“Ghoul”
by George Saunders
from the November 9, 2020 issue of The New Yorker
I need to accept it: I still love George Saunders . . . or I still aspire to. It’s been a while since I’ve loved one of his stories — they often feel samey to me, as unique as they are in concept — but my response every time a new one is available is still pure excitement. I can’t wait to read “Ghoul,” even if its first line is what I’d call typical Saunders: “At noon Layla wheels over Vat of Lunch.” This first-person perspective of someone who capitalizes things important to him or her but not to the rest of us, all to suggest a not-quite-usual view of the world is very much in Saunders’ wheel-house. Will it pay off this time? We’ll see.
How are you doing with Saunders? Do you like “Ghoul”? Hoping to hear from you about your thoughts when you’ve finished the story.
I still very much like George Saunders. It took me a while to get into his book, Lincoln in the Bardo, but once I was in I was DEEPLY IN. In my opinion his best short story is The Semplica Girls Diaries. It’s a remarkable story. Another one I liked was “Tenth of December”.
I thought “Ghoul” was an entertaining and timely story that I’ll have to read again. After reading George Saunders’ short stories for the first time this year during quarantine, I became an immediate fan. This recent one reminded me of others from his Pastoralia collection in that it caused me to get caught up in the rhythm and dialogue during the first read– not a bad thing! For me, his stories always require a second read in order to think about the themes and metaphors I may have missed the first time around. Looking forward to reading his book coming out in January (A Swim in a Pond in the Rain)!
Starts with such fabulous humor and gets dark quick. But yes, when you come across a couple copulating, following the narrator’s advice here makes a lot of sense: “Should you personally know one or both, and feel saying nada might violate politeness, well, say something encouraging, such as ‘Go, go, go!’ or ‘Looking good, James and Melissa, all best wishes!’”
The conceit of subterranean characters-inside-a-video-game-like-live-action-hell-arena or other fabricated universe is a wise one and jibes very well with Saunders’s skill set (and allegorical, of course, given the this-isn’t-the-base-universe likelihood of our own reality/simulation that we inhabit). Reminded me at times of a less dour Synecdoche, NY by Charlie Kaufman.
You’ve gotta love a story with a DisaHole, a fine invented word even by GS’s standards.
The rules vs. friends thing feels very timely for election season. Something dystopian indeed about those among us who can’t separate individuals from their politics or what particular “rules” of conduct they hold themselves to that are different from their friends’. Individual vs. corporate-style “team” fakery is a less than new idea in a Saunders story but still relevant.
The one duck too broken to quack is a plangent symbol and the group kicking of Rolph scene a fine metaphor for cancel culture. Tom’s initial apology letter to Brian is also quite a stirring incarnation of the Maoism of the present moment in 2020 (to which, frankly, the New Yorker largely contributes in its persecution of wrongthink that doesn’t align with its own political agenda and in its veneration of politeness, niceness, and conformity over inconvenient truths or dissenting POVs; at least Harper’s took a stand for free speech, the Soviet-style squelching of which is another topic Saunders riffs on well here). The negotiation with Amy, also very well-rendered: gladhanding, favor-doing, nepotism and pretty-people-get-bailed-out all the way down; that’s our species alright.
Love means “you make me not even care about right or wrong” is of course a universal truth (and a far better tagline than “love means never having to say you’re sorry”).
Social Darwinism rules all. Gwen gets killed for not playing the game. Randomness is constantly afoot. Yet Saunders carries it all with a verve lacking from Atwood’s disappointing The Testaments which similarly tried to take a more “inside the nightmare cinema verité style” approach to dystopia. His is the far more terrifying work for it. It’s a fast-moving and unturgid story. The right length as well, neither too long or short.
Just a remarkably concise line of black comedy: “Mr. Regis unplugs the mike from his little amp, picks up the little amp, walks sadly off, if one can be said to walk sadly while carrying a little amp.” The following scene with Rolph’s son Edgar is heartbreaking. The longer letter from Tom is terrifying, redolent of the Nea So Copros sections of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The way Saunders set this up with the talk of the Visitors by Tom is insanely well-executed. He gives the reader just enough to feel like the truth was inexorable once it was revealed. The semiotic level as comment on a godless universe also recalls Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. “There must be someone up there who still cares about us? But what kind of caring is that? To drop folks in a hole, then plug said hole up?”
Saunders also seems to be grappling with not just the pointlessness of life but of art. All the machinations and practice and work a writer goes through for his or her work to last but a short time and be used mostly for meaningless time-passing or conversation fodder. Like his protagonist, Saunders hides from this via “love,” his long-term heteronormative marriage of thirty-plus years to Paula Redick.
The Jimbo role-playing “West” all-the-time mini-scene confirms that the author is aware of the feebleness of playing house as a retort to the big existential meaningless of it all. But then again, we’ve all gotta pass the time somehow. Who’s to say any role is better than any other? “Who might we become, sans roles”? I don’t know, George, but I know performance is all we have (sorry Buddhists & Hindus, I’m not buying your loopholes, you’re actors too). And the Monitors whose life it is to surveil/police you always have even larger Monitors (*great word choice, points to incursions of telecom and tech) surveilling/policing them. And no matter how much you love someone, if it’s you or them, gun to your head… Well, surely it’s “Poor dears! It all seems so petty” indeed.
The Ray Carver reference was a nice nod to a captain truthteller from the past and GS gives his protagonist’s femme beloved the denouement big-ideas statement: “It is just us. Forever. Until a flood gets us or the air or food stops coming. What a joke, the way we live. The worry, the suspicion, the stress, the meanness.” But a heck of a denouement it is. Put it in the top tier of Saunders stories and give the man an O. Henry or a Best American for this one for sure.
Brave New World meets The Lottery!
Sean, wonderful review of Ghouls. Hat’s off.
I LOVED it. It’s always the voice is his main characters that bring me to tears of god knows what. Felt the same about Puppy. This might be my favorite Saunders story yet. In fact, I’m going back to the park and reading it again. happy veterans day! Tammy
I went through my notes on previous Saunders stories and realized this is a certain “type” of piece he writes. Other examples are “Escape from Spiderhead” and “Elliott Spencer” and “I Can Speak.” In these, he creates a dystopian state (usually corporate but to various degrees) which is highly controlling and punitive and he also demands the reader immerse themselves in his syntax and language and references. This is about mid-level, I’d say. Much of it is reminiscent of other sources–Jordan Peele’s “US,” Huxley, Saunders himself, Cloud Atlas (noted above), Millhauser–and it works just fine on this level. The idea of social roles as performances for an unseen audience and the desire to follow rules rather than give in to despair is a timeless concept and Saunders nimbly expresses it within a suspenseful narrative.
I started writing comments, then realized there is no way I can write everything I think and feel abut this story. So I stopped. Anyway, you all have it covered. I’ll just say that I like it a lot. I’m doing something unique for me — enjoying it w/o writing about it. I agree with those who said it is one of his best, though perhaps not up to “SGD”, which is genius.
Just a few comments. I am surely repeating what others have said, but I want to emphasize these elements.
The ending graf is great:
“Though I will not live to see it, and dread the kicking that must come, may these words play some part in bringing the old world down.”
Did you notice the drastic change in voice and syntax here? It’s almost Biblical.
This story is political, but not in a specific topical way. Sorry, I’m not going to expand on that. It would take too much work. I’ll just leave you with the paradox.
This story is so human/humane. That’s a Saunders trademark.
There are two places where the theme is expressed:
“Rules are rules, friends are friends. But now rules and friends urge different courses of action upon me, and which shall I choose?”
Amy: ‘”Jeez. And now I’m doing something bad, for which I may later be punished. You make me not even care about right or wrong.”‘
I like the phrase that Shirley the Monitor says: “tide of twisted negativity”. Is it coincidence that it echoes the phrase that Bill Safire wrote for Spiro Agnew, “nattering nabobs of negativism”?
Sean, thank you for this wonderful exegesis – it’s for moments like this that I am especially grateful for this forum. I have been a Saunders fan since “Adams” and a Mookse fan eve before that.