Worm Interlude

Halfway​ through my first reading of ‘Liberation Day’, the 63-page title novella of George Saunders’s new collection, a man appears to me. He is not George Saunders exactly – an old version maybe, or a could-have-been. He is speaking the story, or writing it, or daydreaming it at a desk in an empty classroom. He is figuring it out, living in the excitement of it, piling formal solution on formal solution. Perhaps he, though a level-headed man, has gone somewhat off his nut from knowing so much about American history.