- J.G. Ballard

Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he’d built out of metal pole in the yard. Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod’s helmet and Rod had to clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was Uncle Sam, on Veteran’s Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad’s only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first I brought a date over she said: what’s with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.

We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity and less discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We’d stop by and find odd talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old sweatshirts, tubes of Mom’s makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He covered it with cotton swabs that winter fro warmth and provided offspring by hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.

Originally published in Story, Winter 1995

(via http://www.georgesaundersland.com/sticks1)

We, the undersigned writers and all who will join us, support Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement around the world.

Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor

Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

Steve Almond, author of Letters from People Who Hate Me

Katie Arnold-Ratliff, author of Bright Before Us

Rosecrans Baldwin, author of You Lost Me There

Russell Banks, author of Lost Memory of Skin

Matthew Battles, author of Library

Elif Batuman, author of The Possessed

Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

Karen E. Bender, author of Like Normal People

Kate Bernheimer, author of Horse, Flower, Bird

David Bezmozgis, author of The Free World

Max Blumenthal, author of Republican Gomorrah

Robert Boswell, author of The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards

Helen Boyd, author of My Husband Betty

Adam Braver, author of November 22, 1963

Jane Brox, author of Brilliant

Maria Bustillos, author of Dorkismo

Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble

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Lance Cleland, editor, Tin House

Kim Cooper, author of Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’

Lucy Corin, author of The Entire Predicament

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John D’Agata, author of About a Mountain

Eric Darton, author of Divided We Stand

Jonathan Dee, author of The Privileges

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Stacey D’Erasmo, author of A Seahorse Year

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Andre Dubus III, author of Townie

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Ben Ehrenreich, author of Ether

Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues

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Paul La Farge, author of Luminous Airplanes

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Harriet Fasenfest, author of A Householder’s Guide to the Universe

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Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods

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Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding

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Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars

Arlie Hochschild, author of The Second Shift

Roger D. Hodge, author of The Mendacity of Hope

Donovan Hohn, author of Moby-Duck

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Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

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Jessica Francis Kane, author of The Report

Esther Kaplan, author of With God On Their Side

Mary Karr, author of Lit

Richard Kim, editor, The Nation

Laura Kipnis, author of Against Love

Roger King, A Girl From Zanzibar

A.S. King, author of Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Mark Kingwell, author of The World We Want

Jay Kirk, author of Kingdom Under Glass

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine

Cheston Knapp, editor, Tin House

Scott Korb, author of Life in Year One

Jim Krusoe, author of Toward You

Benjamin Kunkel, author of Indecision

Dorianne Laux, author of The Book of Men

Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation

Young Jean Lee, author of The Shipment

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Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude

Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

Kenji Liu, author of You Left Without Your Shoes

William Bryant Logan, author of Dirt

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Sara Marcus, author of Girls to the Front

Alane Mason, translator of Conversations in Sicily

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Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

Sheila McClear, author of Last of the Live Nude Girls

Patrick McGrath, author of Asylum

Askold Melnyczuk, author of House of Windows

China Miéville, author of Embassytown

Mark Crispin Miller, author of The Bush Dyslexicon

Katherine Min, author of Secondhand World

Lee Montgomery, author of The Things Between Us

Rick Moody, author of The Ice Storm

Honor Moore, author of The Bishop’s Daughter

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Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening

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Letty Cottin Pogrebin, author of Deborah, Golda, and Me

Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Devil All the Time

Katha Pollitt, author of The Mind-body Problem

D.A. Powell, author of Chronic

Francine Prose, author of Blue Angel

Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy

David Rakoff, author of Don’t Get Too Comfortable

Jon Raymond, author of Livability

Paul Reyes, author of Exiles in Eden

Matthew Rohrer, author of Destroyer and Preserver

Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Program or Be Programmed

Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia

Mike Sacks, author of Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free

Lilith Saintcrow, author of Redemption Alley

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George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation

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Choire Sicha, The Awl

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Laurel Snyder, author of Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher

Alisa Solomon, author of Re-Dressing the Canon

Anna Solomon, author of The Little Bride

Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell

Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love

Scott Sparling, author of Wire to Wire

Scott Spencer, author of Endless Love

Rob Spillman, editor, Tin House

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Pauls Toutonghi, author of Red Weather

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Ayelet Waldman, author of Red Hook Road

Philip Weiss, author of American Taboo

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Joel Whitney, editor, Guernica

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Michelle Wildgen, author of But Not For Long

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George Orwell

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