A Thing At Work by George Saunders, 2022
The magic trick:
A tour de force of internal monologue
A second Liberation Day story for your weekend. Yesterday’s Saunders feature, “The Mom Of Bold Action” put us in the thoughts of the titular mom of bold action.
Today’s story employs the same internal monologue technique but multiplies it times three. We get the perspectives and thoughts of three different characters in this classically American (and classically 2007?) office (seriously, this feels pretty dated post-COVID). It’s a tour-de-force of this kind of thing. Saunders is so good at inhabiting his characters in this way. We get humor, sadness, richly detailed (and sometimes random) backstories for each character as their thoughts bounce around and connect to any number of things. And actually, I sell it slightly short by saying three characters. We actually go inside the mind of the secretary for a couple paragraphs too. So there you go, four different internal monologues.
And that’s quite a trick on Saunders’s part.
The selection:
Back in her office, Brenda was maniacally wiping her keyboard with a Kleenex. Ah, jeez, she thought, did I just now throw the kids under the bus? By calling them “deadbeats”? No, I wouldn’t do that. That’s not how I am. Plus, anyways, they are deadbeats. Ha. Whatever, they can take it, they’re not made of sugar, they won’t melt. Also, probably shouldn’t have said that thing about stealing coffee. Because now Gen might think I actually have done that.
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