George Saunders on the larger lesson of difference
In the end, we must pity [our enemies]: we are going forward with joy and hope; they are being left behind, mired in fear.
This is a quote from George Saunders’s short story collection, In Persuasion Nation. The quote leads into a section of three stories, which focus on the enemy forces pushing the stories’ characters into becoming what they hope they are not. Each story has two interacting characters who face the decision of if and how to adapt. If they decide not to adapt, then how do they resist?
You can probably sense where this is going, especially if you know that Saunders is a creative writing instructor. He doesn’t favor conformity or fear difference. Literally, every story he writes is odd in some way, not just in his characters’ behaviors, but in the goofily outrageous social demands pressing on them. His inventive imagination constructs those societies as believable, as improbable as they might be. By contrast, Saunders isn’t any 21st century clone of Charles Dickens. The straits his characters endure don’t rise to the level of starving children in smoggy 1800’s London slums. There’s much more orderliness in his invented societies, the order itself being the source of problems.
Each pair of interacting characters understands the demands of their situation and accepts them, in principle. They understand too that demands not met or actively resisted incur punishment of some kind: ostracism, relearning, or, at its mildest, just incessant nagging. The story lines involve the dilemma of the characters accepting their state or embracing change — screw the consequences.
Now, admitting that Saunders is probably an advocate for originality and non-conformity, the question becomes how does he the writer resolve the pickles he puts his characters into? Do we have Hollywood endings, where his disgruntled characters give a middle finger to their tormenters and live on as beautifully divergent? Do they succumb to the mercilessly unforgiving forces of their societies? Or do they just die? Not the no-coming-back kind of dying, but the emotionally sterilizing kind.
There was one story in particular titled My Flamboyant Grandson that I got into more intimately than the others. The grandson in question is elementary school aged and, of necessity, learns to enjoy himself by himself. He does this by singing and dancing joyously, flamboyantly (hence the title), but alone or in front of his dog. We don’t hear about the dog’s reaction.
The unnamed grandson, finds a particular affinity for the CD of the movie Babar Sings. He learns all the roles and tries to dress appropriately for each character, male, female, or elephant. He’s inventive that way. His grandfather sees this and knows the social realities facing his grandson, but he prays:
Dear Lord, he is what he is, let me love him no matter what.
Score an emotional reaction in me the reader. You can likely guess why. If you can’t, let me explain.
I had only one grandfather at the time I was born and I’ve always felt that we were fond of one another. Not in a way that was mushy and overt. He was brought up classically German and married a strictly German woman, my grandmother. She too was not mushy or overt, but his warmth was always more apparent than hers. He showed real joy at doing what he could for his son’s male kids. There were three of us. The girls came later.
He once bought my older brother and me a pony and smiled from cheek to cheek at the surprise of it. He seated us in front of him while riding his old fly wheel tractor and let us steer. He taught us how to milk a cow and feed the chickens. He shared techniques on how to boss a reluctant cow around. (You’re supposed to give it a kick in its flank and project a no-nonsense attitude.) He made us bamboo fishing poles and got us to bait our own hooks. He guided us in the art of gutting and fileting our catch.
All of this instruction really took with my older brother and he’s stayed a fisherman to this day. That and watching old cowboy movies are his main hobbies.
I, however, was pretty much a failure at all this stuff, including even getting the damn pony to move. “Give him a little kick with your heel,” grandpa said. Kicking was a common remedy for getting animals to move, except with the pig. With the pig, you used a stick. But stay out of the way if she got pissed. You don’t stick around when an angry 500 pound sow comes at you.
Anyway, the long and the short of all this lessoning was kind of wasted on me. What became evident was that I was not inclined to be a typical boy. I preferred reading. So my grandfather, who was not a reader himself, did something unexpected. He gave me books that he had obviously picked out himself. Stuff on European and natural history, kings and queens and Grimm’s fairy tales. Probably topics that he might have been acquainted with from his own youth. I don’t know. He was not forthcoming about his past. What was informative — although I didn’t pick up on this at the time — was that he didn’t give the same gifts to my brothers.
I was different in his eyes and he was respectful of my difference. It’s that memory of him that Saunders evoked with his “let me love him” line. My grandfather might have picked up the same signals that Saunders’s grandfather did, that his grandson might be gay. I never considered myself flamboyant, but who even knows that word at six years old. You’re just who you are.
So what if the grandson, me or the fictional kid, was gay? If his life was going to be tough, then show him that love wasn’t entirely out of the question. I fantasize my grandfather thinking: Here we two are, a living example of how it can work — me to you, grandfather to grandson.
I didn’t know “gay” then in the sense it has now. It hadn’t taken on that meaning in the 50’s. At that time, it was still okay to be “gay” in the classic, old-fashioned, happy sense it had then. Instead, it was “queer,” “faggot,” and “cock sucker” that were in common use. Those were the labels society attached to you and they’re still around (though, “queer” is being reclaimed). They weren’t kind words you would want someone you loved to be labeled with. The fact that my grandfather didn’t label me that way was some evidence of his love, however long it took for me to believe that. And it was a long time. So here’s loving him back, belatedly.
And thanks to George Saunders and his sensitivity to us outliers for rekindling those memories.
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He’s Different, But So What?
George Saunders on the larger lesson of difference
This is a quote from George Saunders’s short story collection, In Persuasion Nation. The quote leads into a section of three stories, which focus on the enemy forces pushing the stories’ characters into becoming what they hope they are not. Each story has two interacting characters who face the decision of if and how to adapt. If they decide not to adapt, then how do they resist?
You can probably sense where this is going, especially if you know that Saunders is a creative writing instructor. He doesn’t favor conformity or fear difference. Literally, every story he writes is odd in some way, not just in his characters’ behaviors, but in the goofily outrageous social demands pressing on them. His inventive imagination constructs those societies as believable, as improbable as they might be. By contrast, Saunders isn’t any 21st century clone of Charles Dickens. The straits his characters endure don’t rise to the level of starving children in smoggy 1800’s London slums. There’s much more orderliness in his invented societies, the order itself being the source of problems.
Each pair of interacting characters understands the demands of their situation and accepts them, in principle. They understand too that demands not met or actively resisted incur punishment of some kind: ostracism, relearning, or, at its mildest, just incessant nagging. The story lines involve the dilemma of the characters accepting their state or embracing change — screw the consequences.
Now, admitting that Saunders is probably an advocate for originality and non-conformity, the question becomes how does he the writer resolve the pickles he puts his characters into? Do we have Hollywood endings, where his disgruntled characters give a middle finger to their tormenters and live on as beautifully divergent? Do they succumb to the mercilessly unforgiving forces of their societies? Or do they just die? Not the no-coming-back kind of dying, but the emotionally sterilizing kind.
There was one story in particular titled My Flamboyant Grandson that I got into more intimately than the others. The grandson in question is elementary school aged and, of necessity, learns to enjoy himself by himself. He does this by singing and dancing joyously, flamboyantly (hence the title), but alone or in front of his dog. We don’t hear about the dog’s reaction.
The unnamed grandson, finds a particular affinity for the CD of the movie Babar Sings. He learns all the roles and tries to dress appropriately for each character, male, female, or elephant. He’s inventive that way. His grandfather sees this and knows the social realities facing his grandson, but he prays:
Score an emotional reaction in me the reader. You can likely guess why. If you can’t, let me explain.
I had only one grandfather at the time I was born and I’ve always felt that we were fond of one another. Not in a way that was mushy and overt. He was brought up classically German and married a strictly German woman, my grandmother. She too was not mushy or overt, but his warmth was always more apparent than hers. He showed real joy at doing what he could for his son’s male kids. There were three of us. The girls came later.
He once bought my older brother and me a pony and smiled from cheek to cheek at the surprise of it. He seated us in front of him while riding his old fly wheel tractor and let us steer. He taught us how to milk a cow and feed the chickens. He shared techniques on how to boss a reluctant cow around. (You’re supposed to give it a kick in its flank and project a no-nonsense attitude.) He made us bamboo fishing poles and got us to bait our own hooks. He guided us in the art of gutting and fileting our catch.
All of this instruction really took with my older brother and he’s stayed a fisherman to this day. That and watching old cowboy movies are his main hobbies.
I, however, was pretty much a failure at all this stuff, including even getting the damn pony to move. “Give him a little kick with your heel,” grandpa said. Kicking was a common remedy for getting animals to move, except with the pig. With the pig, you used a stick. But stay out of the way if she got pissed. You don’t stick around when an angry 500 pound sow comes at you.
Anyway, the long and the short of all this lessoning was kind of wasted on me. What became evident was that I was not inclined to be a typical boy. I preferred reading. So my grandfather, who was not a reader himself, did something unexpected. He gave me books that he had obviously picked out himself. Stuff on European and natural history, kings and queens and Grimm’s fairy tales. Probably topics that he might have been acquainted with from his own youth. I don’t know. He was not forthcoming about his past. What was informative — although I didn’t pick up on this at the time — was that he didn’t give the same gifts to my brothers.
I was different in his eyes and he was respectful of my difference. It’s that memory of him that Saunders evoked with his “let me love him” line. My grandfather might have picked up the same signals that Saunders’s grandfather did, that his grandson might be gay. I never considered myself flamboyant, but who even knows that word at six years old. You’re just who you are.
So what if the grandson, me or the fictional kid, was gay? If his life was going to be tough, then show him that love wasn’t entirely out of the question. I fantasize my grandfather thinking: Here we two are, a living example of how it can work — me to you, grandfather to grandson.
I didn’t know “gay” then in the sense it has now. It hadn’t taken on that meaning in the 50’s. At that time, it was still okay to be “gay” in the classic, old-fashioned, happy sense it had then. Instead, it was “queer,” “faggot,” and “cock sucker” that were in common use. Those were the labels society attached to you and they’re still around (though, “queer” is being reclaimed). They weren’t kind words you would want someone you loved to be labeled with. The fact that my grandfather didn’t label me that way was some evidence of his love, however long it took for me to believe that. And it was a long time. So here’s loving him back, belatedly.
And thanks to George Saunders and his sensitivity to us outliers for rekindling those memories.
Similar Posts: