Book -- Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders

Take

Oh boy, this is really happening. I just clicked the stopwatch and it feels like an exam.

It feels kind of ironic that I’m starting with a George Saunders review, because he is such a meticulous writer, a relentless self-editor who seems to have learned to love the act of killing his darlings. Whereas what I need to do now, as I see the clock striking 2:00, is to learn to embrace the spew.

On that note, time to actually talk about this collection, which I read—listened to—last month as part of my friends' book club I joined last year. The way in which these stories really succeeded for me is in giving voices and realism to the characters. There is a lot of dialogue, inner monologue, and descriptions of thoughts and motivations and internal struggles, all of which flesh everyone out. This reminds me some of Anna Karenina, where Tolstoy would include these deft psychological asides so that you would get this quasi-omniscient perspective on a conversation with layers of knowledge and deception and all that.

In most of these stories, you have these flawed characters struggling with ordinary life decisions and moral dilemmas—there are no monsters or saints, at least not in the one-dimensional, caricature sense. And Saunders is especially adept at giving these characters their own distinctive voices, foibles, and quirks, which enhances their relatability and realness. And by bringing all of these elements to the table, one gets the sense of a looming moral presence, or maybe one is put in the position of that presence, constantly trying to figure our which narratives are self-deception and which are honest reflection, or when a character is acting in good faith or not. The writing really captures the psychological complexity and uncertainty involved in all of the weighty decisions and interactions one engages in in today’s fraught world.

One last point—oh boy—some of the uses of language are quite innovative, funny, and clever, particularly with characters who have been subjected to forms of sci-fi-esque brainwashing and are being reprogrammed to perform certain roles by their handlers. 

Afterthoughts

I hadn't planned on including commentary, but man, I feel compelled to, at least this time. Ten minutes is not a long time! Maybe I should be doing this right after I've had my coffee, as opposed to right after dinner. 

My main takeaways are: (i) there is a tension between trying to write well and just getting the thoughts out, but it's not so simple, because the thoughts need to be translated into writing—some amount of care is important to ensure I more or less say what I mean; (ii) it's impossible to replicate the loose and free-flowing headspace of a text conversation, especially once you've gotten emotionally into it, in an artificial context like this; and (iii) it's just freaking hard to write anything of substance that's non-cringeworthy in ten minutes.

On that note, it's striking how so much of what I wrote is evocative, to me, of textbook "bad writing." I'm getting kid-pounding-out-college-reaction-paper-at-2am vibes—lazy filler, repetition (though that second "oh boy" was intentional), imprecision, those sorts of things. Maybe bad writing doesn't vary quite as much as do unhappy families.

On the plus, or at least interesting, side, I suspect I will learn a lot about my tendencies as a writer and a thinker, because I've never operated this way before. Even when I did pound out a paper, I always made an outline first—I regarded it as an essential facilitator of the ensuing atrocity. In this case, I merely tried to get a few half-formed concepts in my head, and I had a list of the story titles in front of me (as if there would be time to go through them!), and then it was off to the races.

Anyway, I have managed to get off the first tee, and there are no mulligans. Time to be more Dude-like about this whole brevity thing.

Mission Statement (Read This First)

They say don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I say why stop there? The idea of this blog is to not let the good be the enemy of the functional.

I have takes—on restaurants, bars, books, articles, movies, shows, albums, concerts, exhibits, cities, clothes, and gear, among other things. I want to share them. I want to remember them. But I don’t want to spend a lot of time on them. And given that, I don’t want to demand a lot of yours.

So here’s the deal: with the exception of this intro, I will be limiting myself to ten minutes per post (with a brief grace period to finish my sentence). Six hundred seconds in which to strive to give coherent and captivating voice to the raw or inchoate opinions swirling around my brain. I’m allowed to gather my thoughts beforehand (e.g., reminding myself what I ate or saw), but all writing must take place during that interval. Afterwards, only post-production (pun intended!) is allowed (e.g., adding links or fixing typos).

I predict this will be a fun and fulfilling exercise—the race against the clock, the balance between spewing and editing, the mercifully low word counts. I mean, we’re all already doing a version of it whenever we dash off an email or a series of texts expressing our views; there’s a lot to be said for a format that’s a little more polished, public, and permanent—the fertile ground between the text and the essay.

People say there are too many takes on the internet, but I‘m not sure that’s true. There are too many takes of the wrong sort—people piling on about ethics, politics, philosophy, and other big questions they’re not sufficiently up on, in order to feel like they are part of something greater or to vent or attack. So much of online discourse—Twitter, Reddit, newspaper comment sections, and the like—seems to consist of the expression of underinformed and underconsidered opinions about the most weighty and complex of issues. So many people feel the need to take a strong position on, say, pandemic policy or financial regulation, even if that stance is basically just parroting their preferred podcaster pundit’s. Imagine if instead everyone took a little time to leave a thoughtful and reasonably detailed Google or Amazon review every time a place or product made an impression—or started a blog for the benefit of their friends. I don’t care what some rando thinks about the lab-leak theory, but if she‘s waxing eloquent about the crab curry at the new Sri Lankan place, she’s got my attention.

Accordingly, I intend to focus here on two subjects on which I’m eminently qualified: my tastes and my impressions. No one needs my two cents about the latest crypto scandal or (what year is it?) bank run. What I really want to do is to try to articulate why the prik khing tofu (a pretty vanilla dish) at Playground (a pretty adventurous establishment) is worth ordering (the slightly crispy, spongy-in-a-good-way, and substantial tofu, a surprising gem from a place that doesn’t seem to be throwing vegetarians much of a bone; the rich, thick red curry sauce with its light but vital sweetness; the generous portion of crunchy-fresh longbeans; the intensity of the spices), or the thoughts I had about architecture, neighborhoods, and density when walking around parts of Philly for the first time (here’s one: I’d underappreciated how great it is that so much of NYC can support the existence of at least one bodega on pretty much every block). Don’t be surprised if half these takes end up being restaurant reviews.

I’m glad that’s out of the way. Writing is hard. Let the brain-dumping begin!