Imagine sitting in a comfortable air-conditioned inter-city bus, and knowing that for two hours you can immerse yourself in a book you have wanted to read for a while. You read the first two pages…and stop. You are irritated by something: you wish to pay attention to the spell-binding prose; you stop reading. You look up and around; and see the source of the scratchy tinny sound: it is emanating from the ear-phones of the passenger sitting next to you! That poor guy is simply listening to the inter-city entertainment channel … he has courteously put on ear phones and is lost in the music of the song of some Indian movie. But even that is too much. You can’t read on: you quietly close the book and whisper to yourself: This book deserves better.
My daughter gave me the TENTH OF DECEMBER, a collection of short stories by George Saunders sometime ago and I thought an inter-city bus trip will be an excellent moment to begin. [It was on the return trip a day later.] And I was hooked instantly: such amazing prose! Lyrical, evocative, suggestive of the ephemeral joys and sensations that one feels and never quite knows how they could ever be expressed and…here! page after page you spot a couple of gems and just wonder: how did he do it?
The story with which I began, THE SEMPLICA GIRL DIARIES left me with an overdose of nostalgia. I somehow saw (heard) my own father’s values and words echo across the pages. The amazing resonance cut so deep that I often paused and thought: is this guy real? Could he have met and interviewed my family in the 70s and 80s in some strange forgotten trip to Pakistan? How did he know that Eva was a perfect match for my own daughter and that somehow she evokes in me the kind of paternal emotion that I did in my father? My mind whirled and twirled around in an amazing dance of images and words. If the passengers were amused by this tie-wearing bearded man as he read, nodded, closed the book, closed his eyes, pouted, read, smiled, grinned, and read some more… they didn’t let on. Nor would I have known if they did notice!
I will not review all the stories here. I want you to get his books and read them. George Saunders is a genius. I will be getting all his other books and want to warn all my friends: watch out for a constant mention of his books for next couple of months!