The George Saunders' Starter Pack

Where to start if you've never read him

You’ve probably heard of George Saunders. He’s one of the most celebrated fiction writers of our time, with numerous awards and bestsellers to validate the hype. This is a great year for Saunders. His much anticipated new novel Vigil releases today (January 27), and his first short story collection—CivilWarLand in Bad Decline—is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Yet, when I’ve talked about Saunders (even with some very bookish people) I’ve noticed I don’t know very many people who have read his work. This is a shame because Saunders’ writing really is amazing.

Saunders captures the absurdity of living in our current cultural moment. His stories are uproariously funny, wildly creative, dark, yet hopeful. His work exceeds labels, but Saunders can be broadly categorized as a satirist. His work can be strange, obscene, and, at times, devastating. But so is our world! As Karen Swallow Prior points out, some satirists stand aloof from whatever they’re critiquing and judge from a high-and-mighty place. But Saunders “stoops down to get inside his characters, to inhabit them, and to correct the errors of both the character and the reader by modeling sincere loving-kindness rather than distant mockery” (On Reading Well, Prior, 210). He offers correction from inside the absurdity rather than condemning it from the outside.

Saunders was raised Catholic and converted to Buddhism later in life. Though he’s not a believer, I’ve found many Christian themes (like sacrificial love, human dignity, kindness, etc.) scattered throughout his literary corpus. There’s a lot for Christians to appreciate and wrestle with in Saunders’ work, yet I know only a few Christians who have read a word of his writing.

As is the case with any author whose work spans multiple decades, I think this is an issue of not knowing where to start. So, in an effort to make Saunders a little accessible, here is my personal list of the essential George Saunders stories.

I’ve arranged this list by page count to show how easy it would be to start reading Saunders. He’s primarily a short story writer so most of these works can be read in one sitting! Whenever possible, I have attached a free online link to the story.

*the page numbers reflect my personal copies rather than the linked online versions.

“Sticks”

2 pages.

That’s right, this short story is all of two pages. Really just a page and a half. But don’t be fooled by its length or lack thereof. This gut-punch of a story sketches out an entire family dynamic in those two pages. It tells the story of a well-meaning but mentally unwell father and his strange habit of decorating some poles in his front yard.

Saunders does a phenomenal job capturing neurotic characters. In this brief piece, he captures someone with deep neurotic tendencies, paints some incredibly vivid mental images, and makes you want to call your dad. What else could you want from a short story?

In Tenth of December

“Isabelle”

7 pages.

This story also packs a punch. Economic pressure, violence, and callousness are par for the course in the world of this short story. The narrator starts off just as cruel as those around him, but his heart changes when he starts to care for a woman who suffers from an unnamed disability. By his actions he tries to ensure that “the sum total of sadness in the world is less than it would have been” (33). Does he do it? Read to find out.

George Saunders has an incredibly big heart, and that shows in this tender story. One of my favorite themes he tackles is human dignity. This story glows with human dignity. As Christians, we should flock to stories that affirm the innate goodness and dignity of people.

In CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

“CivilWarLand in Bad Decline”

24 pages

As much as people (myself included) laud George Saunders as one of the greatest writers of our time, he’s also just a weird dude with a crazy imagination. This iconic short story puts Saunders’ weirdness on full display. It’s set in a Civil-War themed amusement park that’s not doing well. There’s a roving violent gang and (inexplicably) ghosts. There’s a wild Vietnam vet who takes his job as a security guard a little too seriously. Out of all this strangeness, absurdity, and humor, somehow the last paragraph of this story induces tears and chills.

In CivilWarland In Bad Decline

“Mother’s Day”

26 pages

Alma is a bitter old woman. She doesn’t like how her kids turned out, and her husband, who was unfaithful to her throughout their marriage, passed away years ago. Without spoiling how the story unfolds, I’ll just say that it gives a fascinating fictional depiction of the afterlife (something of an obsession for Saunders) and pairs well with Flannery O’Connor’s classic short story “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

In Liberation Day

“Tenth of December”

36 pages

A man with a terminal cancer diagnosis goes into the woods to commit suicide. He believes dying this way will be better than burdening his family with his illness. A boy enters the same woods at the same time to play. Their paths converge, and what results is an incredibly tender story about how precious and difficult life can be.

In Tenth of December

“Fox 8”

47 pages

This story is told from the point of view of a fox who learns the “Yuman” language by listening to a family read stories at bedtime. The fox frets over a new mall that disrupts his home and food supply. So he writes the “Yumans” a letter. But he hasn’t mastered the subtleties of grammar and spelling. Here’s the first couple lines: “Deer Reeder: First may I say, sorry for any werds I spel rong. Because I am a fox! So don’t rite or spel perfect. But here is how I learned to rite and spel as gud as I do!” If you want to learn how Fox 8 learned to rite and spel, and why he’s writing this letter, read on.

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Well, there it is. Six short stories that will introduce you to George Saunders. If you enjoy any of them, consider checking out one of Saunders’ short story collections. All of them are worth reading. In order, they are CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, Tenth of December, and Liberation Day. If you read one or more of his short story collections and are hungry for more, let me recommend Saunders’ first novel Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s his masterpiece. But it’s pretty experimental and strange. Saunders was inspired by a historical legend that Abraham Lincoln, soon after his 11-year-old son died, would visit his son’s crypt and even hold his remains. Saunders took that picture, of a bereft Lincoln holding his son, and ran with it. The result is a ghost story about grief, the unreliability of historical accounts, and the power of empathy. Finally, if you’re a writer, you need to read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. In that book, Saunders takes a number of Russian short stories he regularly teaches at Syracuse, unpacks them, and shows what we can learn about storytelling from these pieces.