462 . Ceorge Saunders
GEORGE SAUNDERS
He trainedas a scientist
Geo.ge Saunderswas born in 1958in Amarillo,Texas,
at the Colorado Schoolof Minesand after graduationworked in Sumatraand
Indcnesra,
analyzingseismicdata in order to prosped for oil. Duringthat time
lre rvas also writing, and eventuallygraduatedfrom the M.F.A.program at
in Bod
Syr.:use Unrversity.He is the author of the collectionsCivilWorLond
(2000).Known for his
Dec ne ( l99tr),a PEN/Hemingwaylinalist,and Postorolto
hilariousand often absurd depictionsof contemporary life,Saundersfollows
In an interthe tradition of great American satirists,
such as KurtVonnegut,Jr:
vreir with tfe AtlonLic,Saunderstalked about hovr he achieveshumor in a
51ety:"l've been askedif when l'm writing I know it's funny,and I think the answ€r rs generallyno. BecauseI think funninesshassomethingto do wrth compre;sion.When I write I know that I'm goingto haveto produce40 percent
nrc:e than I need.Sometimesl'llwrite a whole pageandthere'llbe just one little ;chtickthat'sgood in there. l'll eventuallyjust cut the rest and go with that,
anclrf I'm luckyI get to somethingfunnyA lot of it hasto do with knowinghow
to -ut,so that you get a juxtapositionof strangeelementsl'
My FlamboyantGrandson
seea show. Becausewhat is
J ha,l brought my grandson to New York to
I hc alwaysdoing, up here in Oneontaf Singing and dancing, sometimes
to my old show-tune records, but more often than not to his favorite CD,
"Babar Sings," sometimes even making up his own steps,which I do not
mind. or rather I trv not to mind it. Although I admit that once, coming
into his room and frnding him wearing a pink boa while singing, in the
voice of the Old Ladg "I Have Never Met a Man Like That Elephant," I
had t, r walk out and give it some deep thought and prayer, as was also the
casc rvhcn he lumbered into the parlor during a recent church couples
dinncr, singing "Big and Slow, Yet So Very Regal," wearing a tablecloth
spray painted gray, so as to more closely resembleBabar.
I';cing a man who knows something about grandfatherly disapproval,
having had a grandfhther who constantly taunted me for having enlarged
calve;-to thc extent that even today, when bathing, I find myself think-
My Flamboyant
Grandson. 463
rng unkind thoughts about Grandfather-what
I prayed on both occasions was: Dear Lord, he is what he
is, let me love him no matter what. If
he is a gay child, God bless him; if
he is a non_gay child who simply very
much enjoys wearing his grandmorher's
wig while singing ..ld"i*"lrr.
to
the dog, so be it, and in.ith..."r.
let
communicate my love and acceptance in everything I do.
-.
Because where is a
to go for unconditional love, if not
to his
grandfatherf He has had-child
it tough]i.r
view, with his mother in Nevada
and a father unknown,.raiyd by t i, gr"rramother
-y
and me in an otherwise
childless neighborhood, ptaying
ir, tirry yard that ends in a grave"tori.
f.ard waf . The boys in trli scfro-ot
h"rJ" o' hi_,
J.-grlr,
"..
the teachers, and recentry we found
", "..
his book bag ",in "r.
the Susquehanna,
and recendy also found, taped to
the back of his jacket,
al.og"rory
note, and the writing on ir was not
"
all that childish_tookirrg,
;d there
were rumors that his bus driver had
written it.
Then one day I had a reveladon. If
the lad likes to sing and dance, I
why not expose him to the finesr singing
s":ghl
a"i.ir1g there isf
So I called I-800-CULTURE, got
or'pro_irror-y "n.t
Voucher in-the mail,
and on Teddy's birthday rt. toof
the train down to New york.
As we enrered the magnificent lobby
of the Eisner Tl;;;.,
I was in
good spirits, saying to f'eJdy, The
size or *ri, stage will make that little
stage I built you behind th;
gara*e look patheti., Jh.r, ,.raa.rty _. *.r.
stopped by a stern young fbllow (a
Mr.'Ernesti, I berieve) who said, we
-nro*orory
are sorry, sir, but vou cannot
be admitted o.,
V:1.h.1, are you kidding us) you
"
-.r.ly and
Voucher
your proof
of Purchases from at least six of-rrr,i"t1-your
o,r, U",o,
Artistic Sponsors, such as
-it"a._ption
AOL, such as Coke, and go at once
to th.
Center, on Forry_
fourth and Broadwav. to get your
rear actuar tickets, and please do not
be
late' as latecomers .-rroib.
admitted, d;.;"
special effects which occur
which require total darkness in
to simulate the Afiican
:1'Ir "y
at
night.
;ungte
-d"r
Well, this was news to me, but I was
not about to disappoint the boy.
We left the Eisnerand started up Broadway,
the Everly i."a"r, _ ,fr.
the
Strips.in o,r, ,to.s, the building_mounred
:*I*
:."ding
.Everty
nuilscreens at eye level showing
images reflective of th! p..rorrrt
Preferenceswe 'd stared o' orr,
E;;ly preference Worksheets, the
numerous cybec Sudden Emergent
-orirlrly
screens outthrusting o, do*o-thr.rrting inches from our faces, and in
addition I courd very clearly hear the
464 . f.eo;geS:'-.inders
s()und only lnessagesbcing beamcd to me and mc alone via various Kakio
Aural Focussers,such as one dr.rt shoutcd out to me between Forty-second anci Forty-third, "Mr. Petrillo, you chose Burger King eight times last
iiscal ycrr but only tw() times thus fbr this fiscal year, pleasedo not forsake
us no% thcre is a store one block north!," in the voice of Broadway star
F,laine lVcston, while at Forty-third a light-pole-mounted Focusser
shouted, "Golh'. Leonard, remember your childhood on the farm in
Or.reontal Why not reclaim those roots with a Starbucks Country Roastf,"
in a celcbrity rural voice I could not identify, possibly Buck Owens, and
thcn, bt'st of all, in the doorway of PLC Electronics, a life-size Gene Kelly
hologram suddenll, ap;leared,tap-dancing, saying, "Leonard, my data indicates vou're a bit of an old-timer like myselfl Gosh, in our day life was
simpler, wasn't it, lronardl Why not come in and let Frankie Z. explain
thc latcst gizmos!" And he looked so real I called out to Teddy, "Teddy,
l<>okthcre, Gene Kelly, do you remcmber I mentioned him to you as one
of the arl-time great dancers?"But Teddy of course did not seeGene Kelly,
(icne B-elly not being one of his Prefbrences,but instead saw his hero
Babar, sr.r'inginga small rnonkey on his trunk while saying that his data indicatcd that Tccldy did not yet own a Nintendo.
So that was fun, that was very New York, but what was not so fun
was, by the time wc got through the line at the Redemption Center, it
was ten minutcs until showtimc, and my feet had swollen up the way they
do sho,'tly betore they begin spontaneously bleeding, which they have
dr>necvcr sincc a winter spent in thc fieezing muck <lf Cho-Bai, Korea. It
is srxncthing I have learned to live u'ith. If I can sit, that is helpful. If I can
lean agrinst something, also good. Best of all, if I can take my shoesoff.
!\4rich I did, leaning against a wall.
All around and above us were those towering walls of light, curving
across l;uilding fronts, embcddcd in the sidewalks,custom-fitted to light
polcs: c cartooll lion eating a man in a suit; a rain of gold coins falling into
the car,oc of a naked rain-forest family; a woman in lingerie running a
bottlc ,lf Pepsi between her breasts;the Merrill Lynch talking fist asking,
"Are 1,ou kicking assor kissing it)"; a perf-ecthuman rear, dancing; a fake
tlock of geeseturning into a ficld of Bebe logos; a dying grandmother's
room lrllcd with roses by a FedEx man who then holds up a card saying
"No (iharge."
A.r:d standing beneath all that bounty was our litde Teddy, tiny and
sad, wirclse grandtlther could not even manage to get him into one
c r um n' 1' s hou' .
E&,.,,
My Flamboyant
Grandson. 465
So I said to myself, Get off the wall, old man, blood or no blood, just
,
keep the legs moving and soon enough you,ll be there. And off we went,
me hobbling, Teddy holding my arm, making decent time, and I think we
would have made the curtain. Except suddenly there appeared a citizen
Helper, who asked were we from out of town, and was that why, via removing my shoes, I had caused my Everly Strips to be rendered
Inoperativel
I should say here that I am no stranger to innovative approaches to
advertising, having pioneered the use of towablc signboards in oneonta
back in the Nixon years, when I moved a fleet of thirty around town with
a Dodge Dart, wearing a suit that today would be found comic. By which
I mean I have no problem with the concepr of the Everly strip. That is
not why I had my shoes off. I am as pauiotic as rhe next guy. Rather, as I
have said, it was due to my bleeding feet.
I told all this to the Citizen Helper, who asked if I was aware that, by
rendering my strips Inoperative, I was sacrificing a terrific opportunity to
Celebrate My Preferencesl
And I said yes) yes, I regretted this very much.
He said he was sorry about my feet, he himself having a trick elbow,
and that he would be happy to forget this unfortunate incident if I would
only put my shoes back on and complete the rest of my walk extremely
slowly, looking energetically to both left and right, so that the higher density of Messagesthus received would compensate ficr those I had missed.
And I admit, I was a little short with that Helper, and said, young
man, these dark patches here on my socks are blood, do you or do you
not see themf
Which was when his face changed and he said, please do not snap ar
me, sir, I hope you are aware of the fact that I can write you upl
And then I made a mistake.
Because as I looked at that Citizen Helper-his round face, his pale
sideburns, the way his feet turned in-it seemed to me that I knew him.
or rather, it seemed that he could not be so very different from me when
a young man, not so different from the friends of my youth-from
I yas
|effie DeSoto, say)who once fought a Lithuanian gang that had stuck an
M-80 in the assof a cat, or from Ken Larmer, who had such a sweet tenor
voice and died stifling a laugh in the hills above Koi-Jeng.
I brought out a tlventy and, leaning over, said, Look, please, the kid
just really wants to see this show
Which is when he pulled our his pad and began to write!
465 . C,e:rgcSaurrders
Nou', cven being fiom Oneonta, I knew that being written up does
not take ()nc or two minutcs, we would be standing there at least half an
hour, aftcr which rve would havc to go to an Active Complaints Center,
where thcv would check our Strips fbr Operabiliry and make us watch
that correctivc vidco callcd "Robust Economy, Super Moral Climate!,"
which I had already been madc to watch three times last winter, when I
was ()ut of work and rvc could not af-ford cable. And we would totally
miss "Babar Sings"!
Pleasc, I saicl,please, we have seen plenty of personalizedmessages,
via both rhe building-mounted miniscrccns at eye level and those sudclcnly out-thrusting Cybec Enrergent Screens,we have learned plenty fbr
onc day. honcst to God we havefurd ire said, Sir, since when do you make the call as far as when you
have rece'vcd enor.rghuseful information from our Artistic Partnersl And
just kept ,.r,ritingme up.
Well, there I was, in my socks, there was Teddy, with a scaredlook in
his eycs I hadn't seen since his toddler days, when he had such a fear of
chickcns that we could ncver buy Rosemont eggs, due to the cartoon
chicken c'n the crrton, or, if we did, had to first cut the chickcn off, with
scissorsue kept in the car for that pulpose. So I made a quick decision,
and seizel that Citizen Helper's ticket pad and flung it into the street,
shcluting at Teddy, Run! Run!
And :un hc did. And run I did. And while that Citizen Helper floundcred in the strcet, torn between chasing us and retrieving his pad, we
raced dori'n Broadway, and glancing back over my shoulder I saw a hulking youn;; nlan stick out his foot, and down that Helpcr went, and soon I
was handing our tickets to the same stcrn Mr. Ernesti, who was now less
stcn], an(l in we went, and took our seatsras the starsappearedoverhead
and thc Lisner was transtbrmed into a nighttime jungle .
And suddcnly there was Babar, looking with longing toward Paris,
u'hcrc thc ()ld I.ady was saying that she had dreamed of someone named
Babar, urd dici any of us knowwho this Babarwas,andwhere he might
bc founcil And Tcddy knew the answer, fiom the Original Cast CD,
which rv;rs llabar is within us, in all of our hearts, and he shouted it out
u.'ith all :lrc othcr childrcn, as the Old Lady began singing "The King
In s ideof Y ou. "
Anci lct mc tcll you, fiom that moment everything changed for
-t'cddv. I am happy to report he has joined the play at school. He wearsa
scarf evcrvwhcre he goes, rhr()wing it over his shoulder with what can
onlv be ,lescribecias bravado, and says,whenever asked, that he has de-
My Flamboyant
Grandson. 467
cided to become an actor. This from a boy too timid to trick-or-treat!
This from the boy we once found waiking home from school in rears,
padlocked to his own bike! There are no more late -night crying episodes,
he no longer writes on his arms with permanent
rt" t."p. out t,i
bed in the morning, anxious to get to school, and -"rk.r,
dons his scarf, and is already sitting at the table eating breakfast when we come down.
The other day as he got off the bus I heard him say, to his bus driver.
cool as a cucumber, Seeyou at the Oscars.
When an Everly Reader is reading, then suddenly stops, it is not hard to
trace, and within a week I received a certified letter setting my fine ar one
thousand dollars, and stating that, in lieu of the fine, I could elect to re turn to the origrnating location of my infiaction (they included a map)
and, under the supervision of that cittzen Helper, retrace my steps, shoes
on, thus reclaiming a significant opportuniry to celebrate My preferences.
This, to me, is not America.
What America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not
_
bug you respect his not buying. A gny has a crazy notion different from
your qazy notion, you pat him on the back and say hey, pal, nice crazy
notion, let's go have a beer. America to me should be shouting all the
time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong) some of th.nuts) but, please,not just one droning glamorous reasonablevoice.
But do the math: a day's pay, plus train ticket, plus meals, plus taxis to
avoid ttre bleeding feet, srill that is less than one thousand.
So down I went.
That Citizen Helper, whose name was Rob, said he was glad about
my change of heart. Every time a voice shot into my ear, ielling me
things about myself I already knew, every time a ceiebriry hol.gram
walked up like an old friend, Rob checked a box o.t
Infraction
correction Form and said, Isn't that amazing, Mr. petrillo,-y that we can
do tlat, that we can know you so well, that .. ."r, help you identi$r the
things you want and needf
And I would say,Yes, Rob, that is amazing, sick in the gut but trying
to keep my mind on rhe five hundred bucks I was saving and on alr the
dance classesthat would buy.
fu for Teddy, as I write this it is nearly midnight and he is tapping in
the room above. He looks like a bird, our boy, he watches the same musical
fifteen times in a row. walking through the mall he suddenly emits a randol line of dialogue and lunges off to the side, doing a dancl srcp that resemblesa stumble, spilling his drink, plowing into a group of incredulous,
468 . Af hrlSharma
Surrounded
by Sleep. 469
snickering Oneontans. He looks like no one else, acts like no one else, his
clothes are increasingly lik" plumage, late at night he choreographs using
plastic Army men, he fits no mold and has no friends, but I believe in my
(2002)
heart that someday something beautiful may come from him.
AKH IL SHAR M A
in New Delhi, India tn 1972,Akhil Sharmaimmigratedto the United
'..
and works a\
/
investmentbanker in NewYork By the time he
magazinesas the $tlontic and
thre:, he had alneadypublishedstoriesin such magazines
whh
the
Atlontic,
Sharma tal$ about what
interview
the New Yorker:l\n
driv:s his characterl:1'My characters are motivated by a dgfire to improve
all-represents a
Fother:was publishrd in 2000 and won the PEN/Hemingwayaward
"Surrounded'pySleepl'have
stor,es,rncludrng
Amlrtcon Short Stories.Discussin|'{row he
'Wnen I was younger I started with\he
No v I start with an incident that could
first fidion.Three of his
selected for the Eest
a story Sharma has said,
and would work up to thal
in the storyThe difficutty
\nger plot-driven.Youhaveto keep
br inte\est in the way you tell the story
\\\\
payoffi'
of starting this way is that the story ts
your reader hooked through
rnst:ad of through the promiseof
by Sleep
when Ajay wasten yearsold; his elder brother,
August afterr7.6on,
Ar.
pool
and struck his headon the cement bottom.
iry/o
a
dove
\-/lnran,
For threc minutegl he lay there unconscious. Two boyi'continued to
swim, Kicking aDl rplashing, until finally Aman was spo;ed below them.
Water nad entq,fed through his nose and mouth. It had filled his stomach.
His lu,rgs collapscd. By the time he was pulled out, he could no longer
think, talk, chew, or roll over in his sleep.
'
family had moved from India to
eueens, New york, rwo years
..AjZ"
earlier.The accident occurred during the boys' summer vacadon,
on a visit
with their aunt and uncle in Arlington, Virginia. After
the accidlnt, Ajay,s
mother cam€ to Arlington, where ihe r"aitel to ,ee rRma'vafit,*.L.ou.r.
At the hospital, she told the doctors and nurses that
her sofi had been ac_
cepted into the Bronx High School of Science, in the
hdpe that by highlighting his intel.ligence she would move them to make,i greater
efforr on
his behalf. Within a few weeks of the accident, rhe irs,jr*i.
."-f*y
,"ia
that Amanshouldbe ransferredto a l"* .#;riyl;.
;il;:;
term one. But only a few of thesewerc any good,3nd those*"r.'fuil, ""u
*d
Ajay'smother refusddto moveAman untii spap openedin
one of them.
"
so she remainedin fulington, and Ajay rt"y.4g''too,
and his father visited
from Queenson the weqkends*h"r, i. **"1;.kid
;i"y;;r;nrolled
at the local public school'andin Septemberf{estartednftn-gr"a..
Before the accident,Ajqy had never pfyed much. In lidia,
he and his
brother used to go with their mother t/ttt. t"-pte
every Tuesday night,
but that was mostly because there wa/a good d.isarestaurant
nearby. In
his family wenj to \-#
oJy on important holy days and
F:1.",
"
birthdays.But shortly after Ajay's',f'othe,
tame to Arlington, she moved
into the room thar he and his bro/er
had shared during"the ,umm..
madean altar in a corner. She
"rrd
*ra
/{rew.an old flowereJ;fr..i
board box that had once held
"r.r-"
On
top, sheput a claylamp, an
felevision.
incense-stick
holder, and posty'ardsdepictrng various gods. Theie was
also
a postcardof Mahatma Ga/dhi. she exprafted to Ajay that
God could
takeany.form; the picturef M"h"t-" Gan\i
,h.r" becausehe had
appearedto her in a drelm after the accidentrand
-", told her that Aman
would recover and
least half an hour befor/ the altar ivery mornin
'humility.
At first,
.,,o., she
Jrrs praycp
prayef wrrn
with absolute
aDsolute humtlty. *Wh\tever you do will be
1^l
goo. because you ape doing it,', she murmured
to the posicards of Ram
theirlipswithwaterandrice.Mi[;;A;Jn,
il fnlyrj',,oaubiryl
ro,
onty
waterr
he did not like ro eat. As weeks passedand Aman did
?".ryt'
nor fecov.er rn-trfre to return to the Bronx High
school'lf Science for
rne nrst.clay otflasses, his mother began doing things
thar.qalled amen_
uon to her pi9ty. She sometimes held the prayer
lamp until'it blstered
her palms. lnstead of kneeling beficre rhe altar,
she lay face diwn. she
fasted twice d week. Her attempts to sway God
were not so different
from Ajay's performing somersaults to amuse
his aunt, and they made
God seem human to Ajay.