“THE INVERSE PRAISE of GOOD THINGS”: DIGNIFIED OPTIMISM in the SATIRE of GEORGE SAUNDERS a Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfi

“THE INVERSE PRAISE OF GOOD THINGS”: DIGNIFIED OPTIMISM IN THE SATIRE OF GEORGE SAUNDERS A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in English in the University of Canterbury by Thaddaeus Hadaway University of Canterbury 2019 2 Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ____________________________________________________________ 3 ABSTRACT _________________________________________________________________________ 4 INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________________________ 6 CHAPTER ONE: UNDERSTANDING SATIRE _________________________________________ 12 INTRODUCTION ____________________________________________________________________ 12 THE MATERIAL OF SATIRE ____________________________________________________________ 14 THE SATIRIST ______________________________________________________________________ 15 TOWARD DEFINITION _______________________________________________________________ 18 SATIRE AND POSTMODERNISM _________________________________________________________ 33 SAUNDERS AND POSTMODERNISM ______________________________________________________ 40 CHAPTER TWO: TROUBLE IN PARADISE: OPTIMISM AND NEOLIBERALISM _________ 44 INTRODUCTION ____________________________________________________________________ 44 INSECURITY AND ANXIETY IN “SEA OAK” ________________________________________________ 46 AMERICAN OPTIMISM _______________________________________________________________ 56 “ASK THE OPTIMIST!” _______________________________________________________________ 62 OPTIMISM AND NEOLIBERALISM _______________________________________________________ 67 “PASTORALIA” _____________________________________________________________________ 69 “EXHORTATION” ___________________________________________________________________ 75 SOFT LANGUAGE ___________________________________________________________________ 79 CHAPTER THREE: “A RADICAL DEFENSE OF TENDERNESS”: SAUNDERS’ AFFECTIVE AMENDMENT _____________________________________________________________________ 88 INTRODUCTION ____________________________________________________________________ 88 THE RESULTS OF SATIRE _____________________________________________________________ 91 THE VERY PERSISTENT GAPPERS OF FRIP ________________________________________________ 96 NARRATIVE EMPATHY ______________________________________________________________ 100 POINT OF VIEW ___________________________________________________________________ 105 VIOLENCE _______________________________________________________________________ 117 HOPE ___________________________________________________________________________ 125 CONCLUSION _____________________________________________________________________ 136 WORKS CITED _____________________________________________________________________ 140 3 Acknowledgements While this work is the product of my own academic pursuit, I have received great assistance along the way. I would like to thank Dr Nicholas Wright, who for many years has kindly assisted me in my interest of American literature, and whose empathetic and thoughtful encouragement made this thesis possible. Likewise, I thank Dr Christopher Thomson, whose expertise and feedback during this project was crucial and enriching. I also extend my gratitude to Peter Field, who introduced me to American history. I thank Dr Tearlach Maclean of the UC Health Centre. I am also indebted to the University of Canterbury for generously awarding me a Master’s Scholarship. Special thanks go to my parents, Vern and Dawn, my good friend Ryan, and to my partner, Wendi. I thank each of you for your love, patience, and reassurance as I struggled with various setbacks and injuries. Finally, I thank George Saunders: your interest and support has been most kind and generous. 4 Abstract Through a critical examination of the stories of George Saunders, this thesis examines how Saunders uses satire in literary fiction after postmodernism. In doing so, I show Saunders is a second-generation postmodernist who, despite owing much to his contemporaries and predecessors, appears to offer contemporary American fiction a way out of its preoccupation with irony and solipsism. By analysing the sources and contexts of Saunders’ satire, I argue that Saunders’ stories take pleasure in their engagement with postmodern irony, but never at the expense of a moral agenda laced with satiric wit and narrative empathy. Saunders’ literary satire differs from previous generations of postmodernists due to his satiric targets pointing to real world referents rather than language itself, as was popular in the late twentieth century. Additionally, I posit that satire in Saunders’ stories represents a turn toward affect both on and off the page—it is new, tender, and wholly empathetic to its characters and readers. However, due to Saunders’ use of violence and restricted narrative points of view, there are complexities and complications in Saunders’ morally-charged and emotional satire. While his hopeful satire is sincere in its evocation of empathy with others, Saunders restricts reader choice and reminds his readers of his authorial power by way of narrative point of view. After all, so many of his stories are about authority, and include acts of writing and speech making. In this respect, the reader (as much as Saunders himself) is implicated in and comes to experience the conditions of choice Saunders writes about—conditions which often preclude real choice and empathetic consideration. Despite such complexities, Saunders’ fiction offers a moral, sincere, and emotional challenge to the short stories of the late twentieth century. 5 In America, you’ll get food to eat Won’t have to run through the jungle And scuff up your feet You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day It’s great to be an American — RANDY NEWMAN, “SAIL AWAY” 6 Introduction In 1999 The New Yorker published an article titled “The Future of American Fiction,” in which the magazine’s editors chose twenty writers who they believed to be the pioneers for a new generation of American fiction. Described as “most promising” and “most accomplished,” notable, well-established writers such as David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, and George Saunders were among those included (67). The article attempts to answer the question: “What are we to make of this snapshot of a generation on the eve of the next century?” (67). The editors are unable to confidently guess what the future of American fiction holds but they are assured that their list of writers offer “a satisfying picture ... of Americanness” (68). However, one is most certainly left to wonder what, besides their age, their “generation” is, and, too, what “Americanness” is on display. Interestingly, The New Yorker constructed another list in 2010 that followed the same rules. This later assessment concludes that: “the fiction being written in this country today is not necessarily fiction set in this country, or fiction by writers who were born in this country” (“20 Under 40” 50). The following thesis attempts to, in part, ascertain where George Saunders (a notable contemporary satirist) is situated among his contemporaries who are often described as postmodern. Critics of Saunders’ stories consistently emphasise his original, satirical voice in American fiction, while believing him to be picking up the torch from his American literary forebears. Michiko Kakutani writes that: “Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut,” (Kakutani n.p.) while Zadie Smith states that: “Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny” (Saunders, CivilWarLand n.p.). Likewise, Abby Werlock emphasises the importance of Saunders’ satire in her volume The Facts on File: Companion to the American Short Story (2010), in which she describes satire as: 7 A fictional work that ridicules some aspect of human behavior with the intent of improving the behavior or the situation that caused it. Unlike writers who simply criticize or use sarcasm, satirists blend humor with their censorious attitudes. (577) This brief description, which I will elaborate on later, appropriately highlights the unusual blend of techniques in satire’s construction. Tracing back to one of America’s earliest satirists, Francis Hopkinson, Werlock notes that satire in American fiction has continued with greats such as Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Kurt Vonnegut into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (577). However, in this second edition of the short story companion, Werlock only mentions one writer in the contemporary era: “Writers such as George Saunders carry on the tradition today” (577). For Werlock, Saunders’ impact on the “fiction and satirical front” is nothing less than “gigantic”—an adjective that is not carelessly used (578). Werlock astutely places Saunders within an as yet unnamed generation of writers who are both heirs to America’s previous satirists and also innovators re-shaping literary satire in the present. Werlock concludes that: “George Saunders is a writer who has defined literary satire of the new millennium [and] will continue to do so” (579). The comparisons to West, Vonnegut, and Huxley do not necessarily provide a common ground these writers share; but, the recognition of Saunders as a leading contemporary satirist in the current era is one that invites many questions, specifically with regard to his relationship to postmodernism. In 2015, book critic David Ulin asked, “Did postmodernism kill literary satire?”, pondering

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