Sticks, Exhortation by George Saunders, from Tenth of December, one of the 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s, according to TIME Magazine https://time.com/5719966/best-fiction-books-2010s-decade/ “The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco Nine out of 10

 Sticks, Exhortation by George Saunders, from Tenth of December, one of the 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s, according to TIME Magazine https://time.com/5719966/best-fiction-books-2010s-decade/

“The person who doesn't read lives only one life…The reader lives 5,000…Reading is immortality backwards” ― Umberto Eco

Nine out of 10

 

 

Stick is a very short story, perhaps the proper name would be ‘flash story’, seeing that it is listed as having only four pages, but if it is short on words, that cannot be said about its significance, the emotions, symbols, sadness that are all part of those (few?) pages, which reflects the majesty of the author, who does not need thousands of pages to reach his readers and enter the Hall of Fame as one of the best writers of this century, as far as we have it…if Putin travels further on that Path of war and destruction, wagging his atomic weapons to compensate for his inadequacies (maybe, or is it surely true that he has a short penis, and if not in real life [and real has nothing left to do with the villain from Get Shorty, the opposite of Chili Palmer, who, loan shark that he was, had a million times the charisma of the lizard from the Kremlin] we may remain with only the first of a century that could end up in radioactive smoke…

 

The father of the narrator of this short story had a pole in the yard as ‘one concession to glee’, they had Uncle Sam there for the Fourth of July, on Veteran’s Day a Soldier, on Halloween a Ghost and eventually…Death, but let me not introduce spoilers and let you read the four pages of the tale to find for yourself what happens…there is sorrow and despair, for ‘birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice-cream and ‘One Christmas Eve Dad shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice’ which is our story.

Umberto Eco has spoken magnificently about the thousands of friends and lives we can enjoy when reading, transcending through the pages into the universes populated by those remarkable personages, but it is a two way street, we travel to meet the fictional figures and then return to our own igloo, since we often find parallels, elements that take us back into our own garden…this is how I will be remembered, as a cheap bastard, Le miser of Moliere http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-miser-by-moliere.html one who has always complained about waste

 

Echoes from Sticks and the other short stories of the Tenth of December collection are sounding now, with the war in Ukraine, there is a renewed specter, a ghost that haunts this and other places, the anxiety of what the income might look like soon, if there will be any and the pressure applied by Dad in Sticks is replicated here – the other day, I pressed home the need to restrain and not go out daily, to spend money we may not have for long, what with huge energy bills, if there would be more gas coming, now that the Kremlin Shorty – he also has a Napoleon complex and so much more to face, this demented Red Devil, bent on remaking the old USSR, which he had lamented as the worst catastrophe of the last century, he had started as shy, insecure KGB agent, only to become infatuated, suffering from a deadly mix of delusion of grandeur, narcissism, combined with remaining lack of self-esteem, hidden in his subconscious…he told that story of the cornered rat – when he was a boy, he chased rats in Sankt Petersburg and when he trapped one in a corner, the animal took a bite, hence he learned about being in a corner and we keep hearing we must not place the despot there, cause he might well press the button…what if he also have a serious condition, I mean on top of the brain challenges, maybe he suffers from some kidney failure and sees the end is nigh and suicide with the rest of humanity taken down could sound as the homage he deserves to a short fellow living in a Cuckoo’s Nest http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/10/one-flew-over-cuckoos-nest-by-ken-kesey.html

 

Since I digressed already-  in my defense, there is much you could say about just a few lines from a great author, but you have to be gifted for that and mother nature has not been too generous here – thus it is her fault, or the Almighty if it suits your pleasure and to speculate further, my lack of conviction, the original sin, free will exercised in not praying enough, or having strong enough faith – let me look at the TIME top 10 Best Fiction Books of the Decade and say that the jury is still out, but the evidence is mixed

Somewhat puzzlingly, the first book on the list, A Visit From the Goon Squad by transformational Jennifer Egan, was itself a challenging, controversial read, rejected in the first instance, for, among some other stupid reasons, the flakes of gold in the coffee, which looked preposterous, pretentious, phony to this feeble minded reader, only to embraced and admired, when tried a second time, such a lucky outcome – if it was not the hand of Shiva, God, Allah, Jehovah, Vishnu, Atman or a combination thereof – for it brought bliss, elation and is now of my favorites http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/03/a-visit-from-goon-squad-by-jennifer-egan.html

 

Alas, this was far from the case with My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/04/thoughts-on-little-fires-everywhere-by.html or Gone Girl which are clearly impressive, potentially sensational works of fiction – I enjoyed them, though I am sure I was too loose with my ten out of ten for Little Fires, seeing that it does not stand the test of time and there is no intention of reading it again…what is the difference then between this and Marcel Proust, Somerset Maugham, Barbara Pym, Penelope Fitzgerald, Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, Rosamund Lehman – in fact, for Elsa Ferrante, though the first few volumes were enchanting, at least for a number of pages, the pleasure gradually, or is it exponentially decreased, until it became monotone and…boring

Perhaps only half a life would be appropriated from My Brilliant Friend, out of the 5,000 Umberto Eco speaks of…on the other hand, from the same TIME Top 10 Fiction Books, The Pulitzer Prize for Literature Winner for 2020, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead is a miracle, a phenomenal, magnificent opus magnum that tells the tragic story of boys killed in the days of racism, segregation and torture, with immense talent, challenging, captivating readers http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-nickel-boys-by-colson-whitehead-10.html hence, there are now three masterpieces on this top ten list: A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Nickel Boys and Tenth of December, set against other three less ecstatic works