Tenth of December: Stories

( 64 )

Overview

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.
 
In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and ...

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More About This Book

Overview

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.
 
In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.
 
Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
 
Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”

Advance praise for Tenth of December
 
“Tenth of December shows George Saunders at his most subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing. Few writers can encompass that range of adjectives, but Saunders is a true original—restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane.”—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
 
“George Saunders is a complete original, unlike anyone else, thank god—and yet still he manages to be the rightful heir to three other complete American originals—Barthelme (the lyricism, the playfulness), Vonnegut (the outrage, the wit, the scope), and Twain (the common sense, the exasperation). There is no author I recommend to people more often—for ten years I’ve urged George Saunders onto everyone and everyone. You want funny? Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.”—Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King

Praise for George Saunders
 
“Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith
 
“George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We’re lucky to have him.”—Jonathan Franzen
 
“An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.”—Thomas Pynchon

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Editorial Reviews

The Washington Post - Jeff Turrentine
In one way or another, all the tales in Tenth of December, [Saunders's] amazing new collection of stories, are about the tragedy of separation. What distinguishes it from the three equally fine collections that have preceded it…is the added pinch of semi-sweet salvation, an ingredient most other satirists diligently avoid for fear of ruining their sour-by-design recipes.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised…If his earlier books reverberated with echoes of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut, Mr. Saunders's latest offering…seems to have more in common with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. There are still touches of surreal weirdness here…but for the most part the humor is more muted and the stories tend to pivot around loneliness, disappointment, frustration and the difficulty of connecting with other human beings. Although sentiment has always lurked beneath the antic, corrugated surface of Mr. Saunders's work, there is a new sympathy for his characters in these pages, an emphasis on how bad luck, poor judgment, lack of resources and family misfortune can snowball into violence or catastrophe.
The New York Times Book Review - Gregory Cowles
In Tenth of December, [Saunders's] fourth and best collection, readers will encounter an abduction, a rape, a chemically induced suicide, the suppressed rage of a milquetoast or two, a veteran's post-traumatic impulse to burn down his mother's house—all of it buffeted by gusts of such merriment and tender regard and daffy good cheer that you realize only in retrospect how dark these morality tales really are…despite the dirty surrealism and cleareyed despair, Tenth of December never succumbs to depression. That's partly because of Saunders's relentless humor…But more substantially it's because of his exhilarating attention to language and his beatific generosity of spirit.
Publishers Weekly
The title of Saunders's fourth collection doesn't reference any regularly observed holiday, but for the MacArthur-certified genius's fans, a new collection, his first in six years, is a cause to celebrate. Yet the 10 stories here—six of which ran in the New Yorker—might make readers won over by earlier, irony-laced absurdities like Pastoralia's "Sea Oak" or corporate nightmares like "CommComm" from In Persuasion Nation question whether they know Saunders as well as they think they do. Yes, "Puppy" is about a maniacally upbeat mother on a "Family Mission" to adopt a dog only to discover the dog owner's son chained to a tree in the backyard "via some sort of doohicky." Yes, "Escape from Spiderhead" is about evil experiments to make love and take love away using drugs with names like Darkenfloxx™. But readers expecting zany escapism will be humbled by the pathos on display in stories like "Home," where a soldier returns to his humble origins. "Victory Lap" features a disarming case of child kidnapping, and "The Semplica Girl Diaries" is a heartbreaking chronicle of two months of changeable fortune in the life of a lower-middle-class paterfamilias of modest expectation ("graduate college, win Pam, get job, make babies, forget feeling of special destiny"). Eventually, a suspicion creeps in that, behind Saunders's comic talents, he might be the most compassionate writer working today. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Jan. 8)
Boston Globe
George Saunders captures the fragmented rhythms, disjointed sensory input, and wildly absurd realities of the 21st century experience like no other writer.
San Francisco Chronicle
It's tough to think of a living short-story writer - or even a dead one - who garners as much peer approval as George Saunders. Alice Munro, maybe, but that's about it. . . . It's Saunders whose name is both whispered in reverent tones and shouted from the rooftops by other authors. His sparkling new story collection Tenth of December demonstrates why. . . . Saunders uses humor to amplify tension rather than avoid it, and the results are superb. Many of the 10 stories are comfortable with making us uncomfortable. They go for the jugular instead of the funny bone, and they're capable of astounding, unnerving and delighting all at once. The prose is so smartly crafted throughout that it makes me want to go back and re-evaluate all of Saunders' previous books. But first I plan to re-reread this new collection one more time.
Kirkus Reviews
A new story collection from the most playful postmodernist since Donald Barthelme, with narratives that can be enjoyed on a number of different levels. Literature that takes the sort of chances that Saunders does is rarely as much fun as his is. Even when he is subverting convention, letting the reader know throughout that there is an authorial presence pulling the strings, that these characters and their lives don't exist beyond words, he seduces the reader with his warmth, humor and storytelling command. And these are very much stories of these times, filled with economic struggles and class envy, with war and its effects, with drugs that serve as a substitute for deeper emotions (like love) and perhaps a cure (at least temporary) for what one of the stories calls "a sort of vast existential nausea." On the surface, many of these stories are genre exercises. "Escape from Spiderhead" has all the trappings of science fiction, yet culminates in a profound meditation on free will and personal responsibility. One story is cast as a manager's memo; another takes the form of a very strange diary. Perhaps the funniest and potentially the grimmest is "Home," which is sort of a Raymond Carver working-class gothic send-up. A veteran returns home from war, likely suffering from post-traumatic stress. His foulmouthed mother and her new boyfriend are on the verge of eviction. His wife and family are now shacking up with a new guy. His sister has crossed the class divide. Things aren't likely to end well. The opening story, "Victory Lap," conjures a provisional, conditional reality, based on choices of the author and his characters. "Is life fun or scary?" it asks. "Are people good or bad?" The closing title story, the most ambitious here, has already been anthologized in a couple of "best of" annuals: It moves between the consciousness of a young boy and an older man, who develop a lifesaving relationship. Nobody writes quite like Saunders.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780812993806
  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 1/8/2013
  • Pages: 272
  • Sales rank: 5,773
  • Product dimensions: 6.04 (w) x 8.38 (h) x 0.98 (d)

Meet the Author

George Saunders

MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow George Saunders is the acclaimed author of several collections of short stories, including Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, as well as a collection of essays and a book for children. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.

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Read an Excerpt

TENTH of DECEMBER

The pale boy with unfortunate Prince Valiant bangs and cublike mannerisms hulked to the mudroom closet and req- uisitioned Dad's white coat. Then requisitioned the boots he'd spray-painted white. Painting the pellet gun white had been a no. That was a gift from Aunt Chloe. Every time she came over he had to haul it out so she could make a big stink about the wood grain.

Today's assignation: walk to pond, ascertain beaver dam. Likely he would be detained. By that species that lived amongst the old rock wall. They were small but, upon emerging, assumed certain proportions. And gave chase. This was just their methodology. His aplomb threw them loops. He knew that. And reveled in it. He would turn, level the pellet gun, intone: Are you aware of the usage of this human implement?

Blam!

They were Netherworlders. Or Nethers. They had a strange bond with him. Sometimes for whole days he would just nurse their wounds. Occasionally, for a joke, he would shoot one in the butt as it fled. Who henceforth would limp for the rest of its days. Which could be as long as an additional nine million years.

Safe inside the rock wall, the shot one would go, Guys, look at my butt.

As a group, all would look at Gzeemon's butt, exchanging sullen glances of: Gzeemon shall indeed be limping for the next nine million years, poor bloke.

Because yes: Nethers tended to talk like that guy in Mary Poppins.

Which naturally raised some mysteries as to their ultimate origin here on Earth.

Detaining him was problematic for the Nethers. He was wily. Plus could not fit through their rock-wall opening. When they tied him up and went inside to brew their special miniaturizing potion--Wham!-- he would snap their antiquated rope with a move from his self-invented martial arts system, Toi Foi, a.k.a., Deadly Forearms. And place at their doorway an implacable rock of suffocation, trapping them inside.

Later, imagining them in their death throes, taking pity on them, he would come back, move the rock.

Blimey, one of them might say from withal. Thanks, guv'nor. You are indeed a worthy adversary.

Sometimes there would be torture. They would make him lie on his back looking up at the racing clouds while they tortured him in ways he could actually take. They tended to leave his teeth alone. Which was lucky. He didn't even like to get a cleaning. They were dunderheads in that manner. They never messed with his peen and never messed with his fingernails. He'd just abide there, infuriating them with his snow angels. Sometimes, believing it their coup de grâce, not realizing he'd heard this since time in memorial from certain in-school cretins, they'd go, Wow, we didn't even know Robin could be a boy's name. And chortle their Nether laughs.

Today he had a feeling that the Nethers might kidnap Suzanne Bledsoe, the new girl in homeroom. She was from Montreal. He just loved the way she talked. So, apparently, did the Nethers, who planned to use her to repopulate their depleted numbers and bake various things they did not know how to bake.

All suited up now, NASA. Turning awkwardly to go out the door.

Affirmative. We have your coordinates. Be careful out there, Robin.

Whoa, cold, dang.

Duck thermometer read ten. And that was without windchill. That made it fun. That made it real. A green Nissan was parked where Poole dead-ended into the soccer...

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 3.5
( 64 )
Rating Distribution

5 Star

(26)

4 Star

(8)

3 Star

(5)

2 Star

(7)

1 Star

(18)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 64 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted January 26, 2013

    I've never felt more compelled to write a book review. I was so

    I've never felt more compelled to write a book review. I was so disappointed with this book...the stories are strange, they don't have a good flow, and I found myself wanting to skip pages, hoping it would get better along the way. No such luck. I have always found it easy to immerse myself in a book, but this took some real effort, and I still couldn't manage to stay interested in the weird, twisted stories with unsatisfying endings. What a waste of time and money.

    11 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 22, 2013

    This book is not written for me.

    None of these short stories appealed to me; none of the charecters are likeable and the details of their lives are mostly depressing. Since this reviewer is 81 years old and lives in the Northeast, he suggests you consult other reviews.

    10 out of 15 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted January 16, 2013

    Swallowed it whole, but a high point for me was Escape from Spid

    Swallowed it whole, but a high point for me was Escape from Spiderhead--so tightly written and hauntingly bleak it stuck with me for almost a day.

    10 out of 12 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 31, 2013

    Couldnt even get through the sample!!! :(

    Thank goodness that was free. It felt like I was back in college, stoned, and despretely trying to sqeeze some sense out of the words. Anybody else get that vibe from this one?

    8 out of 12 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 16, 2013

    Awesome writer!

    Just heard a review of this book on NPR. Read sample and had to "BUY NOW." Absolutely genious writing!








    8 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 2, 2013

    Overrated.....

    This collection of short stories was a disappointment to me. I expected something top-notch, given all the ultra-enthusiastic reviews.
    As a result, I bought the book sight-unseen. I've not been able to complete one story. The characters do not engage me, and the flat,detached style is a turn-off. Be sure you sample before buying.

    6 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 1, 2013

    Thumbs down

    Get the free sample before you buy. I wish i had. What a waste of money! It is hard for me to understand how any of the stories in this collection made it to print.

    5 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 15, 2013

    Just great characters. Not your neighbors but they just could be

    If you are an avid NewYorker reader you've read a lot of these stories in shorter form. I recognized them as I started the new story and then focused on the way Mr Saunders expanded the scope. Almost all of the time it was for the better. The title story seemed to me to be more graphic in it's shorter form in the magazine although I probably brought too much into it from my vivid memory of this exquisite tale.

    Definitely a wonderful collection.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 30, 2013

    Reviews

    Be sure to read the professional reviewers' opinions of this collection before you dismiss it completely.

    3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 10, 2013

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace

    It is quite something to come across a writer of versatility and

    It is quite something to come across a writer of versatility and skill who doesn’t figure (now that they have your ear—you bought the book, didn’t you?) they will add more than they need just because they can. This is a slim volume of stories that all of us should have--to read, to cherish, and to share. Saunders has a distinct voice that reveals us as we are now. We may say that his stories do not have the language of the old masters, but they have the language we use, with more kindness, generosity of spirit, and humor mixed in than most of us can rustle up on an ordinary day.

    In the “Afterword” to Although Of Course You End up Becoming Yourself, an extended interview with David Foster Wallace by David Lipsky writing for Rolling Stone magazine, Lipsky says of Wallace’s style that he wrote “the stuff you semi-thought, the background action you blinked through at supermarkets and commutes.” You heard it, you know it, but it doesn’t register enough for you to articulate and consider. Wallace was able to do that, and Saunders does it also. He reaches in and gets that real thing that you discarded, shines it, and shows you how it defines us.

    If I could ask him, I would ask Saunders how he chose which stories to include in this volume. He spans the range of us, starting out in the mind of suburban teenagers looking at each other with longing or appraisal ("Victory Lap"), and ends with a gentleman of great age descending the staircase of dementia to his grave ("Tenth of December"). In between we catch glimpses of ourselves as returning soldiers filled with anger and hope ("Home"), twenty-somethings undergoing moral and medical testing ("Escape from Spiderhead"), and middle-aged parents aching to give their children more than they themselves had growing up ("The Semplica Girl Diaries").

    Saunders is funny, kind, precise with his sword-thrusts which reach the heart but do not kill. I do not think we need ask “where do you get your inspiration?” since echoes of Mao Zedong ring through "Exhortation", and we also know the zany neighbor in "Sticks", or can imagine the source of the internal dialogue in "My Chivalric Fiasco". These people are us, and he treats us gently and allows us to laugh, with regret sometimes, with recognition at other times. But he doesn’t laugh at us and we don’t laugh with cynicism. We are grateful to Saunders because, despite his pointing out our failings and our shortcomings, we can sense he still likes us, and even celebrates our efforts in trying to make sense of, and make our way in, this crazy world.

    I have too many favorite bits to single one out. But perhaps after all, my favorite bit is the fact that he doesn’t use too many words. It is honed and toned and polished and clear and gets to the heart of the matter. It isn’t a long book, so you can easily find your own favorite bit. It’s all good. Go out and buy it. This is one you will want to reread: you will read it when you are happy, and you will read it when you are sad, you will read to see how he did that.

    2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 15, 2013

    Prose is tripey.

    You can almost smell the alcoholic breath coming off the squeezed, pinched off words and paragraphs this author employs in his desparate attempt to write The Great American novel. Not worth it.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 9, 2013

    Very disappointing

    The person who likened George Saunders to a modern day Mark Twain, did Mark Twain a disservice. Although a couple of the stories had an interesting twist, the language and situations were so distasteful, that they were not worth the time spend reading them. I tried to give this a zero star rating, but had to give at least one in order to submit the review.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted March 24, 2013

    Yes.... these stories are strange,wierd....unreliable...you lose

    Yes.... these stories are strange,wierd....unreliable...you lose your footing ..you don't relate to these bizarre characters . You need a breath of fresh air after reading several of the stories.
    Exasperated, you put the book down and go to sleep.The next day you find yourself thinkiing about these sad, strange people and bam!!
    It hits you....you feel a painful knot in your chest, its compassion and worse its recognition.
    That's why he's a genius.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 26, 2013

    I¿m not a whole-hearted fan of Youssarian, Vonnegut, Defoe or so

    I’m not a whole-hearted fan of Youssarian, Vonnegut, Defoe or some other great observers of the human condition and circumstance, but George Saunders‘ writing offers me something a little different.  Something I require in an author’s voice, just to finish the book.  The sound of hope.  If you are in need of a realistic adult voice: its observations on our lives and what we are putting forward for posterity, this is the book for you.  Read it twice!

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 1, 2013

    Excellent

    One of today's great writers.

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 15, 2013

    Worgh Lives up to the hyoe Livds up ro Lives up to the hype

    Highly recommend.

    1 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted May 17, 2013

    Amazing from start to finish!

    You know a book is awesome when you check what page you're on- not because you wonder how much is left until the end but because you're hoping there are still plenty of pages left to read!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 20, 2013

    Sucked

    Very poory written

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 6, 2013

    I found it boring

    I started to read this book, but it seemed so boring,so I put it aside and thought I might come back to it at some other time.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 16, 2013

    Dear Professional Critics: Please stop holding up the mediocre as the profound.

    I simply wish more critics would understand that writing built on disjointed thoughts, weirdness for weirdness sake, and disturbing imagery is actually quite easy to execute. As it is in sculpture and photography, eliciting shock is almost never a meaningful contribution. This book is akin to a moderately skilled jazz saxophonist who largely wails alone, unstructured, and uncontrolled with nothing of any real substance. A few moments of brilliance, sure, but little staying power.

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