CivilWarLand in Bad Decline—George Saunders

I kind of feel like Saunders can do no wrong. I’ve loved everything I’ve ever read of his, and although I’ve come across most of the stories in this collection before, I’ve never read it as such, from cover to cover (plus the nice essay on his life while writing these stories), and the experience was equally enjoyable. Although the stories mostly follow a set formula (first person narration, slightly futuristic dystopian amusement park setting, mostly summarized dialogue, a narrator trying to cope/get along after suffering some massive tragedy while enduring constant ridicule from coworkers, and a dream sequence with psychoanalytical tie-ins to theme), each one is fresh as fuck, inventive, equally hilarious and devastating. I’m not sure how he does it, only that it works, and doesn’t get old, and makes me hate humanity while loving individual humans.

Along those same lines, just as I’d finished the book, I was driving back from the gyno along a busy road in Denver. I was in the far right lane staring at a chubby girl of maybe twenty dressed in the black and yellow of her Einstein Bagel’s uniform, visor on and all, who was waiting at the bus stop. A white car cut me off and slowed down, then I saw the back window roll down, then a hand, an arm, something being thrown. The glass of the bus stop exploded with egg. The car sped away. I stared at the chubby girl, who was just then putting together what had happened, and it wasn’t outrage on her face, nor even fear. It was a look of resigned acceptance, as if this was just what happened, who people were, how she expected to be treated. And it broke my fucking heart.

And somehow this seemed to be exactly what Saunders writes about: people doing whatever they can to endure the cruelties of capitalism, and more poignantly, other people. Them accepting this hate as fact, as fate.