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George Saunders has written America into a pair of books of short
stories, Pastoralia, and Civilwarland In Bad Decline, which have gone fairly
uncelebrated, which is a shame for several reasons. Firstly, they present in
terms fairly easy to interpret, the America that is largely the truth, though
through ridiculous exaggeration. And what does that mean?
Okay, here is the George Saunders Flip Book.
1.
Man has job as some kind of sad and ramshackle spectacle or exhibition. Man
generally has a wife figure. Man is of good intelligence, but lacking in
courage. Man is usually entrenched in poverty.
2.
Enter Oppressive Boss Man. He oppresses.
3. Man somehow
displays pitiful cowardice or incompetence at his demeaning and dehumanizing
job site.
4. Wife thereafter runs to the folds of the
freakish biceps of the Oppressive Boss Man.
5.
Enraged Man protests somehow, engaging in some act of rebellion, usually
overthrowing Oppressive Boss Man.
6. In the first
availible moment to enjoy his success, Man is crushed by the unbearable
weight of society or some other outside force acting in the way of the Boss
Man's Avenger.
So why, again, dear reader, was I talking
about America? Why, you ask, was I rambling on about the meaning behind
these stories?
Because they resonate enormously.
Through details, Saunders manages to recreate some perverse reflection of our
society. In "Sea Oak," for example, a male Hooters girl comes
home from work to find his jobless sisters watching "How My Child Died
Violently," in which some sleazily-named host forces "healing
experiences" upon mourning parents. Though you claim to know nothing
about daytime TV, this sounds oddly familiar to you. For dinner, it's
"Stars 'n' Flags," into which, Saunders remarks, the company
inserts some kind of sugar which renders the food product somewhat addictive.
Any American who doesn't occasionally eat this kind of stuff is generally
a member of some departed social elite.
It's in details
like this that Saunders creates an Ultrareality, which is to say that he
pushes every detail of all that is demeaning in American life to the maximum
volume. He emphasizes the strangely dehumanizing modern poverty both of
wealth and of spirit through these things, in the most straight-faced way.
He drops the reader in these Ultrarealities without blinking an eye, and the
reader is at once repulsed and empathetic to these stories. His style is
direct, as if spoken with steady eye contact, with little regard for anything
except accurate depiction of character and situation.
His other stories include, "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of
Terror," "The Barber's Unhappiness," "The End of FIRPO in
the World," and "Winky."
In each of
these stories, he approaches several questions, both of society and human
nature. One thing he deals with is the seeming inverse relationship between
intelligence, and audaciousness. His protagonists are usually quite
intelligent and well aware of their oppression, but choose to merely exist in
it, accept it, bow to it. While less intelligent characters around them
usually remain in their situations via total ignorance. The sisters in
"Sea Oak," mentioned above are unemployed and studying for GEDs at
home for no explained reason. After concluding that Winston Churchill was
in opera, one sister says to the protagonist, "You've done high school,
man...We got to get our GEDs so we can watch TV and not be all
distracted." They're not afraid of anything, the sisters, but they
haven't any larger concept of life than what's there in front of them. Like
cows, they graze upon whatever's there. And the protagonist submits to
his job as visual meat, adhering to rules and settling for chump change in
return.
All of this really amounts to a point about
poverty. In this country, one in five adults lives below the poverty
line. There is a cheapness to life in America, and we are in a time when
often luxuries are cheaper than necessities; when Cheetos and the like are
more accessible than fresh food, there is a problem. But the problem is, the
intersection of necessary character components to relieve the problem isn't
happening. Or that's how Saunders sees it, anyway. Basically, the proper
sorts of people haven't all come together in a situation where the problem
and the means to solution are all clear and important to them.
In short, Saunders writes his Ultrareality, perhaps, in the hopes
of inspiring people who think like him to get their cranks turning in regards
to this particular problem in America: complacency and low expectations, lack
of temerity and ignorance are the enemies, and one man alone cannot fight
them. Through his wrenchingly unflinching and vivid creations, he does so
with excellent effect. Style, plot, depth, meaning, Saunders has it all.
And by the end of a book, you get the idea, and you start to care.
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