Quite simply, this is
the greatest collection of fucked-up short stories I’ve read since Will Self’s Grey Area. The latter is a book of
way-out plots presented in a relatively straightforward manner (plus, the language
is beautiful and almost conventional – by Self’s standards). By contrast, Tenth Of December is made up of way-out plots weirded out even further by broken, bizarre presentation. In fact, your
appreciation of these stories will very much depend on your acceptance of
George Saunders’ style. Which comes off as deliberately careless and
unintentionally clever.
My reaction after
reading each one of these stories was more or less the same: well, this is
weird – but it’s really good, too. The book contains freak diaries, interior
monologues, multiple narrators speaking in tongues (I may be exaggerating here);
you won’t be just enjoying these stories, the enjoyment can hardly be
guaranteed, you will also have to make sure you know what is actually going on.
It can be argued that the whole point and appeal of a story like
“Exhortation” is that the reader has to find out/guess the job of the narrator.
It’s not a tiresome post-modernist puzzle, but it’s certainly a great example of
art that is well-crafted and understated.
When you get inside the
world created here (and it is a
world, Saunders’ style beautifully ties together all these ten stories into an
odd little universe of mostly amiable freaks and losers), you will see that
it’s really quite simple. Take David Lynch’s Eraserhead as an example. Behind the grotesque make-up and the
disturbing visuals, you actually get a very familiar portrait of young family
life. Much here is just as recognizable: a soldier coming home from war, an
employee seeing his boss having sex with another employee, a small guy burnt by
jealousy and his own smallness. It’s never too
simple, however, and there’s no shortage of the author’s wild imagination
messing with your head. “Escape From Spiderland”, a futuristic tale of
sex/love experiments, is particularly good in that respect.
Also, barring some
eccentrics (see “Sticks”, which is a perfect one-page story), there are lots of
seemingly straightforward characters here. But only seemingly so, ‘seemingly’
the result of odd circumstances and their often unexpected heroic (or ‘heroic’)
actions. See “My Chivalric Fiasco”, see “Victory Lap” (my favourite), see the aforementioned “Escape From Spiderland”.
Perhaps the best thing about
Tenth Of December is that these are
all memorable stories, which is probably the combination of 'huh?' moments
(how about the weird, harrowing perversion in “Puppy”?), George Saunders’ great
sense of humour and, obviously, the style. I’d very much recommend staying with
that style, trying to immerse yourself into that deceptively perfunctory, elliptical English. It’s
not perfect (this sort of writing is bound to lose you on occasion), and I’d
say the collection is a little front-loaded, but as far as truly great literary
experiences go, believe me – this is the real deal.
8/10
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