Tenth of December
March 2013
George Saunders / Bloomsbury
Over the last decade, the news coming out of America hasn’t always been so pretty: war, torture, financial decline, guns, the ongoing bloom of neo-liberalism and its attendant culture of ecstatic consumerism, the increasingly bizarre descent into a parallel political universe. You only have to look as far as Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to realise that, possibly, the only real triumph in US public discourse in this period has been the continuation of its love affair with satire.
The satirical inflection in the American voice is always heard loudest in the face of absurdity: Mark Twain on racism, Lenny Bruce on obscenity, Kurt Vonnegut on war. George Saunders is one of satire’s more important practitioners; in this, his fifth book of short fiction, he speaks the absurdity of the times in voices that are odd, original, funny and disturbing.
Saunders’ satire focuses on subjects rather than targets: sexual violence; exploitative consumerism; war crimes and PTSD; the humiliations of work and social climbing; and the monetisation of the body and personality.
‘Escape from Spiderhead’ is a story reminiscent of the near-future, hyper- or post-consumer dystopias of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. A prisoner exchanges his detention in a harsh prison for a spot in a relatively cushy private facility, where he becomes a test subject for behaviour-manipulating drugs like the sinister Darkenfloxx™ and Verbaluce™. At stake is a potential fortune in the unethical trial of the not-yet trademarked love-regulating drug ED289/290.
In ‘Semplica-Girl Diaries’ the morally blind foundations of consumerism are exposed at the suburban level. Here a financially-struggling father, who keeps a sometimes morose and unintentionally hilarious diary, uses a sudden windfall to buy for his daughter the latest must-have yard accessory: a set of Semplica Girls, whose actual, disturbing provenance doesn’t become clear until partway through the story. It’s here that Saunders gets closest to a kind of stand-up character monologue that masks what becomes a very suburban gothic horror story. ‘Am not tired of work,’ writes the diarist, ‘I am privileged to work. I do not hate the rich. I aspire to be rich myself. And when we finally do get our own bridge, trout, treehouse, SGs, etc., at least will know we really earned them, unlike, say, the Torrinis, who, I feel, must have family money.’
Yet, rather than simply burn down his straw figures, Saunders manages to humanise them. He shows them as being capable of love, regret, honesty. Often this humanity is wrought from facing up to the truths of mortality. If the collection has a leitmotif, it is in a forced, nervous refrain of laughter that appears in more than one story: ‘ha ha ha!’, and which speaks to the desire to mask the existential awfulness of the everyday. Saunders leavens the ruined lives, the violence and disappointment of his characters’ worlds, with the possibility of reaching out and finding life to be worth living. His message? Where there’s now, there’s hope. And that also sounds vaguely American.
Other Articles You May Like
Fleshy Husks and Brittle Bones: Visible Ink 24
Fleshy Husks and Brittle Bones: Visible Ink 24 is RMIT’s contribution to the array of literary journals being produced every…
The Best Australian Essays 2012
Ramona Koval (ed.) / Black Inc.
New Finnish Grammar
Diego Marani / Text Publishing
Galleries
Weather
20°Latest Edition
