How To Get Back Into Reading, and Sticks by George Saunders
Friends, Countrymen, Zoomer-brained peers.
I've been meeting up with some old friends recently, and I noticed that whenever the conversation turns to books or writing, a common sentiment arose. Something to the tune of: "I want to get back into reading, but I just don't have the attention span anymore."
After hearing this from multiple people, I figured I'd create this weekly (hopefully, knowing my unmedicated ass) series to provide quality bite-sized story recommendations for people that want to get back into reading reading. I'm going to share a digestible piece by famous writers every Sunday(ish), so my friends who are gainfully employed during 9am to 5pm will have something to read on the way to work, and hopefully provide a distraction to the gnawing dread of a Monday workday.
The Recc
I picked Sticks as my first recommendation for a few reasons.
The main one is that it's short. Real short. The whole reason for this segment is to provide something well written but succinct, and Sticks is that while also funny and sad. In less than 500 words, Saunders shares an amazingly evocative character study of an intriguing and tragic individual. The Dad is such a dense character it's amazing that you even get a sense of his full picture with that story length at all.
I would recommend reading it twice, and seeing if you can get rid of more than 10 words in a way that doesn't erase information or connotation. Saunders is phenomenal at these short evocative stories because of how much characterisation he can stuff into small phrases. My personal favorite line out of the entire piece is the last line of the first paragraph: "The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking."
22 words and you perfectly get a sense for the absurdity of the situation, the character's feelings about the dad, and the bewilderness that belies it all. I've seen breakup texts five times the length where I still couldn't tell if they were dating or a situationship, while Saunders manages to express paralytic helplessness from depressed resignation in the space of a dodgy Hot Singles ad.
The other reaosn is that it's just so fun. In the story Saunders recounts, it's equal parts whim and spite, and that hot and cold really comes through.
"For two years I'd been driving past a house like the one in the story, imagining the owner as a man more joyful and self-possessed and less self-conscious than myself. Then one day I got sick of him and invented his opposite, and there was the story."
So enjoy this story, let me know what you thought of the format, and see you next week!
Sticks by George Saunders
Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of metal pole in the yard. Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veteran’s Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad's only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over she said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.
We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We'd stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.
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