gets compared to Vonnegut, which I can totally see, but with all due respect to Vonnegut (who I quite like), Saunders writes better short stories.

The only explanation for how good this: the MacArthur Foundation is really just a front for some sort of contemporary Faustian organization on a massive scale. To which, I must say, if this is the result, keep on keeping on.