New Yorker Fiction Review #261: "Ghoul" by George Saunders
Review of the short story from the Nov. 2, 2020 issue of The New Yorker...
The fiction of George Saunders is like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates. You truly never know what you're going to get. You do know, however, that it's going to be bizarre, dark, funny, and damn good, and make you scratch your head in the process. His short story "Ghoul" took me a while to get into and to figure out what he was doing, but in the end, the payoff is worth it.
Essentially, George Saunders has created a world -- presumably some version of Hell -- in which humanoid "ghouls" scrabble around in an underground world a bit like "the upside down" in Stranger Things. Except, in this world, there is a strict code of laws and expectations -- if not exactly "morals" -- which the inhabitants are expected to follow. Expected by exactly who is not certain, and the inhabitants themselves are not even certain. And so, they go around snitching on each other and ratting each other out for the slightest of offenses, such as not ratting out someone else soon enough, in the hopes that they will be rewarded when the rulers from the world above come down to save them.
If this sounds like an "other side of the looking glass" version of Christianity, or at least Christianity in the way some people have chosen to live by it and interpret it, I'd say I have done my job and explained the meaning of the story without you even having to read it. You're welcome.
As one of the main characters writes in a letter within the story:
"Sweetie, no one is coming. To see how good we have done/are doing. It is just us. Forever. Until a flood gets us or the air or food stops coming. What a joke, the way we live. The worry, the suspicion, the stress, the meanness..."
I have no idea where George Saunders stands on Christianity or organized religion, but here he seems to be treating it with the classic Saunders-esque sarcasm and critical eye, overlain with his vivid imagination that conjures up intricate new worlds, like the one in the story, at will. I'm not going to say this is the most memorable or important thing I've ever read by George Saunders, but it's a good example of his ability to create a mood in a story and flesh out, in a few pages, a world that seems like it has been going on forever.
Comments
Yeah, good review. Saunders is quite good. I used to have a little speech about how only the title story in his second book is great, but by his third book they're all really good. I went to a reading in that Park Slope shul where one of my exs is on the board for the launch of Lincoln in the Bardo and even though the author didn't bomb, somehow I came out of it resolved to not read it.
I'd like to see somebody write an article comparing the great Syracuse point guards to the great Syracuse writers, Mary Karr Kenny Anderson, Saunders and I forget the player. DFW hung out there, too, while chasing Karr.