George Saunders is a narrator who, unlike most of his contemporaries, has the habit of delving into formally audacious writing. The American writer's stories reflect what was lost American optimism, with characters who are trapped in their inanity and without possible redemption.
A characteristic way of Saunders' writing is to begin by launching into the text without a parachute, in the middle of a sentence or a thought. Immediately, the reader's brain begins to work in search of what is exposed in a conventional narrative. Every avant-garde always offers itself as incomprehension and strangeness until new forms find their place and literature, once again, takes a step forward. The Day of Liberation opens with a story of almost 100 pages that begins with a disturbing question: "When will be the next time we will be asked to Talk? Of what and in what tone?" The novel, Lincoln en el Bardo, was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize in 2017 and was fortunately translated in Spain for Seix Barral by Javier Calvo. The pathetic desire to please the three Speakers is the perfect summary of an alienation. This type of virtual reality is nothing more than a game in which life and fiction are confused. There is no redemption for the characters in these stories, but in a way, there is a desire in them to do something. Trapped in their inanity, they try at the end of the stories to make decisions, even if they are minimal, because, in the end, Saunders pities them. The book as a whole reflects what was lost American optimism, lost like the figure of Custer, the fateful and patriotic hero of a country that became the most powerful in the world. The return to reality in this book is the incomprehension of reality in which we move like blind kittens suspended in an amnesiac dream and surrounded by the pretense of being alive. The writer's proposal is much less sweeping than the world we live in. The three stories seem to me to be the efficient key to enter.