Shit-hill
I could spend forever thanking George Saunders all the writerly gifts he's given me, and it still wouldn't be enough.
Weekly Three
HEAR: Not Donda.
READ: George Saunders' newest story, "The Mom of Bold Action," in the New Yorker.
VIEW: An employee and lobbyist at Exxon was caught saying (basically that) the company gives zero fucks about anyone but themselves — including Mother Nature
No. 41: Shit-hill
One of my favorite writers is George Saunders.
I didn’t expect him to change my outlook on writing as much as he did, but oh man he did (currently is), and the effect — not to be melodramatic — was life changing.
Saunders, like Canetti, another life-changer, gave gifts to me that have made cutting a footpath through the thorny jungle of literary artistry considerably less bloody.
What makes reading George Saunders so great? You’ll have to read him to really know. It’s an addictive experience. The main character of his new story, “The Mom of Bold Action,” came close to summing it up when she said:
But that was what good writing did, she realized: you said what you really thought and it made a kind of energy, and that sincere energy flowed into the mind of the reader.
One of his methods is to work at the sentence level, instead of at the paragraph or section levels. His sentences claim the reader’s total attention, like it or not, a major achievement at a time when attention is in very, very short supply.
Caught in the act of reading a George Saunders story, it might seem I had unearthed and was holding the only-existing, char-edged blueprint explaining how to construct a time machine — my eyes wide and flickering back and forth across the page, a wry smile twisting across my face, breathy sounds of astonished laughter adding to my fervor.
Saunders shatters traditional form and just writes, free and unrestrained and with the utmost love and zeal. It isn’t hard to tell: he’s having the time of his life, letting the story go where it will, dealing with bad and promoting good, assuming an intelligent reader and treating them with respect.
Sometimes he comes off a madman maniacally pecking at his keyboard with his index fingers, the blue glare of the computer screen reflecting in the lenses of his glasses. He’s not a madman (or maybe he is?). Somehow, literature proper makes a guy saying what he means, being funny, and using simple terms seem mad.
Want to transcend the bounds of reality to allow a woman to ask for forgiveness with a beam of light that emits from her forehead, traveling across town until it reaches the man it’s intended for? Saunders says, do it. Want to bring to life a bag of Doritos and an orange so they might have a conversation about their helplessness in being used as tools in TV commercials? Saunders says, bright idea, go for it.
There is no voice in Saunders’ head that says: “This is how it has always been done. This is how it must be done now. Look at all the books you’ve read. Was it all for naught? What you’re writing here is piss. Buck up. Get it together. Be a master like the masters you admire, or quit.”
No, the voice in Saunders’ head, I imagine, sounds something like: “Woah, that was weird. Let’s run with it! Ha ha.”
This seems just the thing that’s needed in modern literature. Freedom, innovation, fun, all of which are hard to come by in an artform that tends to look backward for guidance to an unhealthy extent.
I read my girlfriend one of his stories. One that I love. She did not like it. One of my old managers said should couldn’t stand Saunders either.
I get it. At least I think I do. I mean, if they don’t like it they don’t like it. That’s enough. They might also disagree with Saunders’ worldview and the messages he promotes. But most likely, I think, it’s because, books being books, many prefer the traditional narrator and the slow burn of moody prose to a jumpy vernacular style.
I love the beauty and embellishments of measured writing, too, but usually its elegance feels out of place today. Saunders’ style is terse and true-to-speech, funny without trying to be, sometimes gross, usually cruel, many times incorrect, messy and filled with unexpected thoughts, ideas, and turns of event.
It’s chaotic. Sound familiar? It’s not an escape, but an immersion.
He has wondered if “style” is just another word for the prose a writer makes when she is working around her weaknesses, also known as, working with what she’s got.
Saunders has got a lot.
I love the man for pushing the genre forward with every word, inviting writers to walk with him out there on the cutting edge. He proves that literature is not dead, has never died, and will never die. That being the case, he says without saying it, “Let’s see what we can do with this thing.”
One of my favorite Saunders bit of advice:
What we have to do is go over, sheepishly but boldly, and stand on our shit-hill, and hope it will grow.
Allow me to translate, since I’ve dropped this quote with no context whatsoever.
Inspiration is required, but we shouldn’t follow the exact paths our inspirations took. It’s a waste of time, because we can only be ourselves.
Every great mountain began as a shit-hill.
It’s a start.
It might be a shit-hill forever, but it’s your shit-hill.
Plus, you never know. Someone might walk by your shit-hill one day and think, “Hey, that’s a pretty cool shit-hill.”
The thing is to keep going. To never stop. Like Robert Creeley, a mountain maker, says in his poem “Here”:
What
has happened
makes
the world.
Live
on the edge,
looking. ♦
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