George Saunders plucks a nerve
George Saunders’s story The Mom of Bold Action speaks to misguided intentions gone bad, unintended consequences, and forgiving yourself for how the shittiness of those consequences impacts others. Still, you believe in yourself and stick with what you believe the “real you” should do.
At one point in the story the hapless heroine, the mom of the title, who is failing at being a writer, reflects after rereading some of her once thought-to-be masterful works:
No more essays.
No more writing at all.
She could do more good in the world by, like, baking.
Her third person reference to herself indicates how her internal overseer is in a lecturing mood. The overseer dictates its judgments after the fact, but is absent when her “creative” self goes on a toot.
Saunders’s characters are all like that, defiantly human and forgivably flawed. Sort of like a lot of us, including me, but in my case more so then than now. I too, just like Bold Mom, on many occasions convinced myself that I was a writer but, also like her, played it safe by baking cookies. It was always apparent that people who knew me in both roles, preferred the cookies over the prose. I, on the other hand, felt the opposite. So here I am still churning it out, doing more writing than baking.
In another story, Love Letter, Saunders has the letter writer writing to his nephew in a time and space where the overseers had become externalized and more unapproving, more judgmental. The writer writes:
I wrote two letters to the editor of the local rag, one overwrought, the other comic. Neither had any effect. After a third attempt was rejected, I found myself pulled over. The cop asked what I did all day. Some of us heard you like to type.
How would you know about that, I said.
Have a good night, sir, he said. Stay off the computer.
Okay, I write to the papers too. So, oh, oh! Given the mood and the power players in the country now, a cold chill ran up my typing fingers. I wondered whether these external overseer cops were actually paying any attention to my stuff. Because for sure they would be offended. But then not so many people read my stuff, so I was probably ok. But just to be on the safe side I decided to always have a small tin of cookies with me when I drive. My Trump card so to speak, if I get pulled over.
But Saunders is still not done with me. In his story, Ghoul, he tells of an underground world where all people are assigned a role to play. The protagonist plays a ghoul, hence the title. All the players are professional and committed to their parts. But infractions, including wanting to be something else and telling the truth are subversive. In such an event, all players are required by the ethics of the society to rat out the offender, at which time he/she will be kicked to death. Harsh!
Anyway, the Ghoul’s would be girlfriend, Amy, discovers a truth and writes a letter to him divulging it. To avoid a spoiler alert, I won’t tell you what the Ghoul does, but the alternatives are he rats her out or he does not. In any case he muses:
May [Amy’s letter] and these words play some part in bringing the old world down.
So, again, the chills run up my typing fingers. I’m beginning to think that maybe I should give up writing entirely and just expand my cookie repertoire.
If you’ve ever searched the Internet for cookie recipes, you know there are millions of them all claiming to be the best or among the ten best. I could easily make baking a rest-of-my-life avocation. Think of how many people I could please. Of course, my contribution wouldn’t be up there with Thomas Paine or Martin Luther King. But it might go down in history as maybe a sort of, kind of, mini loaves and fishes thing. That’s not a sugarless cookie, after all. And even the overseers, my own included, would be pleased.
Obviously, I’m still thinking over the quitting writing possibility, because here I am still doing it. But I am giving some tentative consideration to giving up reading Saunders. However, if you’re not so timid as me and have a stronger constitution for the scary parts, try reading these and others of his stories. They’re in the collection Liberation Day. Plus you can find out what Ghoul actually did. A teaser to end!
Also published at Medium.com on May 14, 2025
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George Saunders plucks a nerve
George Saunders’s story The Mom of Bold Action speaks to misguided intentions gone bad, unintended consequences, and forgiving yourself for how the shittiness of those consequences impacts others. Still, you believe in yourself and stick with what you believe the “real you” should do.
At one point in the story the hapless heroine, the mom of the title, who is failing at being a writer, reflects after rereading some of her once thought-to-be masterful works:
Her third person reference to herself indicates how her internal overseer is in a lecturing mood. The overseer dictates its judgments after the fact, but is absent when her “creative” self goes on a toot.
Saunders’s characters are all like that, defiantly human and forgivably flawed. Sort of like a lot of us, including me, but in my case more so then than now. I too, just like Bold Mom, on many occasions convinced myself that I was a writer but, also like her, played it safe by baking cookies. It was always apparent that people who knew me in both roles, preferred the cookies over the prose. I, on the other hand, felt the opposite. So here I am still churning it out, doing more writing than baking.
In another story, Love Letter, Saunders has the letter writer writing to his nephew in a time and space where the overseers had become externalized and more unapproving, more judgmental. The writer writes:
Okay, I write to the papers too. So, oh, oh! Given the mood and the power players in the country now, a cold chill ran up my typing fingers. I wondered whether these external overseer cops were actually paying any attention to my stuff. Because for sure they would be offended. But then not so many people read my stuff, so I was probably ok. But just to be on the safe side I decided to always have a small tin of cookies with me when I drive. My Trump card so to speak, if I get pulled over.
But Saunders is still not done with me. In his story, Ghoul, he tells of an underground world where all people are assigned a role to play. The protagonist plays a ghoul, hence the title. All the players are professional and committed to their parts. But infractions, including wanting to be something else and telling the truth are subversive. In such an event, all players are required by the ethics of the society to rat out the offender, at which time he/she will be kicked to death. Harsh!
Anyway, the Ghoul’s would be girlfriend, Amy, discovers a truth and writes a letter to him divulging it. To avoid a spoiler alert, I won’t tell you what the Ghoul does, but the alternatives are he rats her out or he does not. In any case he muses:
So, again, the chills run up my typing fingers. I’m beginning to think that maybe I should give up writing entirely and just expand my cookie repertoire.
If you’ve ever searched the Internet for cookie recipes, you know there are millions of them all claiming to be the best or among the ten best. I could easily make baking a rest-of-my-life avocation. Think of how many people I could please. Of course, my contribution wouldn’t be up there with Thomas Paine or Martin Luther King. But it might go down in history as maybe a sort of, kind of, mini loaves and fishes thing. That’s not a sugarless cookie, after all. And even the overseers, my own included, would be pleased.
Obviously, I’m still thinking over the quitting writing possibility, because here I am still doing it. But I am giving some tentative consideration to giving up reading Saunders. However, if you’re not so timid as me and have a stronger constitution for the scary parts, try reading these and others of his stories. They’re in the collection Liberation Day. Plus you can find out what Ghoul actually did. A teaser to end!
Also published at Medium.com on May 14, 2025
Similar Posts: