Happy Birthday To Me! Earlier This Week!

I received a very unexpected birthday greeting in the mail last Monday. It was from my favorite author, George Saunders! I had no idea he even knew it was my birthday. I mean, yes, important date in the annals of history or something like that but still!

And that's when it was revealed that my beautiful, wonderful and just all-around great fiancee, Ashley, put him up to it. Of course she only asked that he send me a birthday greeting through email, but he was insistent that he just send a card through the mail.

Thank you, Mr. Saunders! I have nothing but praising things to say about you and your work, and I'm glad to add this little bit to the long list of those things:

Books That I Keep Coming Back To For My Reasons

I reread. I don't reread a lot by the standard of some friends of mine, but I reread. There are certain books whose shear force is too much not to return to over and over again. Certain stories within certain books that I cannot forget about and have to keep reading and thinking about. So with that in mind, I thought, for once I'd like to compile them here, on the old blog, in all their glory. I have some things to say about each one, naturally. Take a gander, if you so choose. (Do take a gander at these books for yourselves, regardless of whether you care to read what I have to say about them.)

For as much as Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22 and Mark Twain and dozens of others of the recent or more distant past have had on my perspective about what fiction can do, George Saunders has in so many ways eclipsed them. Perhaps it's because I've had several wonderful encounters with Saunders over the years (not that we're friends by any means, though I can dream, can't I?), but there is such an earnestness to his work and his humor that adds to its potency. The man, himself, in my limited experience, seems to exude these characteristics as well. Though I'm only remarking on two of Saunders' books here, I could just easily include everything he's ever published. It's all very worthy of your time and attention. Rather, I'll let you investigate the entirety of his work yourself. I'll say a few things about the works of his that have resonated most powerfully, and which I return to most frequently. 

Allow me to begin with the one I consider more formative of the two: The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (Riverhead Trade, 2005). A marvel, truly. Few books have captured the attention of summer school students I've taught like this one has. Humorous, certainly, in all the bombastic and wondrously whimsical ways Saunders tends to be. Students identify with the plight of the Inner-Hornerites, their subjugation at the hands of the Outer-Hornerites and specifically a tyrannical, megalomaniacal jackass named Phil, whose cruelty and justification for his cruelty likewise are salient through the eyes of those he oppresses, and those sympathetic to the oppressed. We learn more about Phil than that, though. He's not merely a villain, to be sure. Phil's sad early life is given its due, is taken into consideration. It's not impossible to imagine that Hitler, too, could evoke our sympathy were we to more closely scrutinize his early life, his abusive father, his intense struggle with failure creatively. But like Hitler and the great many other despots who've come and gone in time, Phil is judged ultimately and quite reasonably by his most significant actions -- which is, indeed, a lesson for us all.  

Of all of my favorite Saunders short stories, and there are many, I think more than half are contained within the pages of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (Vintage, 1997). In fact, the only ones not included in this collection that I can definitely say I'd immediately miss are, "Sea Oak," "Escape from Spiderhead," and "The Tenth of December." The titular story in CivilWarLand, meanwhile, is really spectacular. I can't lie, I find myself constantly overly influenced by CivilWarLand and "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," in particular. A lot of things I've written in the past five years got their start merely from wondering WHY can't I write a short story as good as "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline"? I've tried. I'm not George Saunders. Can't be him. Happy with who I am, at last, as a writer. BUT I am thankful there is a George Saunders out there who continues to write disjointed tales in his beautifully idiosyncratic way. The melange of atrophic capitalistic dreams and nightmares fills his pages. Stories rife with the human toll society often takes, as we search hopefully to succeed at the kind of gain this country, at least, suggests is our one monomaniacal purpose on earth. Saunders looks at those who fall between the cracks, live on the margins, don't always get to see the light of day. We care about them because Saunders cares about them, teaches us that they are people, too. And there are more like them. And there's more to them, so much more, than we could possibly have expected at a superficial glance.

Don't Kiss Me (FSG, 2013) is a new classic, which I admit is a strange thing to call it seeing as it was only just released this past July. Lindsay Hunter is a writer you should expect to hear more and more from in the coming years. I was a fan of her work before I ever had the privilege of meeting her, and I was pleased that she's every bit as wonderful and kind and generous as I could hope she'd be. Her stories are amazing. I've heard people compare certain classic writers to her works and writing style, many of the southern tradition, and I would not disagree. Not exactly. BUT, where all that's concerned, I see Lindsay Hunter as a fascinating fusion of Southern and Midwestern traditions. It's no coincidence, I think, that Don't Kiss Me was dedicated to Chicago. She understands certain notions that cross the complexly different and similar sociological patterns of the two cultures. Much as Middle America can look and maybe even feel the same to the outsider, to the East and West Coasters, it really couldn't be more philosophically disparate. And in her fiction, Lindsay Hunter often creates emotional collages of these often contradictory elements. Stories like "After" bring this notion immediately into focus. Certainly, with the ostensible rural dialect of her first-person narrator, you could attribute this story to anyplace outside the urban and suburban sprawl in the post-apocalyptic United States. Anywhere troubles abound, which Lindsay Hunter recognizes seems to be everywhere. It's fun. It's the most fun you'll have in a society of ruin. Lots of gross descriptions loaded with black comedy. Bodies that are literally falling apart. Lindsay Hunter's work tends to walk the tightrope between what could happen and what is surreal. It's a delicate balancing act, but she has a way of making the improbable seem possible and the everyday seem spectacular. It's enviable and I hate her for it. But I get to read her stories, so in the end, I'd say I probably don't actually hate her for it / am happy she's out there, writing. She has a novel in the works. I consider that a very good thing.

As much as I'm thrilled Amelia Gray moved right into prime time with the release of THREATS (FSG, 2012), I'm certain to remain a devotee of Museum of the Weird (Fc2, 2010). With a title like that, how could it not be my favorite of her books? I ask you! And it's truly a museum of the weird. Stories like "Dinner" -- which I've taught to my high school students, and they typically enjoy puzzling over its disgusting dilemma: a woman must decide whether or not to eat a plate of hair. It's perfect for that age, too, because it asks them to reflect upon the possibility of pressure from a peer or more specifically a possible romantic interest and decide how far they'd be willing to go to prove their devotion. (I've yet to meet a student who would eat the hair in that situation, although they have said they'd do it for a lot of money.) There's also the killer who calls himself "God" and removes two ribs from men's rib-cages. 

Amelia Gray has such a gentle style of prose, casual and really pleasant to ease into reading. It is always fun to watch how it reveals her often disturbing or at least irreverent narrative turns. It creates a fantastic amount of tension, too. I suppose I'd liken it to the greats of the past. She brings to mind the matter-of-factness despite its twilight zone subject matter of writers like Shirley Jackson, Roald Dahl and, yes, George Saunders. She's great at picking out minutiae to have her characters obsess over, too, like a bag of frozen tilapia, a human tongue for possible ingestion or the hostage negotiating skills of javelina. Prepare yourself and enjoy. 

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin Books, 2011). I've reread this book a couple times now. It's really a wonder of spare prose and fabulism. Loory is so subtle, so precise with his strangeness. I heard him explain to Brad Listi on the Other People Podcast that he has certain, if I'm not totally bungling this, mathematical methods for determining some of the plot turns and whatnot. That just sounds cool to me. And it works, if that's actually what he does. It works well. His stories are mazes of ambiguity, reminding me of Kafka in some respects but really are something entirely new. Fiction that's all his own. And the darkness that floats through his work is so appealing. Even in stories with "happy endings" we get this sense as readers that the other shoe is soon to drop. Things can be very grim, especially in the world of fiction. It's why we keep reading. We want to see things. Loory wants to tell you things. His characters are meant to experience things. Certainly he develops a sense of who they are, these characters, at their core. But he's more interested in how the nameless will respond in any given situation, at least that's been my takeaway. It's why almost no character in any of the stories, certainly no main character, is referred to as anything other than "the man" or "the woman." You don't need to know. Judge them by their actions, or their paltry little circumstances, as Nietzsche might refer to them.


HONORABLE MENTIONS: Adam Levin's Hot Pink, Mathias Svalina's I Am a Very Productive Entrepreneur, and Patrick Somerville's The Universe in Miniature in Miniature.

George Saunders Now and Forever

So, I don't remember the last time I wrote about George Saunders for any reason in particular. I seem to FIND reasons, generally speaking, even when he's not exactly the central subject matter. I find his story writing so fascinating, though. There's so much to learn from him just by his opening sentences, for example. I'm a firm believer in the first sentence. You gotta write a good one. You gotta write a good story, but a good story can very much start on the wrong foot if the first sentence is bungled. And for my money, nobody writing today does them better than George Saunders.

I'm also interested in the, I think, Hunter S. Thompson system of writing the writing of good writers for yourself, just to get a taste of how it feels to write it. I've handwritten in my weird journal the first sentences of all the stories in Civilwarland in Bad Decline. I'm now going to type them out here. Take a look. See if you see what I mean. Feel free to disagree. Plenty of people do, and often!

"Whenever a potential big investor comes for the tour the first thing I do is take him out to the transplanted Erie Canal Lock."

"The first great act of love I ever witnessed was  Split Lip bathing his handicapped daughter."

"Halfway up the mountain it's the Center for Wayward Nuns, full of sisters and other religious personnel who've become doubtful."

"At noon another load of raccoons comes in and Claude takes them out back of the office and executes them."

"Elizabeth always thought the fake stream running through our complex was tacky."

"My first and favorite task of the day is slaving over the Iliana Evermore Fairy Castle."

"Tonight at last the nation votes."

Reflecting on the Year and Looking to the Future of My Happy Reading

2010 was rife with awesomeness, reading-wise. I've added Philip K. Dick and Vladimir Nabokov to my list of all-time favorite authors. George Saunders remains among my topmost with a really just neat short story, "Escape From Spiderhead," that appeared in the recent issue of The New Yorker. David Markson, though sadly he passed away this year, also left a positive impression on me with "Wittgenstein's Mistress." William Gaddis proved his intangible value in my mind with "J R." Adam Levin and Patrick Somerville are two great young, Chicago-area writers I look forward to continuing things from. I've got "The Instructions" and I'm making headway with that, a really just enjoyable read so far. And I've got "The Cradle" and I'm waiting with bated breath for "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature." A D Jameson is another young Chicago-area writer worthy of note, and not simply because I know him, but because he has produced some damned inventive fiction you ought to check out. (Hell, he introduced me to Philip K. Dick and David Markson's awesomeness, among a great many other things.) Jameson's criticism is always thought-provoking, likewise, and his talent for honest and earnest introspection is unrivaled, as I see it. Lots of men-heavy talk here, but I mustn't forget to mention Lorrie Moore, who has just got lots of stuff that's worth your time. Lindsay Hunter and Karen Russell are two other female authors I've enjoyed in 2010, cannot wait for "Daddy's" to arrive. Oh, and I really enjoyed Shirley Jackson's "The Possibility of Evil," which I look forward to attempting to teach to high school students in 2011.

As for the future, i.e. 2011, well, let's start with several books I've gotten for Christmas. There's "The Physics of Imaginary Objects" by Tina May Hall, and that's just got an awesome title. Then there's "Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls" by Alissa Nutting, which isn't that also an awesome title? "Daddy's" as already mentioned. "The Museum of the Weird" by Amelia Gray. Somerville's titles, "The Cradle" and "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature." Roald Dahl's "My Uncle Oswald." "Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov. Oh and philosophy by Soren Kierkegaard.

It should be a great year! How was your book haul? What do you look forward to in 2011, book-wise?" I'll probably give Nicole Krauss' "Great House" a try, and Jim Shepard's "You Think That's Bad." "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace, also, which seems like a good idea, reading-wise.

A Little More on the George Saunders Front

Last week I wrote of my visit to a George Saunders' reading at Northwestern University, during which he related some of his thoughts apropos of the writer's craft. I, in turn, attempted to relate those thoughts here more or less from memory, and it's possible that something was lost in translation. But the good news is we no longer need leave it to chance that I represented his thoughts accurately, because as guest editor to the writings of Adam Levin and two other young authors in an October 2006 edition of Guernica fiction (viewable in its entirety here) he clearly and explicitly states what he basically said during the NU reading.

The essence of which is as follows, to wit:

The young writer is called upon, in other words, through work and craft and persistence, to take the raw talent he or she has, and force it into some deep, dark corners. . . to try to wrest from "mere" talent a kind of iconic originality...to confront the parts of himself or herself that, in the early days of a career, one thinks can be ignored, or overcome, or hidden under a mattress somewhere. [emphasis mine]

This is, to me, especially with respect to the latter portion I italicized, what the task of the writer is. Whereas Nietzsche once wrote, "Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them," I think Saunders' analysis is much more on the mark, perhaps in part because it is less cynical, certainly, but I think it needs to be said there is a reconciliation the writer faces, which requires that he or she be willing to put him or herself on display, at least in a certain sense. It is not as simple as mining one's experiences for the gems, in other words. It is not a process of picking and choosing what to exploit by its designated value; you need the sum total. The grit between the gems is vitally important, too, if not more so. Because who wants to admit to all the crap that's gone wrong? The failures fill the voids, though; the hardships teach us more about living than happiness ever could. Schopenhauer 101. There is in effect a price to be paid by all of us, the writer just uses the grit under the mattress, exposes what's under the rug, too. The writer is in the "open wounds" business, which takes its toll.

These things about oneself that Saunders refers to are not a priori true necessarily, then. I think that ought to be made clear. Certainly I'd say I fall into the camp of people who believe in both nature and nurture, that the two terms are most definitely not mutually exclusive. So while experience might not determine every consideration relevant to what Saunders describes, e.g. you may have deeply felt insecurities borne of the humors apportioned unequally at birth and with which you need to come to terms, experience more often than not dictates one's emotional maturity, and the deeper impression those experiences added up have left, which examples include an abusive home life in youth, a profoundly felt death, or severe illness of one form or another, sometimes a little of both, and much more, too, because the gamut extends quite far.

It's these aspects of our character that we, if we are to be writers, must reconcile and present to the world, for rejection or acceptance, which is another of the challenges posed by not holding anything back, as it raises the stakes, stakes whose outcome is never entirely determinable by our own actions. Offering up your work to others and their judgment is a risky proposition, for as Nietzsche also says (in one of my favorite of his aphorisms), "Having a talent is not enough: we also need your permission to have it -- don't you think so? my good friends?" (Note: this is also a good example of the humor of Nietzsche, which he had a sense of, which is kind of surprising, although it's as dry and mordant as you might rightly expect.) All that we can control is as Saunders says, "The essential thing is having a talent for having talent." Waitaminute, that's pretty much beyond anyone's ability to manipulate through hard work or "control" too, "talent for having talent"? -- well, good luck.

Also, concerning what Saunders wrote in Guernica regarding the writer's craft, there is much more in the complete article than just what I quoted, and which I think is definitely worth your while, so please follow the link embedded above if you feel inclined.

Talking to George Saunders is Fun and Awesome

Probably my most ambitious objective with regard to this blog is: putting myself out there not just in blog format but in non-cyber-medium life as well -- away from the relative safety of a computer and said rumination. For example, George Saunders -- I believe I've mentioned my great fondness of his work before -- did a reading last week at Northwestern University. I giddily attended.

Saunders read one of his more recently published short stories, "Victory Lap." I remember it was difficult for me to follow the story's narrative at times when I first encountered it in The New Yorker last October. Happily, Saunders' animated and engaging reading cleared up any uncertainty I wrestled with, hitherto. So yes, in my view the story was vastly improved upon hearing it read aloud, which I gather public readings will have this effect (make written things better). I came away from the reading far more impressed by what Saunders was trying to do. I did come away thinking it might for that reason, then, work even better as a one-act play. In other words, it seems to work so much better as a piece acted out / performed. After seeing an adaptation of Saunders' story "Jon" at The Building Stage in Chicago, late 2008, I can avow that his work is far more adaptable than it might seem at first blush.

I also had a chance to talk to Saunders, beginning with a question I asked during Q&A. I've always been impressed with his quirky, idiomatic style that he pulls off with seeming ease (I intuit from my own experience that it might not be quite so easy as that, but nevertheless), so I wondered, especially after hearing his speaking the various voices he used, if he had an idea of how his characters should speak while he went through the process of writing them.

Kurt Vonnegut used to say he'd talk to himself on the beach, trying new lines out. Edward Albee, if I recall correctly, described in a New Yorker article once that he would formulate his characters' nuances well in advance of putting them on paper, going so far as to seat himself in various locales and imagining their interactions with the real-life people he watched, all ostensibly in an effort to make them more tactile and realized. Saunders, meanwhile, in his typically affable and modest way said that he does not practice his characters voices while he's writing them, which I found surprising because he reads them with such seamlessness. In any event, it was sort of a relief for me, because I've always been someone who writes at best with only the most rudimentary inner-monologue going. I'm usually worried my characters sound stupid, and often they do, but at least I know that it isn't necessarily because I don't practice what they say as I write them.

Anyway, I ended up purchasing a copy of "The Braindead Megaphone" and had Mr. Saunders sign it, and used that as a segue into chatting -- which is fairly surreal, let me tell you. And I mean it was surreal from the standpoint that: "OMG, this is a guy, ya know, that I've admired from afar for as long as reading has mattered to me and here he is, talking, like we humans do!" So that's how it was surreal, but in every other way it was just awesome. As I've said, Saunders is every bit as affable and modest and engaging as people give him credit.

He said some more interesting things, for instance he reiterated a point he made earlier during his introduction, which I thought was poignant and yet in a certain way epitomized his ethical purpose in writing. He said, to paraphrase him (and apologies if I don't get it quite right), that in the process of writing he discovered that he's had to admit to things he never really knew about himself, never really wanted to discover / admit to upon their unearthing. I think he supposed this is true of writing in general, of writers who try to write in general. If he did suppose that, then I can certainly say I agree wholeheartedly. It's a tough, good thing, and maybe that's why Vonnegut was such a miserable old cuss -- he realized from being a writer that he was one.

It was a great day!