Word Factory Short Story Club
A George Saunders story presented by Giselle Leeb
THE WORD FACTORY SHORT STORY CLUB PRESENTS:
Jon by George Saunders
THE STORY
‘Back in the time of which I am speaking, due to our Coördinators had mandated us, we had all seen that educational video of “It’s Yours to Do With What You Like!” in which teens like ourselfs speak on the healthy benefits of getting off by oneself and doing what one feels like in terms of self-touching, which what we learned from that video was, there is nothing wrong with self-touching, because love is a mystery but the mechanics of love need not be, so go off alone, see what is up, with you and your relation to your own gonads, and the main thing is, just have fun, feeling no shame!’
We are delighted to welcome you to our March short story club (7pm Wednesday March 26th), to discuss a story by George Saunders.
Jon is taken from Saunders’ In Persuasion Nation, his third full-length collection, and first appeared in The New Yorker(2003).
Jon lives with a group of teenagers in a sealed-off facility, where they assess cool products and take Aurabon, a drug that eases any distress. Their only contact with the external world is through a large glass window, where they gaze at ordinary people from their elevated position as “rockstar icons of popular taste”. An unauthorized pregnancy leads to Jon having to face the possibility of becoming average in a culture that worships perfection. But the only language he knows is that of product advertising and he struggles to find words to describe this new world.
Set in the near future, the story holds up a mirror to our accelerating consumer culture and how it shapes not only our external but also our internal worlds and our language. Saunders made-up vernacular is simultaneously hilarious and disturbing, as it perfectly captures the dehumanisation of the contemporary zeitgeist.
Read it here:
Jon, by George Saunders, The New Yorker (2003)
THE AUTHOR
George Saunders:
Described by Time as the “best short-story writer in English”, George Saunders is the author of twelve books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English. His stories have appeared regularly in The New Yorker since 1992. The short story collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2013 (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short story collection). In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. He has taught, since 1997, in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.
YOUR HOST
Photo: Zac Krahmer
Giselle Leeb's debut collection, Mammals, I Think We Are Called (Salt), was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2023. Her stories have appeared in Best British Short Stories 2017 (Salt), Ambit, Mslexia, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Black Static, and other publications. Her genre-bending writing mixes realism, sci-fi, horror and the fantastical, and has a dark but often humorous edge.
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