Or, or: “Mom in Heaven tapped her foot.” -”Al Roosten” Or: “…I will show you pictures of that incredible whale my sons and I lifted with our good positive energy.” -”Exhortation” How about: “It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.” -”Escape from Spiderhead”
I’ll turn review into one of those FaveQuote reviews, where a reviewer simply regurgitates out-of-context sentences from the book, of course! How to impart this phenomena? Reconvening…got it. Need to better get across that every line in this collection is acting in service of collection, story, paragraph, sentence. Summation strategy doesn’t effectively convey value of literature, is doing disservice. Rending, heart ends up cowered in corner of reading area pleading for mercy, mercy, and - not working. “Puppy”: A widening of class divisions coincides with a shrinking of psychological divisions. “Sticks”: A direly short encompassment of one man’s life, or every man’s life honed, affecting, like a pinch whose sting stings for days. “Victory Lap”: An interweaving of three consciousnesses involved in a teenage girl’s abduction, complete with black hawk parenting and ballet pirouettes. I can even organize it as a list (!), which I’ll present as a demonstration of deference to the reader, but will in actuality be a result of my laziness, ha, ha, ha. Can begin micro, end macro, with magniloquent evaluation of Saunders’s whole oeuvre, to sound smart, to provide review circularity, downplay easiness. Will open with the first story, “Victory Lap.” Will write one of those summation reviews that aren’t actually reviews. Cover definitively not most opportune starting place. Could write, “Upon closing book, reflecting, one is whelmed with sense that Saunders, more than any other living fiction writer, presets his narrative and stylistic beats to fall in lockstep with those of one’s own heart.” Because, after reading Tenth of December, that’s how one feels, and this strain of feeling is wondrous, and one should strive to share feelings re wondrous feelings with as many people as possible, so they too can feel! Just think, at end of review, cover intro could potentially be harkened (harked?) back to by evocation of arriving at last page, closing book, reflecting on rejigged perception of experience in wake of, etc., etc. How best to approach? Maybe start with the cover, that’d be sound/logical. Today’s assignation: read George Saunders’s Tenth of December, make critical heads-or-tails of it.
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