This week’s issue of the New Yorker features a post-modernist satirical short story by the award-winning author George Saunders. “Little St.Don” is told in a series of semi-comic vignettes that aim to capture our living nightmare. I’m a big fan of Saunder’s work, especially his short stories, but all I want to read about tangerine Mussolini is his obituary. Anyway, here’s a sample and a link to the magazine:

one day, st. don and a few of his business colleagues saw a blind man begging in the street. “St. Don,” said Michael Cohen, “tell us, is that man blind through his own sin, or did his parents sin?” And St. Don replied, “Hey, I didn’t do it. Both, probably. How should I know? I find it, honestly, a little disgusting. Let’s clear out.”

With that, St. Don spat into the dirt. And the others waited for St. Don to make clay from his spit and the dirt and apply it to the blind man’s eyes and thus heal him. But nothing doing. St. Don just spat into the dirt again, saying, “Did I say let’s get going or what? Are you morons deaf?”

And they all got going.