Chris mentioned that old CSM amigo George Saunders just had a MacArthur Fellowship bestowed on hissef. well, dang, George, congrats! I had to chuckle when I went to his fan site and saw it had been hacked by a Turkish Armenian freedom fighter — complete with a waving flag and anthem. it’s back up now…
George’s latest short story collection, In Persuasion Nation gets qualified critical acclaim as is likely with a collection of stories. I haven’t read it yet. I’m waiting for a 600+ page novel to wield baseball-bat-to-torso, outlining in bruised flesh the practice, not of resistance to the contemporary cultural brutality, but of a thoughtlessly new way-of-going. potential’s there, but somehow mundaneity clogs the sweat pores. put a hold at the local library on Nation, review forthcoming.
Following his superb story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
(1996) and Pastoralia
(1999), as well as last year’s novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, Saunders reaffirms his sharp, surreal vision of contemporary, media-saturated life, but keeps most of the elements within his familiar bandwidth. In the sweetly acerbic “My Flamboyant Grandson,” a family trip through Times Square is overwhelmed by pop-up advertisements. In “Jon,” orphans get sold to a market research firm and become famous as “Tastemakers & Trendsetters” (complete with trading cards). “CommComm” concerns an air force PR flunky living with the restless souls of his parents while covering for a spiraling crisis at work. The more conventionally grounded stories are the most compelling: one lingers over a bad Christmas among Chicago working stiffs, another follows a pair of old Russian-Jewish women haunted by memories of persecution. Others collapse under the weight of too much wit (the title story especially), and a few are little more than exercises in patience (“93990,” “My Amendment”). But Saunders’ vital theme — the persistence of humanity in a vacuous, nefarious marketing culture of its own creation — comes through with subtlety and fresh turns. — Publishers Weekly
