(The short story “Appeasement, Ohio” by George Saunders appeared in the October 26th, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.)
Photograph by James L. Amos / Getty
How hard should a writer make a reader work? That was the question I kept asking myself as I read George Saunders’ “Appeasement, Ohio” which is a quirky little story. I’m not saying that getting though it was like reading Joyce’s Ulysses, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being asked to work at reading this story.
How to describe the it? Lots of moving parts; family, cousins, kids, falling outs, reconnection, loyalty, obligations, conspiracies, tough love, and history. There is no secret, or big reveal in this story, but getting into the details of how this piece unfolds feels like I would be killing some of the fun of reading it in the first place. I will say this, the story did feel like it was inorganically structured to have three storylines that were supposed to weave together – or possibly not – but either way it stuck out as being manufactured rather than authentically blending into the narrative.
What I wrestled with in “Appeasement, Ohio” was the style that the story was written in. Ultimately, Saunders’ writing style did complement the narrative. With the characters fragmented lives, a wildly unbelievable conspiracy theory, a surreal riot, and the loss of vision, nothing seemed on solid ground here. So, when the writing is chunky, choppy, even repetitive at times, it creates a feeling of disjointed incongruent tangents not fully lining up. This caused me, more than once, to have to go back and reread a section, to verify that I read what I read. For what this story was trying to express, it all successfully came together.
But it was a bit of work to get there.
