Tenth of December

George Saunders is a frickin' genius. The more I read him, the more I am completely bowled over. THE LAYERS, MAN, THE LAYERS.

Although I usually hate the stop-start rhythm of reading short story collections, I blazed through this. My favorite: The Semplica-Girls Diaries, written as the diary of a struggling, average, middle-class Dad who - to keep up with the Joneses - spends a bunch of money on hanging a few developing country women via a thin line threaded through their brains out in his yard (“It's painless.”; apparently, in this near future America, it's a thing). Oh, the humanity! Oh, the economic woe! OH, THE HEARTACHE. So smart. Worked on so many levels.

An excerpt:

There is so much I want to do and experience and give to kids. Time going by so quickly, kids growing up so fast. If not now, when? When will we give them largesse and sense of generosity? Have never been to Hawaii or parasailed or eaten lunch at café by ocean, wearing floppy straw hats just purchased on whim. So I worry: Growing up in paucity, won't they become too cautious? Not that they are growing up in paucity. Still, there are things we want but cannot have. If kids raised too cautious, due to paucity, will not world chew them up and spit out?