Tenth of December Discussion Guide

Book:       Tenth of December

Author:    George Saunders

Edition:    Random House hardcover, 2013

Online Resources

Most of these stories have appeared in the New Yorker along with many other of his short stories, so you can find a treasure trove of insights on The New Yorker online .  I recommend two particularly fascinating interviews.  The discussion he has with the New Yorker about The Semplica Girl Diaries offers a range of insights for discussion.  In January 2013, a discussion on Tenth of December explores Saunders as a writer and how creating “semi-fantastical worlds” elevate his writing.

In May 2013, George Saunders delivered the commencement address at Syracuse University.  While his speech may not be directly intertwined with a discussion around this book, it’s a) a wonderfully emotive and full-hearted prescription that can be enjoyed by many far beyond college seniors garbed in caps and gowns and b) seeing and hearing the author provides a perspective on the soul behind the pen. 

Story Synopses

Victory Lap, a boy watches the attempted abduction of the girl next door and needs to decide whether to act.

  Characters: Alison and Kyle.

Sticks, 2-page story of a metal pole a dad drapes with sentiments of life.

  Character: dad.

Puppy, two mothers, one trying to raise a child with severe issues and a second trying to love her kids better than she felt loved by her mother, meet over a puppy.

  Characters: Marie, mom looking for puppy; Callie, mom selling puppy.

    
Escape from Spiderhead, pharmaceutical experiments change feelings into lust and the title character, Jeff,watches and meets death.

  Characters: Abnesti, manager administering experiments; Jeff, Heather, Rachel, Rogan, Keith all experiment subjects. 
   

Exhortation, a memo from a boss creates an analogy between unnamed work in a dysfunctional company and cleaning a shelf.

 Character: Todd, memo-writer.
   

Al Roosten, a deluded man participates in a charity benefit and keeps a running commentary of his daydreams.

  Characters: Al Roosten, title character; Larry Donfrey, local business owner also in charity benefit.
     

The Semplica Girl Diaries, a diary kept by a dad in a parallel dimension details the chasm between the haves and the have nots and the oppressed as well as the similarities we share in the lengths we will all go to for family happiness.  

  Principal characters:  Dad, narrator; Pam, wife; Lilly, daughter for whom party is made; Eva, daughter who releases SGs.
   

Home, a soldier returns home to live with his mother and tries to make sense of the rift between his past life and the present.

  Principal characters: Mike, narrator; Ma, Mike’s mother; Harris, Ma’s boyfriend; Renee, Mike’s sister.
   

My Chivalric Fiasco, an employee witness his boss rape a colleague and is given a promotion to keep quiet.

 Principal characters: Ted, narrator; Martha, work colleague who is raped; Don, boss.
   

Tenth of December, in the title story an awkward boy unknowingly heads toward a cancer patient planning to commit suicide by freezing in the wilderness and soon the tables are turned.

 Principal characters: Robin, boy; Don Eber, old man.

Discussion Topics

The following topics are just a beginning to form a conversation around Tenth of December.  Let your group channel the discussion in ways meaningful to your members.  If there is one story or one theme that is particularly captivating for your group start there and see where you wander.  Or if you have group members who can’t always set aside time for reading, you may want to select several stories in advance, ensure everyone reads them, and delve into those.   

Collection of Stories

Short stories, as with any work of fiction and often non-fiction, can be read on so many levels from the straightforward pleasure found in slipping into someone’s else’s tale to unpacking the complex emotions and connections that the stories raise in your psyche.  How did you read this collection?  Did the depth of your involvement waver from story to story, or as you read more of the stories?  Did you read them sequentially or in some other order?

How did having these stories bound together enhance or detract from your reading pleasure?  

What commonalities across the stories appeared to you as you read? 

Which of the stories most struck a chord, positive or negative, with you?   

After reading through the New Yorker interview with Saunders, did you see other similarities?  

There are ten stories in this collection.  How intentional do you think that is given the title of the book?

Writing Style

Whether in the first person or third person, Saunders often employs a running commentary going on in the characters’ minds to show both the action and the characters’ reaction to what is happening.  

• In both Victory Lap and Puppy,  there are two principal characters.  Although written in the third person, as the viewpoint shifts from one to the other, we, as readers take in the world through the thought process of the character controlling the perspective.   
• Escape from Spiderhead and Home are both written in the first person as a running commentary of what the protagonist is seeing and feeling, with interspersed dialogue.  
• Exhortation and Semplica Girl Diaries are both written as a correspondence, the first a memo and the second a journal.

How does this running commentary shape your feelings towards the principal characters?  Do you like this style?

Ties to Your Life

Many of these stories have futuristic or science-fiction elements.  Yet all are grounded in emotions of human beings.  Which of these stories seemed most grounded in realism to you?  Which aspects of the stories drew upon emotions you have encountered as an employee?  As a parent? As a human?  How did the science fiction elements of the stories intensify or minimize those emotions?

In his interview on Tenth of December, Saunders states,

“even though the settings and situations in the stories were sort of cartoonish and overwrought, my real beliefs and anxieties were being mapped out onto these fictive worlds more powerfully and exactly (albeit inadvertently and in a sort of fun-house manner) than they ever had in anything more “real-life” that I’d written. And, in fact, the weird thing was that these new stories were sort of leading me to understand what I believed about the life I was living, in a way that no amount of rational thought could have done.”

So often we see ourselves in contrast to similar individuals around us whether our colleagues, or classmates, volunteers we work with or neighbors we meet on the block.  Making comparisons with individuals who are similar to us might be an ego-booster or ego-buster. Yet when we are apart from our usual circle, our reflection can change markedly.  Where in your life have you seen your self-awareness refined through a contrast with an out-of-the ordinary experience or against an atypical backdrop?   

Connections Between Stories 

Some stories are similar in perspective of writing style, others are similar in content.  For instance Victory Lap and Tenth of December  both focus on two characters who have a life-saving impact on one another.  Both swerve toward a cliff and teeter on the edge before taking a step back. In what ways is the life-saving a two-way street in each?  How does each character fundamentally change another’s life?  Where do the two stories diverge from one another?

In an interview with the New Yorker discussing the short story Tenth of December, Saunders comments, 

“So that was interesting to me, and also I felt this story to be somehow connected to another one—“Victory Lap”—which ran in the magazine a couple of years ago; I could feel both stories asking questions like: Given the nature of the life (nasty, brutish, short), how is it that good does, in fact, manage to get done? Or: when goodness manifests, how does it manifest? What does it look like and sound like, what are the qualities of the people who do it?”

Escape from Spiderhead and My Chivalric Fiasco use trademarked pharmaceuticals as a means to drastically change an individual’s feelings and inhibitions.   How did the drugs place the time period or universe of the story?   How did these pharmaceuticals connect the stories?  If these drugs did not have an health risks aside from those exhibited in the story, would you take them?  In what situations?

Did you see these stories as connected?  Were there other stories that seemed connected to you?

Emotional Response to the Stories

Novels can certainly take a reader through a full circle of emotions, yet short stories often pull on our emotions more quickly and more unexpectedly.  Overall, how similar or disparate were your emotional reactions across this collection?  On the whole were you hopeful, distraught, relieved, frustrated, angry?  Or was your reaction to each story stand alone and disconnected from the others?

In an interview with the New Yorker in 2011 Saunders says, 

“I started to feel that, at certain points in some of the stories, the most interesting aesthetic motion—the plot twist, if you will—was the one that swerved away from what I might call the habitually catastrophic.”  

Would you agree or disagree as you consider your reaction to each story and the collection as a whole?

You can purchase Tenth of December online at Hugo Bookstores .