Befrielsedagen

I love how funny George Saunders is. It's a bleak kind of humour, but come on; the idea of a dystopian slave plantation where the slaves are brainwashed to produce podcasts on American history is funny. The quiet absurdity of an inter-office battle between two women trying to get the useless manager on their side while he just wants to play with his toy cars is funny. It might be a problem if that was all he was trying to be, but

I love how angry George Saunders is. He's been writing these little pre/inter/postapocalyptic stories for a long while now, and the world isn't doing a whole lot to disprove him. Not for nothing, one of the centrepieces here is just a letter from a grandfather to a grandchild apologizing for not doing more while it was still possible to do more. The game is rigged and just gets riggeder, the winners will win and the losers will lose, and it all ends in tragedy. It might be a problem if that was all he's trying to be, but

I love how compassionate George Saunders is. He still believes that people can be better, that even the perpetrators can see their victims and recognize themselves, no matter how hard we may try not to, no matter how much the systems we build encourage us to climb over each other. You have to believe that truth will out. It would be so easy to write these stories, or live through these times, and just end up with dark humour and rage, but if we don't care... now that would be a problem.