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Vigil

Book by George Saunders · 9 quotes · Control, Lying, Men

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Vigil Quotes

“My charge's wife swept in, set some clean towels on the love seat, went rushing back out again. The stacked towels toppled off the love seat. All but one. The fallen towels landed in a heap of plastic detritus from his various medications, near a set of fresh, folded pajamas, which he now would never wear, and a stack of books he now would never read. Everything in the room was touched with the chaos that disrupted the operating energy of a household at such a time and showed that, all along, the appearance of control had been an illusion.”

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“Always, in the bygone days, men would tell me with great certainty what I should do and then, if I hesitated, would tell me again, towering over me, smelling of cigars and mouthwash, superior smirks creeping over their huge-pored faces, and then I would, often, nearly always--well, I would do it. I would do whatever that man had asked me to do, within reason, seeing this as a form of kindness on my part, so as not to force the poor fellow, who no doubt had a lot on his mind, to, uh, raise his voice or otherwise become, well, frustrated. Frustrated with me. The Frenchman was frowning. It was always their disappointment that got me. Even more so than their anger.”

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“Is it lying when one knows how one wants things to turn out and then says what is needed to achieve that result? said R. Lying when a person uses his considerable reputation and his mastery of public communication to thrash his opponents by redirecting the attention of the general populace, thus infecting the people with the tiniest sliver of doubt, which, widely propagated, becomes a sizable wedge of doubt? said G. Doesn’t every idea, said R., even those judged by some standards to be fallacious or those which have been disproven outright, deserve to be honored with the public’s attention? Doesn’t the public have the right to know? said G. And decide for itself? said R. Are you calling the public stupid? said G. Do you not believe in democracy? said R.”

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“That's what powerful men did. Stayed quiet. Held secrets. Ran things from inside a tight protective circle, making perilous decisions only they were savvy enough to make, leaving normal morality to the mere earthlings, who lived and ate and died dully down below, never knowing the extent to which they were being shielded by a beneficent distant pulling of strings.”

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“There was a story often told. Perhaps you’ve heard this one. Don’t stop me if you have, though, ha ha (I dearly love to tell it): Little boy’s grousing: doesn’t like cars. Because of “the pollution,” you know where this one’s going, I bet. The father pulls the car over to the side of the road. “Then I suppose you’ll want to walk.” End of objections from el kiddo. Your choice, Jacques. Dying in the back of a horse cart stuck in the mud? Or zinging toward help, air-con blasting? Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the latter. We had. The world had. That was what was so damn stupid about it. People forgot the empty larder. Forgot drought, forgot famine. Forgot what it was like to be at the mercy of the world. The Nesbitts’d brought over a charity basket. During that lean period. After the hay burned up, the little feeder stream went dry, Bremer refused to re-up their loan. You best believe I was drooling. Father shot me a look. Move the slightest muscle toward that basket, my young swain, his eyes were saying, you’ll find yourself bunking down in the barn with the heifers. The bread in that basket was rock-hard and the bacon stringy and the apples home to more than a few worms. But to us it was a feast. Whereas nowadays folks padded past climate-controlled cases of out-of-season vegetables and fish from faraway seas and meat from animals who fed in meadows under mountain ranges whose names a person could hardly pronounce, thinking, Yap, yap, yap, big deal, pork from Denmark, salmon from the Bering Strait, loaves of woven bread from Ferrara, all of this is my right. When what it was, was a goddamn miracle.”

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“[Is it] Lying when a person uses his considerable reputation and his mastery of public communications to thrash his opponents by redirecting the attention of the general populace, thus infecting the people with the tiniest sliver of doubt, which, widely propagated, becomes a sizable wedge of doubt? said G. Doesn't every idea, said R., even those judged by some standards to be fallacious or those which have been disproven outright, deserve to be honored with the public's attention? Doesn't the public have the right to know? said G. And decide for itself? said R. Are you calling the public stupid? said G. Do you not believe in democracy? said R. R. turned to me. We were, in life, eminent scientists, he said.”

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