Click here to go to "Semplica Girl Diaries" in The New Yorker
excerpt below from the interview with George Saunders about the story. image above front the same source.
(http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/10/this-week-in-fiction-george-saunders.html)
“The Semplica-Girl Diaries” deals with a family in a not-too-distant future (or perhaps an alternate present or past?) that is struggling to keep up with the Joneses—which, in this society, means leasing some unusual garden ornaments.
Where do your sympathies lie here? Is Eva right to deplore the practice? Is her father right to think of it as a potential step up for the women and their families?
My answer is YES. “Yes” to both questions. You’ve put your finger on the essential energy of the story. It felt like the more I could get the reader to answer “yes” to both of those questions, the more powerful the story would be.
The artist’s job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn’t damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
