Escape from Yourself

It is not often that a reader finds himself inside a character without thinking of that character as himself. However, as Vladmir Nabakov writes in "Good Readers and Good Writers", that is a trait of a poor reader. Someone who is a good reader, at least by Nabakov's standards, is able to read a character without always trying to relate, or has an impersonal imagination. In George Saunder's stories "Victory Lap" and "Escape from Spiderhead" from Tenth of December, he makes this easy for the reader.

Specifically, in "Victory Lap", The style of writing is what allows the reader to read to Nabakov's satisfaction. It is written in third person limited, which is somewhat unusual. We get to look inside the minds of his strange complicated characters and hear all of their strange complicated thoughts. However, if this was all happening in first person, we wouldn't get that feeling of being some non-physical observer. It would feel like reading a diary, which would be much more personal and would make it easier to relate to the character. Writing the story in third person limited feels slightly unnatural at first, but in the end you get a much more enchanting experience.

Saunders is 'good writer' in "Escape from Spiderhead" for an entirely different reason. It is because the world he created in the story is so completely different than our own. And even though it is an imaginary-science-fiction-emotional-torture-jail, it still felt very human. However, not relatable enough to fuse the reader to the character, Jeff. The reader is able to observe this strange world through Jeff's thoughts and feelings. Saunders is even able to give the reader an experience of what death might be like in this world, or our own. He does not just take his own experiences and write about them, he writes of things that most likely no one has experienced, while still giving them meaning and significance in our own lives.