After his reading, George Saunders opened his Q & A session telling the audience, "usually the first person to ask a question has the most sexual energy of anyone in the room."
With the same sense of humor Saunders, a New York Times bestselling writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books, read a story entitled, "Victory Lap" from his newest collection of short stories, "The Tenth of Decemeber" in Meharry last Wednesday.
He was introduced by English Professor, Emily Doak, who referred to him as "a genius" and "the Mark Twain of the new millennium." Doak ended her speech with, "may we open ourselves to be enchanted."
Then Saunders took the stage and began to read. Rather than depict characters from an onlooker's perspective, the story actually gave a play by play of the thoughts going on inside each character's heads.
The story is centered around two teenagers, Alison and Kyle, who live in the suburbs and lead very sheltered lives. A third character is thrown into the mix: a rapist who tries to abduct Alison. Rather than simply shun this man and only depict him as the villain of the story, Saunders's actually gives the readers access to his thoughts as well. The story ends with the two kids getting saved, and the rapist hurt on the sidewalk.
While reading, Saunders constantly switched voices to help the audience members keep the different characters straight. His humor kept everyone's rapt attention.
"I thought that the reading was great," sophomore Cassidy Stortz said. "His unique pauses and changes of voice made the characters a lot more alive and made it more unique then if I had just read it myself."
Several classes have been studying Saunders's work and brought their books to be able to read along with him.
Although, Saunders came as part of The Kelly Writer Series, Doak organized the event. Doak felt that Saunders was a good choice because he presents a different mode of fiction than the previous authors that have come to speak in the past.
"I felt like he would be a good choice because we haven't had anyone who writes speculative fiction in a long time" Doak said.
Doak said that the thing she admires most about Saunders is his ability to create a completely strange and surreal world, yet make it totally recognizable.
"There's something so human and so universal at the heart of his stories," Doak said.
The ability to easily relate to Saunders' stories, among other things, has made him wildly successful. He has published six books and won multiple awards including The MacArthur Fellowship, The World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction and The Lannan Literary Fellowship.
Most recently, on April 17, Saunders received The PEN Malamud Short Story Award, an award given for excellence in short fiction. Then, on April 18, he was named 54th on Time Magazine's list of 100 most influential people.
Although his book reading was late on a Wednesday night, students still seemed very eager to come hear Saunders speak. Meharry was packed with students and faculty alike, and everyone seemed enthralled and mesmerized by his work.
"He writes good fiction," Doak said. "I don't know what could be more inspiring than that."