Vheissu

Here’s a blast from the past that is well worth a note. It’s one of the best stories that the TNY has published in the last year or so. I mean George Saunders’ “ Victory Lap ” (TNY, Oct. 5, 2009) (which tied as the TNY 2009 story of the year in Perpetual Folly’s ranking ). Saunders pulls off a tremendous feat by combining three very different voices (two teenagers and an older man) in a story in which something actually happens: a guy tries to kidnap a teenage girl (for perverse sexual reasons), and a teenage neighbor intervenes to save her. What makes all this an even greater achievement is that the voices come out clearly while using a third-person narrator, inflected in accordance with the character each section follows. The ending, in which the most gruesome scene is blurred by protective parents, is masterful. The sections focalized on the teenage neighbor (Kyle Boot) are hilarious, each detail a testimony to the maddening obsession with precision and control that drives Kyle’s p...