Capital
The semester is ending. In the “Work” seminar today, we’re reading George Saunders. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and this brilliant, heartbreak of a piece, “Chicago Christmas, 1984″:
The gambling began. One by one, the guys lost what they felt they could lose and drifted back to stand against the worktable and diddle with the soldering irons. Soon only John was left. Why was John left? Vic kept taunting. A whole autumn of such taunts now did their work. All belittled men dream of huge redemption. Here was John, dreaming. In response to John’s dreaming, Vic and Gary began to speak with mock-professorial diction.
“Look at this, kindly look at this,” Vic shouted. “John is not, after all, any more a gambler than he is a ergo roofer. That is, he is a equally sucky gambler as he is a suckass roofer.”
“Are you saying,” said Gary, “that his gambling, in terms of how much does it suck, sucks exactly as much as does suck his roofing?”
“Perzackly, yup, that is just what I am saying, doctor,” Vic burped.
John burned. They were going to see. They were going to see that the long years of wrongs done him had created a tremendous backlog of owed good luck, which was going to surge forward now, holy and personal.
And see they did. Soon John was down to his last hundred, and then he broke it, and then he was down to his last twenty. Then Vic cackled, and John threw his sole remaining five at Vic’s chest. Vic caught it, kissed it, added it to his tremendous wad.
A light went on in my head and has stayed on ever since: It was all about capital. Vic could lose and lose and never really lose. Once John dipped below four hundred, he was dead. He was dead now.
I’m so glad you had us read those, simply because I’d never heard of Saunders before; now, having read two of his stories, I’ve discovered another great writer whose work I have to read more of over the summer.
Comment by Philosophy — May 10, 2007 @ 10:56 pm