the last book I ever read (Tenth of December by George Saunders, excerpt four)

from Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders:

Security, being then Summoned by Don Murray, didst arrive and, making much of the Opportunity, had Good Sport of me, delivering many harsh Blows to my Head & Body. And Wrested me from that Place, and Shoved me into the Street, kicking much Dirt upon my Person, and rip’d my Time card to Bits before mine Eyes, and sent it fluttering Aloft, amidst much cruel Laughter at my Expense, especially viz. my Feathered Hat, one Feather of which they had Sore Bent.

I sat, bleeding and bruised, until, summoning what Dignity remained, I made for Home and such Comforts as might be Afforded me there. I had not even Fare to make the Bus (my Backpack having been left behind in that Foul Place), so continued Afoot for well unto an Hour, the Sun by then low in its Arc, all that time Reflecting sadly that, withal, I had Failed in Discrimination, thereby delivering my Family into a most dire Position, whereupon our Poverty, already a Hindrance to our Grace, wouldst be many times Multiplied.

There would be no Back Brace for Father, no Tilting Bed for Mother, and, indeed, the Method by which we would, in future, make Compense for their various Necessary Medicines was now a Mystery, & a Vexation.

Anon I found Myself in proximity of the Wendy’s on Center Boulevard, by the closed-down Outback, coming down and coming down hard, aware that, soon, the effect of the Elixir having subsided, I would find myself standing before our iffy Television, struggling to explain, in my own lowly Language, that, tho’ Winter’s Snows would soon be upon us (entering even unto our Dwelling, as I have earlier Vouchsafed), no Appeal wouldst be Brook’d: I was Fired; Fired & sore Disgraced!

the last book I ever read (Tenth of December by George Saunders, excerpt three)

from Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders:

That part of town was full of castles. Inside one was a couple embracing. Inside another a woman had like nine million little Christmas houses out on a table, like she was taking inventory. Across the river the castles got smaller. By our part of town, the houses were like peasant huts. Inside one peasant hut were five kids standing perfectly still on the back of a couch. Then they all leapt off at once and their dogs went crazy.

the last book I ever read (Tenth of December by George Saunders, excerpt two)

from Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders:

Well, that was sad. The sickness of a kid was—children were the future. He’d do anything to help that kid. If one of the boys had a bent foot, he’d move heaven and earth to get it fixed. He’d rob a bank. And if the boy was a girl, even worse. Who’d ask a clubfoot or bentfoot or whatever to dance? There your daughter sat, with her crutch, all dressed up, not dancing.

the last book I ever read (Tenth of December by George Saunders, excerpt one)

from Tenth of December: Stories by George Saunders:

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 laid 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 left it by the road on garbage day.

the last book I ever read (Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin, excerpt twelve)

from Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin:

“I guess toward the end of his life he could be a real pain in the neck,” I said to Ed Morse one day in New York. Morse now runs the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, a newsletter for the oil business. He seems to retain a lot of affection for Denny, even though their last contact amounted to Morse’s showing up for a dinner date at a Georgetown apartment Denny was then living in only to be told by the doorman that Denny had left for New York. Morse said that Denny had indeed made no secret of his belief that SAIS was a corrupt academic environment. “He thought the people who ran it were cynical,” Morse said. “And he thought that the professors were interested in their little fiefdoms rather than teaching, not interested in collegial relationships, not interested in spending time with students, toward whom they had an incredibly patronizing and condescending attitude.” With these views, Denny probably did seem rigid and arrogant and moralistic, Morse said, but “on the other hand, he was right.”

the last book I ever read (Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin, excerpt eleven)

from Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin:

Denny was close to the Semples in the early sixties, and he remained close until Bob, who had moved from The National Observer to The New York Times, was transferred to New York. For several years, Denny and Carol Austin would go to the Semples’ for Christmas dinner. He was the old charming Denny at dinner. Carol Austin says that after what was often a grumpy ride over to the Semples’ house in Cleveland Park, she could see him rev up his group personality as they stood outside the front door. But at some point, Semple told me, “He had these conversations with Susan and me: ‘Jesus, I’m twenty-five years old and I’m a Senate aide.’ We’d have these long discussions. Essentially, he was asking two friends: What should I be doing? Then, all of a sudden, something didn’t work out somewhere and he said he was going to Cleveland to work in television. That was, I think, the moment. I think we both thought, Uh-oh. The guy’s at sea. He had lost his bearings in this quest for a career that by all rights should have come out of Yale and the Rhodes scholarship. I thought, The guy’s lost it, and it’s too early to lose it.”

Of course, it’s common for people in their twenties to have crises of confidence. It’s common for people in their twenties to worry about whether they’re in the right field after all. Someone familiar with attendance patterns at Yale class reunions once told me that attendance drops appreciably from the tenth reunion, which normally draws a large crowd, to the fifteenth. There are, of course, a number of theories to explain that—including the theory that physical deterioration, particularly among males, seems to accelerate in one’s early and middle thirties. The theory favored by my informant, though, was that by the time the fifteenth reunion comes around—the graduates are now, say, thirty-six or thirty-seven—someone is pretty set in the sort of career he’s going to have. He’s in his slot, and it may be apparent how far he has or hasn’t moved in it. It is too late to show up as a promising young man who has not quite found himself. It is too late to say casually over a drink that you might decide to go to law school after all.

the last book I ever read (Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin, excerpt ten)

from Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin:

I must have seen Denny occasionally in New York during that period—I found a letter to my parents mentioning that I had met his boat when he returned from England—but I have a strong memory of only one meeting, at Princeton. I drove over from Fort Dix, New Jersey, where I was on temporary duty for a day or two as the driver for a major from our office on Governors Island—the public information office for First U.S. Army headquarters—who though he ought to be on hand to make certain that the mustering out of Elvis Presley went off without a hitch. Although Elvis was the symbol of rebellion, the entertainer who many thought could not appear on the Ed Sullivan Show because of his lewd gyrations, his manager had decided that it would be a good career move for him to report cheerfully for the draft and serve two years in an Army line unit with ordinary draftees—a reflection of how far rebellion went in the late fifties. The Elvis mustering out was not my only brush with the celebrated during my Army career. When General Douglas MacArthur, long retired from active duty, had a prostate operation at Lenox Hill Hospital, I was part of a group assigned to work out of a room down the hall writing releases on how many pats of butter and soft-boiled eggs he had consumed each day during his recuperation—a military operation we referred to as the “wee-wee patrol.” When Nikita Khrushchev, on his first trip to the United States, arrived in New York by train from Washington and turned to wave out the window to the waiting throngs, he found only me—a solitary figure on an adjoining platform, dressed in the uniform of an Army private, holding the bull mike I had just used to inform the press traveling on another train which stairway to take. I waved back.