{"id":6558,"date":"2011-10-29T15:30:52","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T19:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=6558"},"modified":"2016-07-08T17:46:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T21:46:37","slug":"george-saunders-tenth-of-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2011\/10\/29\/george-saunders-tenth-of-december\/","title":{"rendered":"George Saunders: “Tenth of December”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tenth of December\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby George Saunders<\/span>\r\nOriginally published in the October 31, 2011 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span><\/pre>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
I have been having a hard time with George Saunders lately. Where I once looked forward to his stories in The New Yorker<\/em>, and have recommended his earlier story collections to others,\u00a0I was a bit saddened when I saw his name in this week\u2019s issue. I just haven\u2019t enjoyed him this year. But I dug in\u00a0— or, rather, I tried to.\u00a0 I started this story on Monday morning and felt like I was making steady progress, but it took me\u00a0three days\u00a0to actually finish it. I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ve just continued to drift away from one of my favorite short story writers, and I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s his fault because, in retrospect, this is a pretty nicely executed story, even if I found it a bit predictable and Saunders\u2019 style and structure familiar as to him (not as to others, since I still think Saunders has his own strangeness).<\/p>\n
\u201cTenth of December\u201d has a structure that reminded me right away of one of my favorite Saunders stories of the last few years, \u201cVictory Lap\u201d (my\u00a0brief thoughts here<\/a>). In that story, Saunders had us enter the heads of two narrators with distinct (thoroughly stylized) voices. At first the two lines of narrative\u00a0are distinct and seemingly unrelated, but soon the two characters come together in an unexpected and dramatic way. Similarly structured and similarly stylized, \u201cTenth of December\u201d didn\u2019t work for me nearly as well while reading it. When I wrote about Saunders\u2019 last story, \u201cHome\u201d (my thoughts here<\/a>), I wondered how much of my disappointment was based on the fact that it wasn\u2019t a good story and how much was based on the fact that, if you\u2019ve read enough Saunders, the stories start to feel the same. Sadly, that this story feels similar to another, despite the differenct characters and the different circumstances,\u00a0only strengthens arguments against Saunders we\u2019ve heard before: that he\u2019s\u00a0mostly style and little substance.<\/p>\n
When the story begins, we meet a young boy named Robin, who has “unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs.\u201d Obviously picked on at school, in the wilds around his home he visualizes\u00a0a world\u00a0where he moves around enacting heroic stealth operations against some otherwordly\u00a0creatures named the Nethers.\u00a0Robin runs all of the speaking parts in his own mind, becoming as much a figment of his own imagination as the Nethers. Here we get a sense of\u00a0his voice,\u00a0which moves along haltingly, mimicing the way a child (or an adult) might add on new phrases as they come to mind, moving the inner narrative forward bit-by-bit, each time teasing out a\u00a0bit of minor peril and\u00a0heroism which can never climax because then what?<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s assignation: walk to pond, ascertain beaver dam. Likely he would be detained. By that species that lived amongst the old rock wall. They were small but, upon emerging, assumed certain proportions. And gave chase. This was just their methodology. His aplomb threw them loops. He knew that. And revelled it. He would run, level the pellet gun, intone: Are you aware of the usage of this human implement?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Each time I read a Saunders story, even back when I was really enjoying them, I had a hard time trying to determine if the voice was effective or affected. And even when I found it effective, it still often grated for a while until the story completely took over. While this voice worked for me in theory, I still found it kind of annoying as I read because it continued to push me out of the story, but this perhaps\u00a0represents my own late-blooming prejudice more than anything. This is not the shortest of short stories, and I\u2019m sad to say I never was able to fully engage with\u00a0it due to the voice play.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, despite the stylized voice, the story is still told\u00a0by a third-person narrator, albeit an incredibly close third-person narrator, so close, in fact, that even spelling and\u00a0usage errors\u00a0pop in. This works well since both Robin and the character I\u2019ve yet to talk about have withdrawn from their lives and created an alternate narrative where they see themselves from some imagined perspective that stands apart.\u00a0Here we see Robin again confronting the Nethers, who increasingly take on the characteristics of the jerks at school.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d just abide there, infuriating them with his snow angels.\u00a0 Sometimes, believing it their coup de gr\u00e2ce, not realizing he\u2019d heard this since time in memorial from certain in-school cretins, they\u2019d go, Wow, we didn\u2019t even know Robin could be a boy\u2019s name. And chortle their Nether laughs.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Part of Robin\u2019s inner narrative involves\u00a0the new girl at school\u00a0named Suzanne. She doesn\u2019t even know his real name, but now the Nethers\u00a0have her and Robin is there to save her\u00a0— their relationship is destined to last forever. It\u2019s total wish-fulfillment\u00a0(and familiar\u00a0— come on\u00a0— we\u2019ve all at least imagined a good come-back to that argument long after we lost)\u00a0as she says, \u201cAnd also, yes to there being something to us,\u201d and invites him to her pool. I was a bit thrown when she said, \u201cIt\u2019s cool if you swim with your shirt on.\u201d This seemed to be Saunders butting in his head to show that Robin is also chubby and dreaming of a girl who doesn\u2019t mind. But I\u2019m not so sure it\u2019s consistent with\u00a0Robin\u2019s inner narrative to let in\u00a0his chubbiness, especially in the form of swimming with a shirt. A minor quibble.<\/p>\n
At the end of the first section, Robin spies a winter coat and, a bit farther on, the man who has dropped it despite the winter chill. This is Don Eber, a man in his fifties who, we find out\u00a0as the story\u00a0breaks Robin\u2019s section and takes us to Don\u2019s,\u00a0has\u00a0cancer. Shedding his winter coat and testing the theory that freezing to death is just like falling to sleep, Don is struggling with his own inner narrative where Dad and Kip each hold conversations about Don\u2019s actions. Don\u2019s third-person narrator is also so close as to allow all of the slip-ups in Don\u2019s mind as coldness overtakes him:<\/p>\n
Not so once the suffering begat. Began. God damn it. More and more his words. Askew. More and more his words were not what he would hoped.<\/span><\/p>\n
Hope.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Don, attempting suicide,\u00a0and Robin, coming to the rescue with a coat (but across a barely frozen pond)\u00a0are about to meet in dramatic fashion. And I\u2019ll be darned if in writing this review I didn\u2019t find myself appreciating Saunders\u2019 story more than when I read it, though not to the point\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0interested in going back through the story now. It\u2019s long and (perhaps it was my mood) a bit tedious.<\/p>\n
So I find myself needing to test myself re: Saunders. If I now\u00a0read the older work I enjoyed, would I still like\u00a0it? I hope so, and I hope I can get over whatever hang up I have right now because, going through the process of writing this review, I\u2019m beginning to suspect it\u2019s just me. Is it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is George Saunders’s “Tenth of December.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[221,94],"tags":[1036],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-6558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-george-saunders","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2011-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Tenth-of-December.jpg?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-1HM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6558"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19208,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6558\/revisions\/19208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6558"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}