I think Pastoralia is still my favorite George Saunders short-story collection, though I really love them all, their devastating deadpan and deep humanity. A very cool T magazine feature publishes new annotations made by authors in 75 first editions to be auctioned at Sotheby’s to benefit the PEN American Center. An example from Saunders’ oeuvre follows.

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CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders, published in 1996.

At the end, Saunders writes: ‘Closing thought: I like the audacity of this book. I like less the places where it feels like I went into Auto-Quirky Mode. Ah youth! Some issues: Life amid limitations; paucity. Various tonalities of defense. Pain; humiliation inflicted on hapless workers – some of us turn on one another. Early on, this read, could really feel this young writer’s aversion to anything mild or typical or bland. Feeling, at first, like a tic. But then it started to grow on me — around ‘400 Pound CEO.’ This performative thing then starts to feel essential; organic somehow – a way to get to the moral outrage. I kept thinking of the word ‘immoderation.’ Like the yelp of someone who’s just been burned.”