Often short stories read to me like sketches, unexpandable ideas, or scenes cut out from longer works, but with George Saunders, short stories are perfect little worlds, entire unto themselves. Liberation Day: Stories can be broadly divided into weirdly imaginative and expansive near-future tales (generally with a greater class divide and the have-nots further exploited by the fat cats and their strange tech) and stories that feature extreme close-ups into folks’ inner monologues (generally with ironic or humorous results). In each story, the writing is precise, the voices varied and pitch perfect, and it all adds up to a scathing indictment of modern life. Simply masterful. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.) The stories:
What is right, what is wrong? In this situation? What a small question! What is great? That is what my heart longs to ask. What is lush? What is bold, what is daring? In which direction lies maximum richness, abundance, delight? ~Liberation Day
Clocking in at nearly 30% the length of this collection, the titular story reads like classic near-future sci-fi Saunders: In this striking examination of human nature, enslaved people (acting as Speakers or Singers) are Pinioned to a Speaking Wall in rich folks’ homes, and via input from devices implanted in the base of the performers’ necks, the systems’ owners are able to concoct spoken/sung “jams” for the amusement of themselves and their Company. Liberation Day is told from the POV of one such Speaker, Jeremy, and it’s uncomfortable to watch as his only concern is to perform well enough for Mr U and his Company to maybe get some attention from the beautiful Mrs U (who doesn’t often enjoy her husband’s jams but does engage in secret late night sessions with Jeremy in which she gets him to concoct romantic scenes and tell her how pretty she is). When the Speakers and Singers are upgraded with new tech that deepens their knowledge base, they are programmed to perform the story of Custer’s Last Stand — from the POVs of all involved — and not only does Saunders make this story intensely evocative of the senseless tragedy, but for the reader to experience the unprovoked attack on a village of Indigenous people in the past, via the performance of indentured peoples in the future, it forces you to consider your current place in the continuum of exploitation: Just who is suffering today because we (I) don’t afford them full humanity? From the line-by-line writing to the overall message, this was an absolute stand out.
Keith yelled that he was going for a run. Wow. Keith hadn’t gone running in years. It was as if reading her essay had made him want to be as good at something as she was at writing. Not to brag. But that was what good writing did, she realized: you said what you really thought and it made a kind of energy, and that sincere energy flowed into the mind of the reader. It was amazing. She was an essayist. All these years she’d just been working in the wrong genre. ~The Mom of Bold Action
A woman with a history of schlocky, unpublished writing (even her internal monologuing is schlocky) unleashes a regrettable series of consequences with her first sincere project.
I just want to say that history, when it arrives, may not look as you expect, based on the reading of history books. Things in there are always so clear. One knows exactly what one would have done. ~Love Letter
An old man in a near future police state writes a letter to his adult grandson, apologetically trying to explain how American citizens gradually lost their freedoms through small concessions to the government. On the one hand, this felt a little obvious and partisan (in a “they came for my neighbour and I said nothing” kind of a way), but on the other hand, one does read the news.
That was Brenda. Nice lady, lots of issues, okay, but come on. This was a place of work. ~A Thing at Work
This one was pretty funny: Through rotating POVs between people in an office (who all spend a lot of time judging each other and lying to themselves), we learn just how unknowable other people actually are.
She always seemed to be reading directly from a book on how to be most common. “Are those apples fresh?” someone would ask, and she’d say, “I suppose they are pretty fresh.” “Was that an earthquake just now?” someone would ask, and she’d say, “If it was, it will be on the radio.” ~Sparrow
What a sweet little love story about a woman so common that no one expected much for her: The magic is in the way that Saunders seems to subvert every fact as soon as it’s stated — she seems like this but this happens; she looks like that, but this…and then she has it all and it filled my heart.
I guess one never realizes how little one wants to be kicked to death until one hears a crowd doing that exact same thing to someone nearby. ~Ghoul
Sometimes it takes a weird mashup of Palahniuk, Orwell, and M. Night Shyamalan to shine a light on our own weird world.
Something had spoiled Paulie and Pammy. Well, it wasn’t her. She’d always been firm. Once she’d left them at the zoo for disobeying. When she’d told them to stop feeding the giraffe they’d continued. She’d left them at the zoo and gone for a cocktail, and when she returned Pammy and Paulie were standing repentant at the front gate, zoo balloons deflated. That had been a good lesson in obedience. ~Mother’s Day
A bitter old woman who always blamed others for the unhappiness in her life is forced to make a reckoning. As in A Thing at Work, we learn more about characters by what they think of others than how they present themselves.
Sometimes, to do good, there are steps along the way at which goodness must be temporarily set aside or lost sight of, says Jer. ~Elliott Spencer
In echoes of the title story, in this melancholic near future tale, the disadvantaged are moulded into mindless tools for the use of others. But what happens when your tools remember they’re human, too?
That letter exists in my mind. But I am too tired to write it. Well, that is not true. I am not too tired. I’m just not ready. The surge of pride and life and self is still too strong in me. ~My House
This brief story echoes Mother’s Day as an ageing man is confronted with his own faults in the face of death.
4.5 stars, rounding up.
