If you like laughing at the sad, pathetic, and the tragic lives of the lower middle class, then this is the book for you. And laugh and giggle I did, not without some reservations but the stories are funny but also sad. Are there really people like this? People who live and think like this? Yes. I don't know any but they probably live ten miles away, in Jamestown, NY. What can I say. I am an elitist of sorts, though I don't think of myself as such. It's just that these people's lives are so sad, often so disgusting, that I don't want to be around them, rather not think about the fact that people live this way, that I am lucky not be be like them. And nothing I did in particular allows me to be here and not there, just luck, fortunate to have the caucasian parents I did.
Most of Saunders stories are set in the present although two give us visions of the future, not pleasant. I won't try to summarize his stories but one. They all chronicle the lives of those living on the edge, without 'padding,' and each story tends to move towards a tragic end then stops short, leaving the reader with some hope. His last story, the title piece "Tenth of December," may be his finest. We have two narrators, one a sad, overweight little boy, Robin, made fun of at school, lost in his imaginary world. He walks out to a pond in winter, imagining the new girl in class likes him, wants to be with him. The second narrator, Don Erber, married and father of two children, is dying of a brain tumor and has left his death bed, determined to end his life, to save his family the embarrassment, responsibility, and fear of caring for him during his last pathetic and disgusting days.
He leaves his home, walks past the pond, drops his coat, and goes off in the cold woods, determined to die of exposure. Robin, however, discovers the coat, walks across a pond to return it to the ailing elderly man but he falls through the ice. Don observes the boy's fall, gathers himself enough to rush over to the pond and save the boy, then dress him in his clothes, his coat, and take to his front door. He then returns to the woods. Robin, when he gets home, realizes Don is still out in the cold, tells his Mom, and together they find Don and they bundle him up and bring him back to their home, where he is comforted by their attention, and eventually goes home with his wife. As he sits in Robin's house, he reflects back on the last few days, the last couple of hours and has this Epiphany: "Because, okay, the thing was---he saw it now, was starting to see it---if some guy, at the end, fell apart, and said or did bad things, or had to be helped, helped to quite a considerable extent? What of it? Why should he not do or say weird things or look strange or disgusting? Why should the shit not run down his legs? Why should those he loved not lift and bend an feed and wipe him, when he would gladly to the same for them? He'd been afraid to be lessened by the lifting and the bending and the feeding and wiping, and was still afraid of that, and yet, at the same time, many drops of goodness, is how it came to him---many drops of happy---of good fellowship---ahead---and those drops of fellowship were not---had never been---his to withheld. Withhold." This is why this may be the 'best book you will read this year,' according to the NYTimes.
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