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CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
In six stories and the novella, Bounty, Saunders introduces readers to people struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. "(Saunders) has created a surreal, weirdly persuasive picture of the devolved future now taking shape in our own worst and most potent tendencies."--Tobias Wolff.
Hardcover
First published January 16, 1996
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About the author
George Saunders
105 books10.6k followersGeorge Saunders was born December 2, 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In 1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked at Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, NY as a technical writer and geophysical engineer from 1989 to 1996. He has also worked in Sumatra on an oil exploration geophysics crew, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse.
After reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.
He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges.
He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.
He is married and has two children.
His favorite charity is a project to educate Tibetan refugee children in Nepal. Information on this can be found at http://www.tibetan-buddhist.org/index...
After reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.
He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges.
He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.
He is married and has two children.
His favorite charity is a project to educate Tibetan refugee children in Nepal. Information on this can be found at http://www.tibetan-buddhist.org/index...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,132 reviews
June 13, 2022
Using lavish grotesque and generously mocking political correctness and hypocrisy George Saunders thrashes everyday life to pitiful trash, reducing the States to the ridiculous dystopia of dark ages.
Economics, politics, ecology, morals and culture degraded dramatically but at the same time vulgarity progressed incongruously.
Bread and circuses: entertainment is the basis of civilization. Whatever happens, show must go on and the citizens must be entertained…
That night I sleep a troubled sleep beside a fetid stream. I dream of Limbo, a tiny room full of dull people eternally discussing their dental work while sipping lukewarm tea. I wake at first light and hike through miles of failing forest and around noon arrive in a village of paranoiacs standing with rifles in the doorways of flapper-era homes. It’s a nice town. No signs of plunder or panic. The McDonald’s has been occupied by the radical Church of Appropriate Humility. Everyone calls them Guilters. The ultimate Guilter ritual is when one of them goes into a frenzy and thrusts his or her hand into a deep fryer. A mangled hand is a badge of honor. All the elders have two, and need to be helped on and off with their coats.
Economics, politics, ecology, morals and culture degraded dramatically but at the same time vulgarity progressed incongruously.
The day it happened, an attractive all-girl glee club was lying around on the concrete in Kawabunga Kove in Day-Glo suits, looking for all the world like a bunch of blooms. The president and sergeant at arms were standing with brown ankles in the shallow, favorably comparing my Attraction to real surf. To increase my appeal I had the sea chanteys blaring. I was operating at the prescribed wave-frequency setting but in my lust for the glee club had the magnitude pegged.
Bread and circuses: entertainment is the basis of civilization. Whatever happens, show must go on and the citizens must be entertained…
February 10, 2019
Have you ever heard a politically incorrect joke and laughed, and then felt guilty, but then laughed again?
Have you ever driven by a car wreck and slowed down to see the emergency response vehicles, and the vehicle made to look like a damaged accordion?
Have you ever watched a reality TV show and saw folks fighting each other and tearing clothes and being separated by bouncers and realized you were hypnotized by the gross lowest common denominator humanity?
Have you read Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders?
Twisted. Degenerate. Profligate. Absolutely and unconditionally brilliant.
I loved it and am seeking counseling.
If Kurt Vonnegut had a redheaded stepchild, that illegitimate heir to the black comedic, satirical throne may be George Saunders. Civilwarland in Bad Decline, his 1996 collection of short stories and one novella is Vonnegutesque in the sense that Saunders pokes relentless fun at our society and culture, accepts Louis CK-like the abashed groans, and then plunges ahead with more of his acerbic, vitriolic and wickedly funny as hell slam dunk on our society.
But that really doesn’t fit either, a slam-dunk is too pedestrian and neutral of a reference. Saunders takes our capitalistic, Judeo-Christian, western civilization morals and ethics and delivers an MMA beat down that would make Quinton "Rampage" Jackson wince.
Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs and Harry Crews in a literary tag team no-holds barred grudge match.
His characters wheeze and moan with pathetic life and piss themselves. There is casual, negligent murder followed by halfhearted suburban, banal regret. Saunders describes flagrant, unapologetic infidelity both literally and metaphorically. His is not just the gutter, but a glittery and neon bright cesspool meandering into a dog bowl.
Saunders demonstrates his skill with the unreliable narrator the same way Picasso did with the color blue. If he were a harmful drug he would not be heroin but rather a ball peen hammer and a shot of El Torro tequila. Use with moderation.
Take the eponymous story for example, Civilwarland in Bad Decline. An absurd parody of a theme park suffering financial setbacks amidst roving teenage vandals. There are ghosts of Civil War era people haunting the grounds of the fake interactive museum. Then there is a mentally disturbed war veteran – in the fake theme park haunted by formerly real live civil war veterans.
Several short stories and a novella – and the theme and tone of the collection coalesces into the novella “Bounty”, a caustic satire of Americana gone all wrong.
And so it goes.
Have you ever driven by a car wreck and slowed down to see the emergency response vehicles, and the vehicle made to look like a damaged accordion?
Have you ever watched a reality TV show and saw folks fighting each other and tearing clothes and being separated by bouncers and realized you were hypnotized by the gross lowest common denominator humanity?
Have you read Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders?
Twisted. Degenerate. Profligate. Absolutely and unconditionally brilliant.
I loved it and am seeking counseling.
If Kurt Vonnegut had a redheaded stepchild, that illegitimate heir to the black comedic, satirical throne may be George Saunders. Civilwarland in Bad Decline, his 1996 collection of short stories and one novella is Vonnegutesque in the sense that Saunders pokes relentless fun at our society and culture, accepts Louis CK-like the abashed groans, and then plunges ahead with more of his acerbic, vitriolic and wickedly funny as hell slam dunk on our society.
But that really doesn’t fit either, a slam-dunk is too pedestrian and neutral of a reference. Saunders takes our capitalistic, Judeo-Christian, western civilization morals and ethics and delivers an MMA beat down that would make Quinton "Rampage" Jackson wince.
Vonnegut, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs and Harry Crews in a literary tag team no-holds barred grudge match.
His characters wheeze and moan with pathetic life and piss themselves. There is casual, negligent murder followed by halfhearted suburban, banal regret. Saunders describes flagrant, unapologetic infidelity both literally and metaphorically. His is not just the gutter, but a glittery and neon bright cesspool meandering into a dog bowl.
Saunders demonstrates his skill with the unreliable narrator the same way Picasso did with the color blue. If he were a harmful drug he would not be heroin but rather a ball peen hammer and a shot of El Torro tequila. Use with moderation.
Take the eponymous story for example, Civilwarland in Bad Decline. An absurd parody of a theme park suffering financial setbacks amidst roving teenage vandals. There are ghosts of Civil War era people haunting the grounds of the fake interactive museum. Then there is a mentally disturbed war veteran – in the fake theme park haunted by formerly real live civil war veterans.
Several short stories and a novella – and the theme and tone of the collection coalesces into the novella “Bounty”, a caustic satire of Americana gone all wrong.
And so it goes.
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
March 7, 2013
‘What a degraded cosmos.’
We live in a world where cruelty towards others is becoming more and more accepted – how easy we rationalize our self-righteous anger against someone who cut us off, brought us an undercooked meal, said something stupid, etc., and even seen as funny. Saunders, like the ghost of Christmas future, would like to show us where that is leading us. Civilwarland In Bad Decline, his first collection of stories, paints a grim portrait of a near-future filled with everything from economic collapse, murderous CEO’s, moral degradation on a mass scale, and a world dominated (or enslaved) by the rich, callous and self-absorbed. His satire, which manages to extract a comedic flair from all the foreboding gloom, cuts to the core of our morality. Saunders presents us with the inner thoughts of the poor and the meek, the dregs of a future society not that unlike our own as he cautions us against our mistreatment of others and the self-important beliefs that drive us to sidestep our morality.
George Saunders thinks we are all assholes, and he is probably right. While we feel safety in our knowledge that each story is removed from our own reality, the creeping dread at seeing our own world, our actions or those of people we know, elevated to such apocalyptic proportions is frightening. In nearly every story, the economy has driven us to a state where the wealthy dominate and all others are mere chattel, disposable employees who suffer horrific treatment just to scrape by. We see people pushed through degrading drudgery just to survive, dehumanized, enslaved and laughed at, and we see those who have risen above it only looking down with mirthful scorn. Each person is just a pawn in everyone else’s game. It is this self-centered view that led the world to such a predicament.
There is no end to the rationalizations made to gloss over the difficult truths of moral depravity. Much like the darkly comedic works of Flannery O'Connor, Saunders depicts obdurate, morally corrupt characters who cling to their religion. What terrible atrocities we can commit with God on our side. Money is another scapegoat, as in the title story where even murder seems less repugnant than bankruptcy and lowly employees are pressured into terrible situations in order to feed their families. There is no arguing against those in power, and exposing their depravity, or fighting against it, can only lead one to being squashed by the corporate gears, as in Downtrodden Mary. Some people truly are above the laws.
It is the wicked that rule the world, and the good that are haunted by the ghosts of the slaughter. Those with a good moral compass always get crushed in his worlds, and often they are ridiculed or hated because of their honest and good beliefs. The ability to feel, to empathize, to pity, open one up to the cold, hateful aim of those whose hearts are so calloused and buried in filth and self-righteousness that they can't care for anyone aside from themselves.
Saunders wants us to treat each other with respect, to keep an open mind and open heart. In his violent visions, we see the results of our acceptance of picking on the nerds, the physically less fortunate, the weak and the dumb. In the wonderful, and wonderfully terrifying novella Bounty, those with any deformity, the Flawed, are enslaved and dehumanized. While Saunders uses the parallels of pre-Civil War American slavery to flesh out the novella, as well as using racism to fuel the plot of the Ralph Ellison-esk Isabelle, the effect is more than just putting a new spin on a traditional literary examination¹
. Saunders re-examines the past to portend the future, and extends the horrors encompass us all instead of stopping at boundaries of race, creed or gender. The world damns the Flawed, yet, as pointed out by an elderly Flawed ‘there’s not a person on this earth who’s not Flawed in one way or another.’ While we may excel in one area, we all have our deficiencies, even if they are not visible.
In each story, the world is headed in a terrible direction that is, for the most part, seen as irreversible. Saunders is looking to us, those in the present, to course correct in order to avoid such a grim future. His futures, however, aren’t that dissimilar from our present. In nearly every story (which is a bit of a point of contention for me), the narrator works in a theme-park like resort where wealthy patrons can experience a simulated pure, natural world, often one of times past. While this is fitting with a world where everything is collapsing, polluted and destroyed, it isn’t much different from our present as we escape the world around us for virtual worlds. We live through our online selves, we escape our world to other worlds, such as seeking solace in times past, through video games and movies. These terrible bosses and evil corporate empires are all around us, and the mistreatment and fear mongering that keeps workers in line happens each and every day. Having just escaped a factory where it is clear that employees are not people – a place where nobody is concerned that the employees move about in thick clouds of aluminum dust, or use cancerous chemicals without masks or ventilation, a place where employees work 60-80hr weeks and have no say in anything, no rights, hope of raises, are dismissed at a whim, ridiculed, a place that is perfectly legal and accepted by society, yet maddening and deadly to work in, this is the sort of place that Saunders satirizes without having to jump too far (I apologize for this aside, I don’t intend it as any ‘woe-is-me’, but to share the eye-opening experience I had of how places like in The Jungle still exist today). As in Cormac McCarthy, Saunders shows how just because you can do something, doesn’t make it right. Just because you have the power over another life, you should not kill it, smite it, ridicule it, enslave it or abuse it in any way. Laws or social acceptance may be in your favor, but it still isn’t right and makes you a monster. We must be good to one another in order for the world to flourish.
This collection is a joy to read. It is witty, downright hilarious at times while uncomfortable at others, and presents a really positive message despite dragging the reader through a world of muck to get there. I really hope Saunders continues writing for a long time to come and goes down as one of the great literary satirists. The writing is crisp and carries a strong forward momentum and Saunders comes equipped with enough techniques, such as his slight changes in dialogue presentation and his character’s lexicon to disguise that each character, all of them told in first person, have a very similar cadence and voice. While it has a few rough patches, the collection still manages to soar with its comedy and dark visions.
4.5/5
¹ Slavery is not the only idea dredged up. Saunders use of economical collapse sets each story in a world where it isn’t all that surprising that people would bond together against what they fear. In High School we all had to examine how ordinary people could commit terrible atrocities, such as the Nazis and the holocaust, etc. (I apologize for the Reductio ad Hitlerum here, but it is necessary), allowing economic pressure and mob mentality to rationalize and assuage any moral qualms against even the most despicable of actions. In Bounty, it is a similar circumstance that allows people to view the Flawed as less-than-human and to not bat an eye at the Flawed’s horrific mistreatment.
We live in a world where cruelty towards others is becoming more and more accepted – how easy we rationalize our self-righteous anger against someone who cut us off, brought us an undercooked meal, said something stupid, etc., and even seen as funny. Saunders, like the ghost of Christmas future, would like to show us where that is leading us. Civilwarland In Bad Decline, his first collection of stories, paints a grim portrait of a near-future filled with everything from economic collapse, murderous CEO’s, moral degradation on a mass scale, and a world dominated (or enslaved) by the rich, callous and self-absorbed. His satire, which manages to extract a comedic flair from all the foreboding gloom, cuts to the core of our morality. Saunders presents us with the inner thoughts of the poor and the meek, the dregs of a future society not that unlike our own as he cautions us against our mistreatment of others and the self-important beliefs that drive us to sidestep our morality.
George Saunders thinks we are all assholes, and he is probably right. While we feel safety in our knowledge that each story is removed from our own reality, the creeping dread at seeing our own world, our actions or those of people we know, elevated to such apocalyptic proportions is frightening. In nearly every story, the economy has driven us to a state where the wealthy dominate and all others are mere chattel, disposable employees who suffer horrific treatment just to scrape by. We see people pushed through degrading drudgery just to survive, dehumanized, enslaved and laughed at, and we see those who have risen above it only looking down with mirthful scorn. Each person is just a pawn in everyone else’s game. It is this self-centered view that led the world to such a predicament.
Dad said she should try to understand that other people, even ignorant people, even poor people, loved their children every bit as much as she loved hers.Immanuel Kant’s first Categorical Imperative states that ‘ Act only on the maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’ Through his stories, Saunders argues that if we all look out only for ourselves, if we all ignore the needs of others, then we are doomed to this degradation of moral, ethical, and economic standards. The 400lb CEO is a ripe example of our cruelty towards others, as the reader witnesses the inner turmoil of a good man, albeit an obese man, as he clings to his morality while beleaguered by insults and jokes at his weight – his coworkers openly mock him to his face with no thought to how it might affect him. This instills a tragic belief that perfectly captures the essence of Saunders’ message:
”Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “The point is, I don’t love their kids as much as I love mine.”
’ I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.’
There is no end to the rationalizations made to gloss over the difficult truths of moral depravity. Much like the darkly comedic works of Flannery O'Connor, Saunders depicts obdurate, morally corrupt characters who cling to their religion. What terrible atrocities we can commit with God on our side. Money is another scapegoat, as in the title story where even murder seems less repugnant than bankruptcy and lowly employees are pressured into terrible situations in order to feed their families. There is no arguing against those in power, and exposing their depravity, or fighting against it, can only lead one to being squashed by the corporate gears, as in Downtrodden Mary. Some people truly are above the laws.
It is the wicked that rule the world, and the good that are haunted by the ghosts of the slaughter. Those with a good moral compass always get crushed in his worlds, and often they are ridiculed or hated because of their honest and good beliefs. The ability to feel, to empathize, to pity, open one up to the cold, hateful aim of those whose hearts are so calloused and buried in filth and self-righteousness that they can't care for anyone aside from themselves.
Saunders wants us to treat each other with respect, to keep an open mind and open heart. In his violent visions, we see the results of our acceptance of picking on the nerds, the physically less fortunate, the weak and the dumb. In the wonderful, and wonderfully terrifying novella Bounty, those with any deformity, the Flawed, are enslaved and dehumanized. While Saunders uses the parallels of pre-Civil War American slavery to flesh out the novella, as well as using racism to fuel the plot of the Ralph Ellison-esk Isabelle, the effect is more than just putting a new spin on a traditional literary examination¹
. Saunders re-examines the past to portend the future, and extends the horrors encompass us all instead of stopping at boundaries of race, creed or gender. The world damns the Flawed, yet, as pointed out by an elderly Flawed ‘there’s not a person on this earth who’s not Flawed in one way or another.’ While we may excel in one area, we all have our deficiencies, even if they are not visible.
In each story, the world is headed in a terrible direction that is, for the most part, seen as irreversible. Saunders is looking to us, those in the present, to course correct in order to avoid such a grim future. His futures, however, aren’t that dissimilar from our present. In nearly every story (which is a bit of a point of contention for me), the narrator works in a theme-park like resort where wealthy patrons can experience a simulated pure, natural world, often one of times past. While this is fitting with a world where everything is collapsing, polluted and destroyed, it isn’t much different from our present as we escape the world around us for virtual worlds. We live through our online selves, we escape our world to other worlds, such as seeking solace in times past, through video games and movies. These terrible bosses and evil corporate empires are all around us, and the mistreatment and fear mongering that keeps workers in line happens each and every day. Having just escaped a factory where it is clear that employees are not people – a place where nobody is concerned that the employees move about in thick clouds of aluminum dust, or use cancerous chemicals without masks or ventilation, a place where employees work 60-80hr weeks and have no say in anything, no rights, hope of raises, are dismissed at a whim, ridiculed, a place that is perfectly legal and accepted by society, yet maddening and deadly to work in, this is the sort of place that Saunders satirizes without having to jump too far (I apologize for this aside, I don’t intend it as any ‘woe-is-me’, but to share the eye-opening experience I had of how places like in The Jungle still exist today). As in Cormac McCarthy, Saunders shows how just because you can do something, doesn’t make it right. Just because you have the power over another life, you should not kill it, smite it, ridicule it, enslave it or abuse it in any way. Laws or social acceptance may be in your favor, but it still isn’t right and makes you a monster. We must be good to one another in order for the world to flourish.
This collection is a joy to read. It is witty, downright hilarious at times while uncomfortable at others, and presents a really positive message despite dragging the reader through a world of muck to get there. I really hope Saunders continues writing for a long time to come and goes down as one of the great literary satirists. The writing is crisp and carries a strong forward momentum and Saunders comes equipped with enough techniques, such as his slight changes in dialogue presentation and his character’s lexicon to disguise that each character, all of them told in first person, have a very similar cadence and voice. While it has a few rough patches, the collection still manages to soar with its comedy and dark visions.
4.5/5
‘Seeing someone do something that’s not patently selfish and fucked-up is like a breath of fresh air, good clean fresh air, not that any one of us would know good clean fresh air is a vial of it swooped down and bit us on the ass!’
¹ Slavery is not the only idea dredged up. Saunders use of economical collapse sets each story in a world where it isn’t all that surprising that people would bond together against what they fear. In High School we all had to examine how ordinary people could commit terrible atrocities, such as the Nazis and the holocaust, etc. (I apologize for the Reductio ad Hitlerum here, but it is necessary), allowing economic pressure and mob mentality to rationalize and assuage any moral qualms against even the most despicable of actions. In Bounty, it is a similar circumstance that allows people to view the Flawed as less-than-human and to not bat an eye at the Flawed’s horrific mistreatment.
June 30, 2015
I already knew & liked the title track so I skipped to the big novella "Bounty" and thought hello hello this is like a Motown follow-up where say "Reach Out I’ll be There" was followed up by "Standing in the Shadows of Love" which is like the same song tweaked a bit (but still great) or "I Can’t Help Myself" followed up by "It’s the Same Old Song" which really is, how daringly blatant they were. I thought this was a short story collection but it’s more like a rock opera, where the stories inhabit the same world you know like Tommy so I shoulda read the blurb :
Set in a dystopian near-future in which America has become little more than a theme park in terminal disrepair
Well, sugar pie honey George, it’s the same old joke. Alright, because George is quite brilliant, it’s a firework display of many similar jokes. But anyways, not a patch on Tenth of December, George's latest collection, which got the P Bryant Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, presented in a short but tasteful ceremony in Pirates Park, Waldeck Road, Sherwood in May 2013. Mr Saunders sent a hologram of himself to accept the award and it was just so moving I had to retire behind a large child to throw up.
Best story (worth getting this 2nd hand for): "The 400-Pound CEO"
Set in a dystopian near-future in which America has become little more than a theme park in terminal disrepair
Well, sugar pie honey George, it’s the same old joke. Alright, because George is quite brilliant, it’s a firework display of many similar jokes. But anyways, not a patch on Tenth of December, George's latest collection, which got the P Bryant Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, presented in a short but tasteful ceremony in Pirates Park, Waldeck Road, Sherwood in May 2013. Mr Saunders sent a hologram of himself to accept the award and it was just so moving I had to retire behind a large child to throw up.
Best story (worth getting this 2nd hand for): "The 400-Pound CEO"
July 26, 2015
Welcome to the Occupation
The whole way through George Saunders' first collection of short stories, there are suggestions that the world is not as it should be.
Imagine a world like this, totally unlike our own:
The characters and narrators are (or are surrounded by) kooks and wackos. People have names like Shirleen and Melvin. Where there were once cornfields and flood plains, there are now parking stations and theme parks. Gangs invade civil war re-enactments. All dreams are defiled. All entertainment is simulated. Muzak reigns. All other music is lip-synched. All consumer items are fake or synthetic. All advertising is misleading. All flavouring is artificial. Outside homes are suspended signs saying, "Homogeneity, Sweet Homogeneity." A Randian Bountytown welcomes you with the greeting, "Where merit is king - and so are you!" Success in the community means you've been inducted into Rotary. "God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy." Designer verisimilitude is de rigueur. Memories are shmemories. Errant fathers are passive flakes, milquetoasts and yes men who leave their families behind and marry floozies. Even Dear John letters are forged. People are either Normal or Flawed, special or mutant, possessed or dispossessed. There is no longer any innocence, only guilt. Sincerity is a thing of the past. Authenticity has disappeared into thin air and survives only as a ghost or a rumour.
My Torn and Black Heart Rebels
Saunders' narrators believe they have to do something about it; the world needs to be rectified:
"Having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels...enough already, enough, this is as low as I go."
Understandably, they have to start at the bottom:
"Learn to enjoy what little you have. Revel in the fact that your dignity hasn't yet been stripped away."
For all the satirical intent and comic effect, these stories of rebellion have a heart of gold. They live and breathe pure empathy:
"Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold."
The door of happiness swings open for the selfless:
"I look after her and she squeals with delight when I come home, and the sum total of sadness in the world is less than it would have been."
This is the real thing.
George Saunders and Mark Twain
SOUNDTRACK:
The whole way through George Saunders' first collection of short stories, there are suggestions that the world is not as it should be.
Imagine a world like this, totally unlike our own:
The characters and narrators are (or are surrounded by) kooks and wackos. People have names like Shirleen and Melvin. Where there were once cornfields and flood plains, there are now parking stations and theme parks. Gangs invade civil war re-enactments. All dreams are defiled. All entertainment is simulated. Muzak reigns. All other music is lip-synched. All consumer items are fake or synthetic. All advertising is misleading. All flavouring is artificial. Outside homes are suspended signs saying, "Homogeneity, Sweet Homogeneity." A Randian Bountytown welcomes you with the greeting, "Where merit is king - and so are you!" Success in the community means you've been inducted into Rotary. "God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy." Designer verisimilitude is de rigueur. Memories are shmemories. Errant fathers are passive flakes, milquetoasts and yes men who leave their families behind and marry floozies. Even Dear John letters are forged. People are either Normal or Flawed, special or mutant, possessed or dispossessed. There is no longer any innocence, only guilt. Sincerity is a thing of the past. Authenticity has disappeared into thin air and survives only as a ghost or a rumour.
My Torn and Black Heart Rebels
Saunders' narrators believe they have to do something about it; the world needs to be rectified:
"Having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels...enough already, enough, this is as low as I go."
Understandably, they have to start at the bottom:
"Learn to enjoy what little you have. Revel in the fact that your dignity hasn't yet been stripped away."
For all the satirical intent and comic effect, these stories of rebellion have a heart of gold. They live and breathe pure empathy:
"Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold."
The door of happiness swings open for the selfless:
"I look after her and she squeals with delight when I come home, and the sum total of sadness in the world is less than it would have been."
This is the real thing.
George Saunders and Mark Twain
SOUNDTRACK:
November 7, 2025
Ich glaube ich bin jetzt irgendwie immunisiert gegen den Humor und die skurrilen Einfälle des Autors. Ab der zweiten Hälfte des Bands habe ich nur noch mechanisch fertiggelesen, ohne dass mich die Storys noch sonderlich fasziniert hätten. Eine reine Frage der Dosierung. Wahrscheinlich sollte man nur alle paar Jahre einen Kurzgeschichtenband von Saunders lesen. Ich habe allein in diesem Jahr Liberty Day, Zehnter Dezember, die Regentschaft des Phil und nun Bounty Land gelesen. Das war etwas viel. Jetzt brauche ich eine längere Pause.
In Bounty Land konnte ich nicht mit allen Geschichten etwas anfangen. Eine war sehr gut (Nr.4), und zwei ziemlich gut (Nr. 2 und 7). Der Rest geht so.
1. BürgerKriegsLand fast am Ende (5/10): nur mittelinteressant, im Stil seiner neueren Story Collections, aber noch nicht so ausgereift. 30 Seiten.
2. Isabelle (7/10): hat mich in seiner Kürze (10 Seiten) und doch großen Reichhaltigkeit überzeugt. Geschichte über einen Alleinerzieher mit behinderter Tochter, die von allen abwertend „Fleischkloss“ gerufen wird. Entwickelt sich interessant.
3. Der Wellenmacher versagt (2/10): konnte damit gar nichts anfangen.
4. Der 180-Kilo-Präsident (9/10): die bisher beste Story, über einen sehr dicken Mann, der von allen gehänselt wird und sich nach Liebe sehnt.
5. Offloaden für Mrs Schwartz (3/10): ein Mann trauert und erinnert sich an seine Frau.
6. Die geknechtete Mary (4/10): wieder mal eine Geschichte aus einer Kuriositäten-Show.
7. Bounty Land (7/10): mit 100 Seiten die längste Story. Eine postapokalyptische Dystopie, in der Menschen mit genetischen Defekten als Sklaven gehalten werden. Ein Mann sucht seine Schwester, die an einen reichen Farmer verkauft wurde.
In Bounty Land konnte ich nicht mit allen Geschichten etwas anfangen. Eine war sehr gut (Nr.4), und zwei ziemlich gut (Nr. 2 und 7). Der Rest geht so.
1. BürgerKriegsLand fast am Ende (5/10): nur mittelinteressant, im Stil seiner neueren Story Collections, aber noch nicht so ausgereift. 30 Seiten.
2. Isabelle (7/10): hat mich in seiner Kürze (10 Seiten) und doch großen Reichhaltigkeit überzeugt. Geschichte über einen Alleinerzieher mit behinderter Tochter, die von allen abwertend „Fleischkloss“ gerufen wird. Entwickelt sich interessant.
3. Der Wellenmacher versagt (2/10): konnte damit gar nichts anfangen.
4. Der 180-Kilo-Präsident (9/10): die bisher beste Story, über einen sehr dicken Mann, der von allen gehänselt wird und sich nach Liebe sehnt.
5. Offloaden für Mrs Schwartz (3/10): ein Mann trauert und erinnert sich an seine Frau.
6. Die geknechtete Mary (4/10): wieder mal eine Geschichte aus einer Kuriositäten-Show.
7. Bounty Land (7/10): mit 100 Seiten die längste Story. Eine postapokalyptische Dystopie, in der Menschen mit genetischen Defekten als Sklaven gehalten werden. Ein Mann sucht seine Schwester, die an einen reichen Farmer verkauft wurde.
July 21, 2013
Poor George Saunders must have had a real real bad theme park experience in his youth. This collection of stories makes the dystopia of Zombieland seem sedate. I love Saunders' take on American consumption and the way he is able to shove values and virtues of 20th century America into a funky future that makes all our virtues absurd and makes this anti-utopia seem closer than you might have previously imagined.
January 4, 2011
The past couple of months, two activities have dominated my leisure time: reading and watching NBA hoops. After reading CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, I was reminded of a hoops argument that I think should carry over to modern literature as well. The argument has to deal with the unceasing quest for the so-called next Michael Jordan.
Michael Jordan was the transcendent athlete, if not public figure, of my childhood. There are a generation of kids who still drink Gatorade, buy Nikes, and wear Hanes solely because at some point in their childhood they wanted to be like Mike. Whenever I play a pickup game, or even just shoot around I find my tongue subconsciously hanging out of my mouth when I drive to the basket. What separates Jordan from similar figures is he actually justified this adulation. Watching Jordan was watching a real life folk hero. I remember my Dad, who isn't an NBA fan, during the MLB strike of 1994 ranting about how all professional athletes are overpaid, then pausing and adding "with the exception of Michael Jordan. This is a guy who averaged a couple grand a minute during the late '90s. The Flu Game, The Shrug Game, The Blindfolded Dunk, The final shot of the 1998 Finals. No other athlete since Babe Ruth has been able to summon similar myth-making moments.
Yet as soon as he retired (for the second time) the media and basketball fans have become obsessed with finding the "Next Jordan." Around a dozen guys have been nominated as candidates, and while these guys are all extremely talented, it's doing them a disservice to compare them to Jordan. Jordan is Gretzky, Young Sandy Koufax, Mohammed Ali before the draft, and The Beatles combined, a truly once in a lifetime talent.
I've started to notice a similar thing going on in literature concerning David Foster Wallace. More and more it seems the DFW comparisons are used talking about contemporary authors. For Christmas, I received two books explicitly name checked Wallace on the back cover. This really doesn't bother me, and I don't think it causes the reader or the publishing industry any harm. When I think about it, there's nothing like a good DFW comparison to get me interested in a newly published book. But at the same time, I worry a little bit about it. The problem with the next Jordan controversy is that while Vince Carter has (or more aptly once had) the capacity for in-air improvisation that Jordan had, Dwyane Wade has the ability to put a team on his shoulders and almost single-handedly win playoff series, and Kobe has the clutch instincts and competitive intensity Jordan had, none of these guys are on MJ's level. While these guys, and others I haven't mentioned are very good to extraordinarily good at individual faucets of the game of basketball, Jordan was the best at everything you can ask a shooting guard to be good at.I wouldn't go so far as to completely equate the respective greatness of MJ and DFW, but there is an analogy here. Because, let's face it, anybody who reads an author expecting a David Foster Wallace doppelgänger is probably going to be disappointed as those who expected Harold Miner to be the next Michael Jordan.
Now that that's said, while this argument came to me while I was reading CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, I'm not sure this review is the best place to expound upon it. For starters, George Saunders writing style and story telling are both fundamentally different from DFW's. If you were to make a Venn Diagram of George Saunders and DFW, the overlapping segments of the circles would be a mere sliver, at least based on this book. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if Saunders never read any Wallace before he wrote any of these stories. There are certain traits that Saunders and Wallace share. Both are able to write about a world that is fundamentally different from ours in very profound ways, but, at the same, make the reader feel some sense of almost eerie familiarity. Be it descriptions of wheelchair bound Quebecois assassins who were disabled in a bizarre rail-jumping ritual, or an account of an employee at a Civil War Era theme park seeking advice from the ghosts of an actual Civil War era family, both writers have an uncanny ability to treat the other-worldly in a causal manner. They both have incredible imaginations, but are able to resist what must be an overwhelming urge to let the "otherness" of their narratives overly dominate the storytelling.
I feel like I'm doing people a disservice when I tell them what the plot of Infinite Jest is about. While the world Wallace constructs is unbelievably intriguing, that's not what the book is "about." If you go into the book expecting to learn about The Entertainment and find out what's wrong with Hal, you're going to be somewhat disappointed. I feel similarly about the stories here. While the settings might suggest genre fiction, Saunders' writing reminded me more of Raymond Carver than Philip K. Dick or DFW. My one quibble may be is that while Saunders is definitely a unique storyteller, and I enjoyed all of the stories, there is nothing that really resonated with me or kept me up thinking at night. Beyond the polish of the background, I'm not sure exactly how much is new there.
I haven't come close to reading the complete DFW bibliography (or Saunders'), but it still pisses me off to no end that one day that wells going to run prematurely dry. Because, just as there was nothing like watching Jordan in his prime, there is nothing out there quite like reading David Foster Wallace. What makes experiencing greatness so extraordinary is the uniqueness inherent in it's nature. Like I said, I'm not sure how far anybody has ever gone with the Wallace comparisons to Saunders, so I'm not sure if any of this applies. And there's nothing wrong with comparing recent experiences with fondly recalled past experiences. But I worry that holding something to the level of past greatness, be it MJ, DFW, The Beatles, Brando, Scorsese, etc., does a diservices to both the new experience by holding it up to a standard that is impossible to reach without some glimmer of nostalgia, and the old experience by causing us to forget how unique the first was.
Michael Jordan was the transcendent athlete, if not public figure, of my childhood. There are a generation of kids who still drink Gatorade, buy Nikes, and wear Hanes solely because at some point in their childhood they wanted to be like Mike. Whenever I play a pickup game, or even just shoot around I find my tongue subconsciously hanging out of my mouth when I drive to the basket. What separates Jordan from similar figures is he actually justified this adulation. Watching Jordan was watching a real life folk hero. I remember my Dad, who isn't an NBA fan, during the MLB strike of 1994 ranting about how all professional athletes are overpaid, then pausing and adding "with the exception of Michael Jordan. This is a guy who averaged a couple grand a minute during the late '90s. The Flu Game, The Shrug Game, The Blindfolded Dunk, The final shot of the 1998 Finals. No other athlete since Babe Ruth has been able to summon similar myth-making moments.
Yet as soon as he retired (for the second time) the media and basketball fans have become obsessed with finding the "Next Jordan." Around a dozen guys have been nominated as candidates, and while these guys are all extremely talented, it's doing them a disservice to compare them to Jordan. Jordan is Gretzky, Young Sandy Koufax, Mohammed Ali before the draft, and The Beatles combined, a truly once in a lifetime talent.
I've started to notice a similar thing going on in literature concerning David Foster Wallace. More and more it seems the DFW comparisons are used talking about contemporary authors. For Christmas, I received two books explicitly name checked Wallace on the back cover. This really doesn't bother me, and I don't think it causes the reader or the publishing industry any harm. When I think about it, there's nothing like a good DFW comparison to get me interested in a newly published book. But at the same time, I worry a little bit about it. The problem with the next Jordan controversy is that while Vince Carter has (or more aptly once had) the capacity for in-air improvisation that Jordan had, Dwyane Wade has the ability to put a team on his shoulders and almost single-handedly win playoff series, and Kobe has the clutch instincts and competitive intensity Jordan had, none of these guys are on MJ's level. While these guys, and others I haven't mentioned are very good to extraordinarily good at individual faucets of the game of basketball, Jordan was the best at everything you can ask a shooting guard to be good at.I wouldn't go so far as to completely equate the respective greatness of MJ and DFW, but there is an analogy here. Because, let's face it, anybody who reads an author expecting a David Foster Wallace doppelgänger is probably going to be disappointed as those who expected Harold Miner to be the next Michael Jordan.
Now that that's said, while this argument came to me while I was reading CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, I'm not sure this review is the best place to expound upon it. For starters, George Saunders writing style and story telling are both fundamentally different from DFW's. If you were to make a Venn Diagram of George Saunders and DFW, the overlapping segments of the circles would be a mere sliver, at least based on this book. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if Saunders never read any Wallace before he wrote any of these stories. There are certain traits that Saunders and Wallace share. Both are able to write about a world that is fundamentally different from ours in very profound ways, but, at the same, make the reader feel some sense of almost eerie familiarity. Be it descriptions of wheelchair bound Quebecois assassins who were disabled in a bizarre rail-jumping ritual, or an account of an employee at a Civil War Era theme park seeking advice from the ghosts of an actual Civil War era family, both writers have an uncanny ability to treat the other-worldly in a causal manner. They both have incredible imaginations, but are able to resist what must be an overwhelming urge to let the "otherness" of their narratives overly dominate the storytelling.
I feel like I'm doing people a disservice when I tell them what the plot of Infinite Jest is about. While the world Wallace constructs is unbelievably intriguing, that's not what the book is "about." If you go into the book expecting to learn about The Entertainment and find out what's wrong with Hal, you're going to be somewhat disappointed. I feel similarly about the stories here. While the settings might suggest genre fiction, Saunders' writing reminded me more of Raymond Carver than Philip K. Dick or DFW. My one quibble may be is that while Saunders is definitely a unique storyteller, and I enjoyed all of the stories, there is nothing that really resonated with me or kept me up thinking at night. Beyond the polish of the background, I'm not sure exactly how much is new there.
I haven't come close to reading the complete DFW bibliography (or Saunders'), but it still pisses me off to no end that one day that wells going to run prematurely dry. Because, just as there was nothing like watching Jordan in his prime, there is nothing out there quite like reading David Foster Wallace. What makes experiencing greatness so extraordinary is the uniqueness inherent in it's nature. Like I said, I'm not sure how far anybody has ever gone with the Wallace comparisons to Saunders, so I'm not sure if any of this applies. And there's nothing wrong with comparing recent experiences with fondly recalled past experiences. But I worry that holding something to the level of past greatness, be it MJ, DFW, The Beatles, Brando, Scorsese, etc., does a diservices to both the new experience by holding it up to a standard that is impossible to reach without some glimmer of nostalgia, and the old experience by causing us to forget how unique the first was.
March 16, 2021
Ne yazsa okurum! Hele sonuna eklediği "yazarın notu" o kadar samimi geldi ki.. Bir yandan da ders gibiydi. Beklenmedik olaylar yüzünden okuma sürecim biraz fazla uzadı ama bir yandan da bırakmak istemediğim doğrudur.
December 20, 2021
Whacky reportage on squalid desperation. Some impressive literary gymnastics and unpredictable outcomes make this a lot of fun. This juxtaposed with the fact that everyone is actually having a horrible time gives it that strange sense of pathos via entertainment, or as often the more classic serving of entertainment at the expense of the downtrodden, non-gratuitous of course. Perhaps somewhat akin to a Vonnegut novel in short form
April 10, 2022
"I can hide my Flaw by always wearing shoes?" I say feebly.
"Pshaw," she says. "It's these people's business to know a Flawed. They can smell a Flawed coming. They eat Flaweds for breakfast."
"She's my sister," I say. "I have to go."
"Then get out of my sight," she says in a trembling voice. "I consider you a suicide. Goodbye, dear dead boy. Our Lord has reserved a special place in Limbo for those who put an end to themselves."
"I'll be okay," I say.
"No," she says firmly. "You won't."
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline is the debut novel of author George Saunders. It consists of six short stories, a novella, and an Author's Note at the end that's about twenty pages long. The stories usually involve bizarre amusement/theme parks but are not limited to this setting alone. To me they were very dream-like, as if you were a character in a nightmare; everything just seems wrong, about to fall apart at any moment, with bizarre or nonsensical events occurring regularly and things that seem out of place or just seem wrong. They're also powerfully depressing, brutal stories: people are routinely cheated on by their partners, or brutally murdered (though it's never really that graphic; the events are relayed in a very matter-of-fact way), or forced into slavery, or beaten relentlessly by oppressors. Saunders himself admitted to the nature of the stories in the Author's Note:
The stories are, I think, more cruel, more misshapen than they'd need to be, if that was the book's simple intention. The stories are mean in places. They're occasionally nasty. They are abrupt and telegraphic and odd. Sometimes the author seems to be rooting for the cruel world to go ahead and kick his characters' asses.
On the plus side, they are also fascinating in a way, and very original. Some of them are downright brilliant, and some are funny. But overall they're not easy stories to read. The reader is often given a glimmer of hope for one of the characters to escape their misery, only to have that hope shattered soon after. If I had to describe the stories in this book in one word, it would be bleak.
The Author's Note is wonderful. It's basically Saunders telling the story about his life at the time this book was written, the struggles he encountered and had to overcome while writing it, and how it was eventually written. It feels like a "behind the scenes" look at how the book came to be. It also goes into his personal philosophy about writing, and about how you shouldn't imitate other writers but should put your own skills and abilities into your writing as you will produce a purer work that is truer to yourself. I thought it was incredibly insightful.
Saunders likely described this book best in his Author's Word when he said it was "dark and maybe even a little sick in places." That being said, it's worth checking out if you won't be thrown into depression by the content and are interested in reading a darker story collection.
Individual ratings for each story (and the Author's Word) are below, as well as a cumulative rating for the book as a whole:
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: 5/5
Isabelle: 4.5/5
The Wavemaker Falters: 3/5
The 400-Pound CEO: 4.5/5
Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz: 4/5
Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror: 2/5
Bounty: 4/5
Author's Note: 5/5
32/40 = 80% = 4 stars
"Pshaw," she says. "It's these people's business to know a Flawed. They can smell a Flawed coming. They eat Flaweds for breakfast."
"She's my sister," I say. "I have to go."
"Then get out of my sight," she says in a trembling voice. "I consider you a suicide. Goodbye, dear dead boy. Our Lord has reserved a special place in Limbo for those who put an end to themselves."
"I'll be okay," I say.
"No," she says firmly. "You won't."
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline is the debut novel of author George Saunders. It consists of six short stories, a novella, and an Author's Note at the end that's about twenty pages long. The stories usually involve bizarre amusement/theme parks but are not limited to this setting alone. To me they were very dream-like, as if you were a character in a nightmare; everything just seems wrong, about to fall apart at any moment, with bizarre or nonsensical events occurring regularly and things that seem out of place or just seem wrong. They're also powerfully depressing, brutal stories: people are routinely cheated on by their partners, or brutally murdered (though it's never really that graphic; the events are relayed in a very matter-of-fact way), or forced into slavery, or beaten relentlessly by oppressors. Saunders himself admitted to the nature of the stories in the Author's Note:
The stories are, I think, more cruel, more misshapen than they'd need to be, if that was the book's simple intention. The stories are mean in places. They're occasionally nasty. They are abrupt and telegraphic and odd. Sometimes the author seems to be rooting for the cruel world to go ahead and kick his characters' asses.
On the plus side, they are also fascinating in a way, and very original. Some of them are downright brilliant, and some are funny. But overall they're not easy stories to read. The reader is often given a glimmer of hope for one of the characters to escape their misery, only to have that hope shattered soon after. If I had to describe the stories in this book in one word, it would be bleak.
The Author's Note is wonderful. It's basically Saunders telling the story about his life at the time this book was written, the struggles he encountered and had to overcome while writing it, and how it was eventually written. It feels like a "behind the scenes" look at how the book came to be. It also goes into his personal philosophy about writing, and about how you shouldn't imitate other writers but should put your own skills and abilities into your writing as you will produce a purer work that is truer to yourself. I thought it was incredibly insightful.
Saunders likely described this book best in his Author's Word when he said it was "dark and maybe even a little sick in places." That being said, it's worth checking out if you won't be thrown into depression by the content and are interested in reading a darker story collection.
Individual ratings for each story (and the Author's Word) are below, as well as a cumulative rating for the book as a whole:
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: 5/5
Isabelle: 4.5/5
The Wavemaker Falters: 3/5
The 400-Pound CEO: 4.5/5
Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz: 4/5
Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror: 2/5
Bounty: 4/5
Author's Note: 5/5
32/40 = 80% = 4 stars
February 9, 2018
saunders kelimenin tam anlamıyla insanın tüylerini ürperten öyküler yazmış. tüyler ürperiyor çünkü yazılanlar hem bize uzak gibi gözüküyor, distopya gibi, hem de aslında ne kadar gerçek olduğunu içten içe biliyoruz.
atlatılan savaşlar, yok olan doğa, hayvanlar, insanları köle gibi çalıştıran vahşinin de vahşisi bir kapitalizm, bugün eğlenerek gidilen temaparklarla yaratılan fazlasıyla tedirgin edici dünyalar. fakirin, çirkinin, farklının, ezilmişin kıçına indirilen tekme üstüne tekmeler...
tüm bu dehşetin yanında acayip zekice bir mizah...
bu, saunders okumaya ilk adımdı, devam edecek.
bu arada kitabın sonundaki yazılış hikayesi de ayrı bir hikaye gibi okunabilir.
atlatılan savaşlar, yok olan doğa, hayvanlar, insanları köle gibi çalıştıran vahşinin de vahşisi bir kapitalizm, bugün eğlenerek gidilen temaparklarla yaratılan fazlasıyla tedirgin edici dünyalar. fakirin, çirkinin, farklının, ezilmişin kıçına indirilen tekme üstüne tekmeler...
tüm bu dehşetin yanında acayip zekice bir mizah...
bu, saunders okumaya ilk adımdı, devam edecek.
bu arada kitabın sonundaki yazılış hikayesi de ayrı bir hikaye gibi okunabilir.
July 20, 2022
Single-handedly exploded the seriousness of my interest in the Civil War history industry (and, hey, I’m a big fan of Shelby Foote) and caused such a crisis in my own writing that the novel I was writing set in 1864 could never recover. An utterly original work of American fiction.
March 25, 2018
So this is where it all began for George Saunders. In the wonderful preface (which can be read in full here), he reveals that he wrote these stories over the course of seven years while working a monotonous office job. Once he had compiled the tedious technical reports at his desk, he spent every spare minute working on this collection, hiding it from his boss. (Sidenote: This sounds very familiar to me. I work in a similarly unstimulating role and tend to spend much of it daydreaming about books. But hey it pays the bills). With a young family relying on him at home, it can't have been easy to juggle everything, but his persistence eventually paid off and he became the much-acclaimed author he is today.
Though Saunders looks back on this period fondly, the stories are quite dark. Unhappy ghosts and monstrous theme parks, his favourite subjects, feature prominently. Bounty, the novella which ends the collection, is a nightmarish vision of future America, where the Flawed (people with genetic abnormalities) are forced to work in historical recreations to entertain the wealthy Normals. In The 400-Pound CEO, the protagonist is an obese man, bullied by his office colleagues, whose company rids homes of racoon infestations and claims to release them into the wild (when in fact they burn the animals and dump them in a pit). Isabelle is the one uplifting tale in the book. In an angry town fuelled by racial hatred, the lonely narrator takes pity on a severely disabled neighbour and gives her a place to stay: "Now we're pals. Family. It's not perfect. Sometimes it's damn hard. But I look after her and she squeals with delight when I come home, and the sum total of sadness in the world is less than it would have been."
If I have one small criticism it's that the stories are all quite similar in tone and theme. But you can see Saunders honing his craft, and these tales are imbued with the sharp satirical humour and skewed take on modern culture that he is now famous for. His ability to highlight the absurdities of world we live in allows us to realise how ridiculous much of it really is, and encourages us to consider what really matters most. He is a true genius, and we are lucky to have him.
Though Saunders looks back on this period fondly, the stories are quite dark. Unhappy ghosts and monstrous theme parks, his favourite subjects, feature prominently. Bounty, the novella which ends the collection, is a nightmarish vision of future America, where the Flawed (people with genetic abnormalities) are forced to work in historical recreations to entertain the wealthy Normals. In The 400-Pound CEO, the protagonist is an obese man, bullied by his office colleagues, whose company rids homes of racoon infestations and claims to release them into the wild (when in fact they burn the animals and dump them in a pit). Isabelle is the one uplifting tale in the book. In an angry town fuelled by racial hatred, the lonely narrator takes pity on a severely disabled neighbour and gives her a place to stay: "Now we're pals. Family. It's not perfect. Sometimes it's damn hard. But I look after her and she squeals with delight when I come home, and the sum total of sadness in the world is less than it would have been."
If I have one small criticism it's that the stories are all quite similar in tone and theme. But you can see Saunders honing his craft, and these tales are imbued with the sharp satirical humour and skewed take on modern culture that he is now famous for. His ability to highlight the absurdities of world we live in allows us to realise how ridiculous much of it really is, and encourages us to consider what really matters most. He is a true genius, and we are lucky to have him.
May 6, 2020
Como um monstro de fome imensa, a tristeza alimenta-se de todas as outras emoções, deixando o ser humano entregue a um ambiente escuro, frio e inóspito. Parco em resiliência, ele busca outros semelhantes para compartilhar essas negativas experiências e, fiel súbdito da primeira, também ele suga as energias alheias. Num antídoto de fachada, o melhor local que se afigura, para exacerbar essa vital força contida, será um parque de diversões - uma dose de adrenalina para o esquecimento.
Confinado ao epítote de potencial escritor, Saunders criou um parque de diversões sórdido, modelo do nosso quotidiano à escala. Os contos e as novelas, que compõem a obra, são as atrações tão características destes lugarejos. Ao comprar o bilhete para cada um, no virar de uma página, o leitor tem acesso ao exagero de um mundo (cada vez mais) real, experimentando montanhas russas de segregação, casas assombradas de violência, tendas de tiro ao alvo da ganância, carrosséis de xenofobia, entre outros. Claro que, no turbilhão de ideias, a náusea surge facilmente, sendo contrabalançada pelo humor negro, fiel companheiro e terapia eficaz.
Sob uma máscara que faz lembrar um universo distópico, o autor aproveita-se dos podres da besta humana, amassa-os e oferta farturas povilhadas de critica social. Ao leitor cabe o singelo papel de peão de um xadrez maior, onde o xeque não é possível: o rei enlouqueceu, a rainha transvestiu-se e até o bispo mordiscou o pomo do pecado. Entre as jogadas, resta-lhe a surpresa por algo tão aluado, à primeira vista, mas bastante terreno, num olhar mais atento. Ciente dessa comédia do desconforto, segue as letras, nesta viagem na maionese.
"- Pensa no interesse colectivo, meu rapaz (...) Esse é o leme do navio, de resto desgovernado, do auto-interesse individual."
Confinado ao epítote de potencial escritor, Saunders criou um parque de diversões sórdido, modelo do nosso quotidiano à escala. Os contos e as novelas, que compõem a obra, são as atrações tão características destes lugarejos. Ao comprar o bilhete para cada um, no virar de uma página, o leitor tem acesso ao exagero de um mundo (cada vez mais) real, experimentando montanhas russas de segregação, casas assombradas de violência, tendas de tiro ao alvo da ganância, carrosséis de xenofobia, entre outros. Claro que, no turbilhão de ideias, a náusea surge facilmente, sendo contrabalançada pelo humor negro, fiel companheiro e terapia eficaz.
Sob uma máscara que faz lembrar um universo distópico, o autor aproveita-se dos podres da besta humana, amassa-os e oferta farturas povilhadas de critica social. Ao leitor cabe o singelo papel de peão de um xadrez maior, onde o xeque não é possível: o rei enlouqueceu, a rainha transvestiu-se e até o bispo mordiscou o pomo do pecado. Entre as jogadas, resta-lhe a surpresa por algo tão aluado, à primeira vista, mas bastante terreno, num olhar mais atento. Ciente dessa comédia do desconforto, segue as letras, nesta viagem na maionese.
"- Pensa no interesse colectivo, meu rapaz (...) Esse é o leme do navio, de resto desgovernado, do auto-interesse individual."
October 8, 2018
Frammenti di un mondo bizzarro
Rispetto a “Dieci dicembre”, l’unica raccolta di racconti di Saunders che avevo letto finora, apprezzandone alquanto l’originalità nello stile e nei contenuti ma trovandola sottilmente angosciante nelle atmosfere, ”Il declino delle guerre civili americane” presenta invece una notevole dose di follia e soprattutto di humour.
Si tratta beninteso di un humour nero, caustico, cattivo che trascina le situazioni fino al paradosso ed oltre; la maggior parte dei racconti, pur variando il protagonista narrante, è ambientata nel mondo (già di per sé stesso piuttosto assurdo per noi europei) dei parchi tematici e questo, fin dal primo esilarante racconto che fornisce il titolo alla raccolta, si traduce in una sarabanda di situazioni, dialoghi, eventi al limite del grottesco ma sempre particolarmente divertenti.
Altre storie vanno ancora oltre, verso il mondo virtuale dell’immagazzinamento e trasferimento della memoria umana, pur sempre a scopo “ludico” (“Scaricando dati per la signora Schwarz”, uno dei racconti migliori) o nella distopia para-fantascientifica che culmina nell’ultimo racconto, il più lungo, variante sul tema dei mutanti (qui chiamati “i Difettosi”) e dell’emarginazione cui sono soggetti da parte dei Normali.
In apparente contrasto con tutti questi argomenti che attingono a piene mani al regno della fantasia e del surreale, i rapporti umani all’interno dei luoghi di lavoro, che siano parchi tematici, simil-sale giochi, falsi centri riabilitativi per procioni (!), sono improntati alla sopraffazione e allo sfruttamento da parte dei “capi” nei confronti di dipendenti costantemente combattuti fra senso morale e rischio di licenziamento, e in qualche caso generano sullo sfondo la crescita di una specie di coscienza di classe, fino al racconto finale che si chiude con un vero e proprio arruolamento nella Resistenza da parte del protagonista, vessato lungo tutto l’arco della vicenda.
Tutto questo è racchiuso in un libro breve (poco più di 150 pagine articolate in 7 racconti) ma talmente ricco di spunti geniali ed anche preveggenti considerando gli oltre 20 anni trascorsi dalla pubblicazione, con idee sfruttate meno di quanto la loro potenzialità consentirebbe, uno straniante mix di umorismo e disagio per il destino dei protagonisti, esteso in qualche modo all’intera umanità “de-moralizzata” in tutti i sensi.
Rispetto a “Dieci dicembre”, l’unica raccolta di racconti di Saunders che avevo letto finora, apprezzandone alquanto l’originalità nello stile e nei contenuti ma trovandola sottilmente angosciante nelle atmosfere, ”Il declino delle guerre civili americane” presenta invece una notevole dose di follia e soprattutto di humour.
Si tratta beninteso di un humour nero, caustico, cattivo che trascina le situazioni fino al paradosso ed oltre; la maggior parte dei racconti, pur variando il protagonista narrante, è ambientata nel mondo (già di per sé stesso piuttosto assurdo per noi europei) dei parchi tematici e questo, fin dal primo esilarante racconto che fornisce il titolo alla raccolta, si traduce in una sarabanda di situazioni, dialoghi, eventi al limite del grottesco ma sempre particolarmente divertenti.
Altre storie vanno ancora oltre, verso il mondo virtuale dell’immagazzinamento e trasferimento della memoria umana, pur sempre a scopo “ludico” (“Scaricando dati per la signora Schwarz”, uno dei racconti migliori) o nella distopia para-fantascientifica che culmina nell’ultimo racconto, il più lungo, variante sul tema dei mutanti (qui chiamati “i Difettosi”) e dell’emarginazione cui sono soggetti da parte dei Normali.
In apparente contrasto con tutti questi argomenti che attingono a piene mani al regno della fantasia e del surreale, i rapporti umani all’interno dei luoghi di lavoro, che siano parchi tematici, simil-sale giochi, falsi centri riabilitativi per procioni (!), sono improntati alla sopraffazione e allo sfruttamento da parte dei “capi” nei confronti di dipendenti costantemente combattuti fra senso morale e rischio di licenziamento, e in qualche caso generano sullo sfondo la crescita di una specie di coscienza di classe, fino al racconto finale che si chiude con un vero e proprio arruolamento nella Resistenza da parte del protagonista, vessato lungo tutto l’arco della vicenda.
Tutto questo è racchiuso in un libro breve (poco più di 150 pagine articolate in 7 racconti) ma talmente ricco di spunti geniali ed anche preveggenti considerando gli oltre 20 anni trascorsi dalla pubblicazione, con idee sfruttate meno di quanto la loro potenzialità consentirebbe, uno straniante mix di umorismo e disagio per il destino dei protagonisti, esteso in qualche modo all’intera umanità “de-moralizzata” in tutti i sensi.
February 4, 2016
Set in a near-future America which appears to have become one big dilapidated theme park, the bizarre stories (and novella) of CivilWarLand in Bad Decline are by turns funny, disturbing and moving. Saunders' characters are invariably weird, eccentric, even occasionally horrifying, yet they end up feeling more human than the majority of fictional characters. It's also satisfying to find I can now detect Saunders' influence in the work of so many other writers I admire - to name a few: Lindsay Hunter's short stories, Kaaron Warren's novel Slights, and recent favourite
You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
by Alexandra Kleeman.
My favourites from this collection were the title story and 'The 400-Pound CEO', and I also found the insightful author's note - which is really another story, albeit an autobiographical one about the creation of this book - to be just as enjoyable to read as the stories themselves.
If only I could stop hoping. If only I could say to my heart: Give up. There's always opera. There's angel-food cake and neighborhood children caroling, and the look of autumn leaves on a wet roof. But no. My heart's some kind of idiotic fishing bobber.
I believe he [God] takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly un-likable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.
My favourites from this collection were the title story and 'The 400-Pound CEO', and I also found the insightful author's note - which is really another story, albeit an autobiographical one about the creation of this book - to be just as enjoyable to read as the stories themselves.
If only I could stop hoping. If only I could say to my heart: Give up. There's always opera. There's angel-food cake and neighborhood children caroling, and the look of autumn leaves on a wet roof. But no. My heart's some kind of idiotic fishing bobber.
I believe he [God] takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly un-likable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.
March 12, 2017
Video-review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aiH7...
Featured in my Top 5 George Saunders Books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bc7g...
George Saunders' debut collection goes a bit over the top with its emotional charge at times, but remains an immensely rewarding, if upsetting, experience. Its stories are balanced and rewarding (although kinda same-y occasionally), the Bounty novella is less elegant but quite unforgettable, and overall he can do things in the span of a page that will make your head spin.
Featured in my Top 5 George Saunders Books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bc7g...
George Saunders' debut collection goes a bit over the top with its emotional charge at times, but remains an immensely rewarding, if upsetting, experience. Its stories are balanced and rewarding (although kinda same-y occasionally), the Bounty novella is less elegant but quite unforgettable, and overall he can do things in the span of a page that will make your head spin.
July 2, 2015
A tough book to rate. More like 3.5.
Blown away by Saunders's most recent book of stories, Tenth Of December, I was curious about his debut book of stories and a novella, published in 1996. There are similar themes: dystopias, social injustice, exploitation. And that unique narrative voice – satiric, colloquial, with a finely tuned ear to the banal cadences of the tech world and corporate-speak – is certainly there.
But perhaps because I liked the later book so much, these feel embryonic, brimming with potential rather than fully realized. Later on he would sharpen his prose to a fine point, clarify what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. He's still a champion of the underdog, especially the under- and unemployed. He's still critical of authority; there are lots of horrible bosses in this book. And he displays a wickedly funny imagination: many of these stories are set in absurd theme parks that have a kernel of truth about them.
But a lot of these tales sound the same. And even though I read December a year ago, the best of those stories still linger with me in a way that these don't.
Here's my review of Tenth Of December: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Blown away by Saunders's most recent book of stories, Tenth Of December, I was curious about his debut book of stories and a novella, published in 1996. There are similar themes: dystopias, social injustice, exploitation. And that unique narrative voice – satiric, colloquial, with a finely tuned ear to the banal cadences of the tech world and corporate-speak – is certainly there.
But perhaps because I liked the later book so much, these feel embryonic, brimming with potential rather than fully realized. Later on he would sharpen his prose to a fine point, clarify what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. He's still a champion of the underdog, especially the under- and unemployed. He's still critical of authority; there are lots of horrible bosses in this book. And he displays a wickedly funny imagination: many of these stories are set in absurd theme parks that have a kernel of truth about them.
But a lot of these tales sound the same. And even though I read December a year ago, the best of those stories still linger with me in a way that these don't.
Here's my review of Tenth Of December: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
May 30, 2022
What a treat it is to read early George Saunders being a fan of his later work. The big picture portions of his style are already on display, but they haven't quite been honed to a razor-sharp point. Fortunately, even Saunders in development is well worth a read. Across these stories, a surprising number of which take place in theme parks*, Saunders mashes up the serious with the absurd and hilarious in a style wholly his own.
I frequently guffawed at some of the turns these stories take. It's hard to pinpoint exactly how he does it, but I'm astonished his weird worlds hold shape even though they sound like terrible ideas on paper. All in all, a joy to read. A worthy introduction to the kaleidoscopic and comedic apocalypse that Saunders' has made his bread and butter.
*which is explained by Saunders in the 2016 edition's afterword
I frequently guffawed at some of the turns these stories take. It's hard to pinpoint exactly how he does it, but I'm astonished his weird worlds hold shape even though they sound like terrible ideas on paper. All in all, a joy to read. A worthy introduction to the kaleidoscopic and comedic apocalypse that Saunders' has made his bread and butter.
*which is explained by Saunders in the 2016 edition's afterword
March 9, 2022
Reading parts of this in the morning put me in a bad mood for the whole fucking day.
August 27, 2014
George Saunders is one of those wonderful discoveries I had last year. His Folio Prize winning Tenth of December blew me away and I knew I had to read more, if not all, of his works. I wanted to go down the line of his fiction books, with Civilwarland in Bad Decline being the earliest, published 17 years earlier than Tenth of December. The short stories from the former may not be as polished and potent as those of the later, but it still has everything I loved about Saunders' writing. It is unguarded and offhanded and very conversational.
The protagonists in all the seven stories fit the downtrodden and the disadvantaged kind. Vulnerable characters that feel so real, I feel like my heart is being being skewered reading about their day to day lives of bleakness. He is a master at combining realism with surrealism. On one end, we have characters that are regular people, in terms of the voices Saunders lends them with. They are mostly rank and file employees: a wavemaker operator at a waterpark, an elderly museum worker, a raccoon trapper, a civil war re-enactment themed park assistant. And then he places them in a surreal setting of dystopian America, a picture of noxious wasteland, where the museum contains exhibits of pickled fetuses and a synthetic cow, a recreation center with mutants as slaves. He paints a pretty strange and terrifying landscape. Or he gives them claws instead of toes, or makes them weigh 400 pounds, or turn them boneless. But oh, their voices are so very human and real. He shows their capacity for stupidity, and revenge, and self loathing, but also their resilience and their gigantic hearts. And the humor, let's not forget to mention the wicked humor, and the biting satire, and the luminescent redemption (or epiphany) that cuts through the grim events like daggers of light piercing a dark room. Well, perhaps not the kind of redemption one expects, though.
My favorites among the seven stories are:
1. The 400-Pound CEO - This is a story about Jeffrey, an obese worker of a raccoon disposal company. He is this amiable guy who always does the right things. And is kind to even his d-bag boss and co-workers who ridicule him about his weight and virginity, and plays cruel tricks on him. But then something happens that lands him in jail.
“I'm not a bad guy. If only I could stop hoping. If only I could say to my heart: Give up. Be alone forever. There's always opera. There's angel-food cake and neighborhood children caroling, and the look of autumn leaves on a wet roof. But no. My heart's some kind of idiotic fishing bobber.”
2. The Wavemaker Falters -This is about a wavemaker operator, living under a cloud of guilt as he is haunted by the ghost of Clyde, a boy he accidentally tore to bits by forgetting to put the filter on the wavemaker because he was busy watching group of girls in day-glo bathing suits. Ghost Clyde visits every night and tells him of the future he's been denied on account of being dead. The senior prom he is missing, or that Mexico trip with a hot girl he is supposed to be having.
"Having lost what has to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels, saying enough already, enough, this is as low as I go."
3. Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz - This one tells of a guy who runs a virtual reality arcade with modules (games) as strange as "Legendary American Killers Stalk You", "Sexy Nurses Scrub You Down" and "Violated Prom Queen." He too is racked by guilt and unhappines from the death of his wife. He soon finds a way to extract his memory and place it on a disk.
"Your heart has never been broken. You've never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold."
4. Bounty - This one is about a Flawed (mutant), a young, innocent boy with claws instead of toes, escapes from his workplace/prison in order to go after his sister (another Flawed) who was taken by a Normal. Only the outside world he escapes to isn't any better. Flaweds are looked down upon, forbidden to cohabitate with Normals, traded as slaves or killed. And he gets into some pretty tight spots and brutal situations. But ended up having another purpose aside from finding his sister.
"I think of Connie. I remember the autumn before the purge, when the Flaweds in our grade school were fitted with bracelets during a surprise assembly. Connie and I stood there blinking madly as a Normal janitor named Fabrizi fired up his welding tool. At home Connie decorated her bracelet with glitter glue. Dad called her a trooper and praised her gumption, then broke down in sobs."
Civilwarland in Bad Decline is a wonderful short story collection. As far as dystopian literature goes, it is an effective one because not only does it present a decayed world filled with greed, hate, corruption and ecological degradation but it underscores the fact that such a world is achieved by human choice. And I feel such a mad world is possible in the future too. Powerful stuff.
Special Thanks to Meliza of Mecanism for giving me a copy.
See Original Post Here: Rabbitin
The protagonists in all the seven stories fit the downtrodden and the disadvantaged kind. Vulnerable characters that feel so real, I feel like my heart is being being skewered reading about their day to day lives of bleakness. He is a master at combining realism with surrealism. On one end, we have characters that are regular people, in terms of the voices Saunders lends them with. They are mostly rank and file employees: a wavemaker operator at a waterpark, an elderly museum worker, a raccoon trapper, a civil war re-enactment themed park assistant. And then he places them in a surreal setting of dystopian America, a picture of noxious wasteland, where the museum contains exhibits of pickled fetuses and a synthetic cow, a recreation center with mutants as slaves. He paints a pretty strange and terrifying landscape. Or he gives them claws instead of toes, or makes them weigh 400 pounds, or turn them boneless. But oh, their voices are so very human and real. He shows their capacity for stupidity, and revenge, and self loathing, but also their resilience and their gigantic hearts. And the humor, let's not forget to mention the wicked humor, and the biting satire, and the luminescent redemption (or epiphany) that cuts through the grim events like daggers of light piercing a dark room. Well, perhaps not the kind of redemption one expects, though.
My favorites among the seven stories are:
1. The 400-Pound CEO - This is a story about Jeffrey, an obese worker of a raccoon disposal company. He is this amiable guy who always does the right things. And is kind to even his d-bag boss and co-workers who ridicule him about his weight and virginity, and plays cruel tricks on him. But then something happens that lands him in jail.
“I'm not a bad guy. If only I could stop hoping. If only I could say to my heart: Give up. Be alone forever. There's always opera. There's angel-food cake and neighborhood children caroling, and the look of autumn leaves on a wet roof. But no. My heart's some kind of idiotic fishing bobber.”
2. The Wavemaker Falters -This is about a wavemaker operator, living under a cloud of guilt as he is haunted by the ghost of Clyde, a boy he accidentally tore to bits by forgetting to put the filter on the wavemaker because he was busy watching group of girls in day-glo bathing suits. Ghost Clyde visits every night and tells him of the future he's been denied on account of being dead. The senior prom he is missing, or that Mexico trip with a hot girl he is supposed to be having.
"Having lost what has to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels, saying enough already, enough, this is as low as I go."
3. Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz - This one tells of a guy who runs a virtual reality arcade with modules (games) as strange as "Legendary American Killers Stalk You", "Sexy Nurses Scrub You Down" and "Violated Prom Queen." He too is racked by guilt and unhappines from the death of his wife. He soon finds a way to extract his memory and place it on a disk.
"Your heart has never been broken. You've never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold."
4. Bounty - This one is about a Flawed (mutant), a young, innocent boy with claws instead of toes, escapes from his workplace/prison in order to go after his sister (another Flawed) who was taken by a Normal. Only the outside world he escapes to isn't any better. Flaweds are looked down upon, forbidden to cohabitate with Normals, traded as slaves or killed. And he gets into some pretty tight spots and brutal situations. But ended up having another purpose aside from finding his sister.
"I think of Connie. I remember the autumn before the purge, when the Flaweds in our grade school were fitted with bracelets during a surprise assembly. Connie and I stood there blinking madly as a Normal janitor named Fabrizi fired up his welding tool. At home Connie decorated her bracelet with glitter glue. Dad called her a trooper and praised her gumption, then broke down in sobs."
Civilwarland in Bad Decline is a wonderful short story collection. As far as dystopian literature goes, it is an effective one because not only does it present a decayed world filled with greed, hate, corruption and ecological degradation but it underscores the fact that such a world is achieved by human choice. And I feel such a mad world is possible in the future too. Powerful stuff.
Special Thanks to Meliza of Mecanism for giving me a copy.
See Original Post Here: Rabbitin
November 9, 2025
Треба цим дистопістам заборонити писати, бо ми, таке враження, скоро опинимося в світі, що вони описують.
І це Сондерс писав в 1996, 2000 роках, боюся уявити що там далі в 2022.
Але я знову реготала.
І це Сондерс писав в 1996, 2000 роках, боюся уявити що там далі в 2022.
Але я знову реготала.
July 8, 2023
A collection of short stories and one novella, this was Saunders’ debut and I have decidedly mixed feelings about it. It has glowing reviews and the cover blurbs all proclaim that George Saunders is a brilliant satirist and this book marks “the debut of an exciting new voice in fiction” (I really need to start ignoring cover blurbs when making book-buying decisions). Comparisons are made to Kurt Vonnegut and Nathaniel West throughout the review excerpts, but I really didn’t feel the book lived up to all the hype. Saunders is a savage satirist, but is probably better when taken in small doses. There’s a sameness to the stories and he tends to be repetitive in themes and settings. There’s only six short stories and one novella in the collection, yet four of them take place in run-down amusement parks. Yes, that’s a great setting for a story, with rich possibilities of social satire among the seedy attractions and grease soaked food stalls, but not great enough to use over and over again.
The book is funny, but be warned, the humor is quirky and more than a little twisted. In “The 400-Pound CEO”, the main character works for Humane Raccoon Alternatives where nuisance raccoons are trapped and then set free in the wild (or so their sales brochures claim):
“At noon, another load of raccoons comes in, and Claude takes them out back of the office and executes them with a tire iron. Then he checks for vitals wearing protective gloves. Then he drags the cage across 209 and initiates burial by dumping the raccoons into the pit that's our little corporate secret. After burial comes prayer, a personal touch that never fails to irritate Tim, our ruthless CEO.
Post-burial, I write up the invoices and a paragraph or two on how overjoyed the raccoons were when we set them free. Sometimes I'll throw in something about spontaneous mating beneath the box elders. No one writes a better misleading letter than me. In the area of phone inquiries, I'm also unsurpassed. When a client calls to ask how their release went, everyone in the office falls all over themselves transferring the call to me. I'm reassuring and joyful. I laugh until tears run down my face at the stories I make up regarding the wacky things their raccoon did upon gaining its freedom”
Saunders takes great pleasure in skewering corporate culture. The employers in the stories are, more often than not, venal, shallow, and speak in the gibberish of corporate-speak: "Respect," says one of them. "That's the quality I hope to imbibe to you during the confab that is to follow this present preface I'm extolling."
His stories are dark, with surreal and bizarre touches throughout them. In the title story, in-between showing potential investors around the decrepit amusement park he works at, the main character talks to the ghosts of a settler family haunting the park. In "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror", one of the attractions is a see-through cow with a piece of Plexiglas imbedded in it and another is a “Pickled Babies” exhibit where jars of babies immersed in formaldehyde line the walls. This is a dystopian world, filled with grotesques and the characters rarely arrive at anything resembling a happy ending:
“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”
I’d recommend it only to people that like quirky and a little twisted. It’s funny, but the humor is dark and the world view is cynical. In the stories, society is collectively sitting in a hand basket, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to ask where it’s going.
The book is funny, but be warned, the humor is quirky and more than a little twisted. In “The 400-Pound CEO”, the main character works for Humane Raccoon Alternatives where nuisance raccoons are trapped and then set free in the wild (or so their sales brochures claim):
“At noon, another load of raccoons comes in, and Claude takes them out back of the office and executes them with a tire iron. Then he checks for vitals wearing protective gloves. Then he drags the cage across 209 and initiates burial by dumping the raccoons into the pit that's our little corporate secret. After burial comes prayer, a personal touch that never fails to irritate Tim, our ruthless CEO.
Post-burial, I write up the invoices and a paragraph or two on how overjoyed the raccoons were when we set them free. Sometimes I'll throw in something about spontaneous mating beneath the box elders. No one writes a better misleading letter than me. In the area of phone inquiries, I'm also unsurpassed. When a client calls to ask how their release went, everyone in the office falls all over themselves transferring the call to me. I'm reassuring and joyful. I laugh until tears run down my face at the stories I make up regarding the wacky things their raccoon did upon gaining its freedom”
Saunders takes great pleasure in skewering corporate culture. The employers in the stories are, more often than not, venal, shallow, and speak in the gibberish of corporate-speak: "Respect," says one of them. "That's the quality I hope to imbibe to you during the confab that is to follow this present preface I'm extolling."
His stories are dark, with surreal and bizarre touches throughout them. In the title story, in-between showing potential investors around the decrepit amusement park he works at, the main character talks to the ghosts of a settler family haunting the park. In "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror", one of the attractions is a see-through cow with a piece of Plexiglas imbedded in it and another is a “Pickled Babies” exhibit where jars of babies immersed in formaldehyde line the walls. This is a dystopian world, filled with grotesques and the characters rarely arrive at anything resembling a happy ending:
“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”
I’d recommend it only to people that like quirky and a little twisted. It’s funny, but the humor is dark and the world view is cynical. In the stories, society is collectively sitting in a hand basket, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to ask where it’s going.
September 20, 2024
Saunders’la aramdaki mesafeyi kısaltıp metne de yakınlaştıracağını düşündüğüm için okumaya kitabın ortaya çıkış hikayesini ve paralelinde yaşamından kesitler sunduğu Yazarın Notu'ndan başladım. Notta Hemingway’le birlikte Carver’dan etkilendiğini öğrenince suratımda beliren tebessümü görmek isterdim. Carver’dan sonra Saunders evrenine geçmem tamamen insiyaki bir tercihti.
Kitapta yer alan öyküler erken dönem Saunders işleri (imiş). İddialı cümleler sarfetmek istemem. Phil ve Tilki 8 dışındaki kitaplarını elimin altında olmalarına rağmen doğru zamanı beklediğim için okumadım. Yorgun bir zihinle evrenine girmenin kolay olmayacağını sezinliyordum. Neyse, kitapta 6 öykü, 1 novella yer alıyor. Genel anlamda kıvrak zekalı birinin elinden çıktığını hissettiren, sömürü, sosyal ve ekonomik adaletsizlik, yozlaşma gibi benzer temaların etrafında dolanan, ofansif mizaha göz kırpan, politik doğruculuk kırıcı, The Office ile Idiocracy arasında bir yerlere konumlanabilecek öyküler. Saunders'ın yazınında bir mekanizma işlettiği görülüyor. Bu diğer kitaplarındaki öykülerde de işlettiği bir mekanizma mı, doğrusu merak ediyorum. Eğer öyleyse tekrara düşmesi kaçınılmaz görünüyor.
Yazarın alameti farikasının en belirgin olduğu öykü “180 Kiloluk Genel Müdür”. Bu öykü, yaşam akıp günler birbiri ardına devinirken başkalarının zalimliklerini büyük büyük görüp parlaklaştıran ancak kendi karanlık yanlarına körleşenlerin fotoğrafı. Hayvan imha edip müşterilerine bunu “serbest bırakma” şeklinde izah eden vahşi, tuhaf bir dolandırıcılık şirketinin çalışanları ve “şişman” Jeffrey’nin öyküsü. Ofis arkadaşları ve patronu Tim her kertede ona bedeninden utanması için türlü zorbalıklar yapıyorlar. Jeffrey, iş yerinde uğradığı zorbalıkları gidip konuşmak ya da başka çözümler aramak yerine tepkisini patronunun kahvesine sümük atıp yazıcıya gönderdiği dosyaları iptal ederek koyan “korkak” biri. Toksik çalışma ortamının kusurlarını zihninde rasyonalize etmekte de mahir. Aynı zamanda hayatın kendisine mevcut durumundan daha fazlasını sunmasını bekleyen bir kadersever. Bir gün Tim’in bir hayvan aktivistine uyguladığı şiddeti görüp olaya müdahale ediyor ve suça karışıyor. İşlediği suçu kendi çıkarlarına alet edip şirketin başına geçmek gibi “bencilce” bir tavra da sahip. Zaten bıçak kemiğe dayandığında “yüce idealleri” umursamayıp sadece kendisini koruyacağını bilen biri. Her neyse, Tim’in koltuğuna oturmasıyla kodese tıkılması arasında bir dilim pasta yiyecek vakti bile olmuyor. Adamcağız (!) yaptıklarının sefasını süremiyor. Sayın adalet, bu ne hız! Öykünün Jeffrey’nin zayıf ve güzel bir bebek olarak doğsaydı yazgısının farklı olacağını düşünüyor olmasıyla sonlanması da manidar. Yaşamındaki pürüzleri şişmanlığında araması gibi şifasının da aynı adreste olduğuna inanma kolaycılığı babasının da hayıflanmasına bakılırsa “genetik”.
Saunders, Jeffrey’ye “Ne yoz bir evren bu; iyi başlayıp sürekli kötüye giden şeylerin ne kusursuz bir örneği…” dedirterek kurduğu evreni de tarifliyor. Adeta okurun zihninden geçenleri ifşa ediyor. Karakterle empati yapmaya başlanan her andan birkaç cümle sonra başına gelenleri hak ettiğinin düşünülmesini istediğine eminim, ama kanıtlayamam. Üstelik gökyüzünün bileşenlerini el işinden makasla kesip bir resme yapıştırmış gibi betimleyerek kurduğu evrenin bir tasarım ürünü olduğunu hissettiriyor. Bu, okurun güvenli alanda olduğuna ikna olmasını da kolaylaştırıyor. Ancak kazın ayağı öyle mi emin değilim. Zira etraf Timler ve Jeffreyler’le dolu.
3buçuk
Kitapta yer alan öyküler erken dönem Saunders işleri (imiş). İddialı cümleler sarfetmek istemem. Phil ve Tilki 8 dışındaki kitaplarını elimin altında olmalarına rağmen doğru zamanı beklediğim için okumadım. Yorgun bir zihinle evrenine girmenin kolay olmayacağını sezinliyordum. Neyse, kitapta 6 öykü, 1 novella yer alıyor. Genel anlamda kıvrak zekalı birinin elinden çıktığını hissettiren, sömürü, sosyal ve ekonomik adaletsizlik, yozlaşma gibi benzer temaların etrafında dolanan, ofansif mizaha göz kırpan, politik doğruculuk kırıcı, The Office ile Idiocracy arasında bir yerlere konumlanabilecek öyküler. Saunders'ın yazınında bir mekanizma işlettiği görülüyor. Bu diğer kitaplarındaki öykülerde de işlettiği bir mekanizma mı, doğrusu merak ediyorum. Eğer öyleyse tekrara düşmesi kaçınılmaz görünüyor.
Yazarın alameti farikasının en belirgin olduğu öykü “180 Kiloluk Genel Müdür”. Bu öykü, yaşam akıp günler birbiri ardına devinirken başkalarının zalimliklerini büyük büyük görüp parlaklaştıran ancak kendi karanlık yanlarına körleşenlerin fotoğrafı. Hayvan imha edip müşterilerine bunu “serbest bırakma” şeklinde izah eden vahşi, tuhaf bir dolandırıcılık şirketinin çalışanları ve “şişman” Jeffrey’nin öyküsü. Ofis arkadaşları ve patronu Tim her kertede ona bedeninden utanması için türlü zorbalıklar yapıyorlar. Jeffrey, iş yerinde uğradığı zorbalıkları gidip konuşmak ya da başka çözümler aramak yerine tepkisini patronunun kahvesine sümük atıp yazıcıya gönderdiği dosyaları iptal ederek koyan “korkak” biri. Toksik çalışma ortamının kusurlarını zihninde rasyonalize etmekte de mahir. Aynı zamanda hayatın kendisine mevcut durumundan daha fazlasını sunmasını bekleyen bir kadersever. Bir gün Tim’in bir hayvan aktivistine uyguladığı şiddeti görüp olaya müdahale ediyor ve suça karışıyor. İşlediği suçu kendi çıkarlarına alet edip şirketin başına geçmek gibi “bencilce” bir tavra da sahip. Zaten bıçak kemiğe dayandığında “yüce idealleri” umursamayıp sadece kendisini koruyacağını bilen biri. Her neyse, Tim’in koltuğuna oturmasıyla kodese tıkılması arasında bir dilim pasta yiyecek vakti bile olmuyor. Adamcağız (!) yaptıklarının sefasını süremiyor. Sayın adalet, bu ne hız! Öykünün Jeffrey’nin zayıf ve güzel bir bebek olarak doğsaydı yazgısının farklı olacağını düşünüyor olmasıyla sonlanması da manidar. Yaşamındaki pürüzleri şişmanlığında araması gibi şifasının da aynı adreste olduğuna inanma kolaycılığı babasının da hayıflanmasına bakılırsa “genetik”.
Saunders, Jeffrey’ye “Ne yoz bir evren bu; iyi başlayıp sürekli kötüye giden şeylerin ne kusursuz bir örneği…” dedirterek kurduğu evreni de tarifliyor. Adeta okurun zihninden geçenleri ifşa ediyor. Karakterle empati yapmaya başlanan her andan birkaç cümle sonra başına gelenleri hak ettiğinin düşünülmesini istediğine eminim, ama kanıtlayamam. Üstelik gökyüzünün bileşenlerini el işinden makasla kesip bir resme yapıştırmış gibi betimleyerek kurduğu evrenin bir tasarım ürünü olduğunu hissettiriyor. Bu, okurun güvenli alanda olduğuna ikna olmasını da kolaylaştırıyor. Ancak kazın ayağı öyle mi emin değilim. Zira etraf Timler ve Jeffreyler’le dolu.
3buçuk
December 14, 2017
İçSavaşDiyarı Feci Düşüşte, George Saunders’ın ilk öykülerinin yer aldığı, yayımlanan ilk kitabı. Fakat bu ilklik herhangi bir çağdışılık taşımıyor. Kitap dünyaya 1996 yılından bakıyor ama yarattığı kestirim ilk günkü kadar taze; çünkü öyküler güçlü, zekice yazılmış ve en önemlisi, tamamı büyük bir öngörü sahibi.
Örneğin kitaptaki son öyküyü, yani "Bereket" isimli novellayı ele alırsak bu öngörüyü daha rahat anlayabiliriz: "Normal" insanları eğlendirmekle yükümlü "kusurlu"larla dolu bir eğlence parkı ve o parktan kaçıp insanlıktan nasibini almamış bir ülkeyi gözlemleyen bir kusurlu, öykünün iskeletini oluşturuyor. Distopik bir Amerika yolculuğuna çıkan kahraman, hem öteki olmanın zorluğunu acı deneyimlerle aktarıyor hem de insanların kötülüğünün bir sınırı olmadığını kanıtlıyor. Elbette kahramanın yaşadığı bu belirsiz çağ aslında günümüzün bir yansıması; zira herhangi bir kusura sahip olmadıkları halde milyonlarca insan da şu an tam bir öteki hayatı yaşıyor ve kısacık ömürleri sefaletle geçiyor.
Diğer öyküler de son derece güçlü. Kitaba adını veren "İçSavaşDiyarı Feci Düşüşte" yine bir tema parkı ve parka çekidüzen vermesi için alınan bir savaş suçlusunun ortalığı birbirine katışını anlatıyor. "180 Kiloluk Genel Müdür" travmalarla dolu bir zihni yansıtıyor, "Dalgayapar Bozulunca" vicdan azabını, "Isabelle" ırkçılığı öne çıkarıyor. "Ezik Mary’nin Başarısızlıkla Sonuçlanan Terör Harekâtı" işverenlerin daha dikkatli olması gerektiğini vurgularken, kitaptaki en bilimkurgu öykü olan "Son İndirme Bayan Schwartz İçin", sahip olduğumuz anılarla yaşamanın aslında ne kadar zor bir iş olduğunu anımsatıyor.
Yani Saunders’ın kahramanları yine her zamanki kadar garip gureba, fakir fukara, absürt, rezil, üçkâğıtçı ve yalnız. Hatta yapayalnız... Bu yalnızlığın, insana hiç hesaba katmayacağı şeyler yaptırdığını ve insanın hayattaki en büyük gayesinin yalnızlıktan kurtulmak olduğunu gayet iyi kavrayan Saunders, karakterlerini de son derece kalın çizgilerle çizerek onları yalnızlıkla dolu bir dünyanın içine atıveriyor. Yani hikâye, karakterlerin çevresinden akıyor.
Elbette, Saunders’ın resmettiği manzaralar Amerikan kültürüne oldukça bağlı. Fakat öyküleri aynı zamanda evrensel de kılan şey, karakterlerin sahip olduğu bu derinlik. Herhangi bir öyküdeki herhangi bir karakter, herhangi bir yazarın herhangi bir öyküsüne yerleştirilse yine pek sırıtmaz. Çünkü yazar, insana dair, insanla ilgili şeyleri anlatıyor ve bu yüzden, kısıtlı bir dönem anlatısının ya da basit bir olay örgüsünün tuzağına düşmekten kurtuluyor.
Öyle ki, Amerikan İç Savaşı’nı arka planına aldığı ve doğrudan doğruya Abraham Lincoln’ün oğlunu anlattığı Arafta’da bile kültürel bir duygu sömürüsüne gitmiyor Saunders. Ölümü, yaşamı ve ikisinin arasında kalmışlığı anlatmak için o yılları bir paravan olarak kullanıyor.
George Saunders, "kendine has" tanımlamasını kesinlikle hak eden bir yazar. Gerek öykülerinde yarattığı atmosfer gerekse birbirinden özgün karakterleriyle, modern edebiyattan hoşlanan ve çağımızın dertlerinden mustarip olan okurları kendine mıknatıs gibi çekmeyi başarıyor.
Örneğin kitaptaki son öyküyü, yani "Bereket" isimli novellayı ele alırsak bu öngörüyü daha rahat anlayabiliriz: "Normal" insanları eğlendirmekle yükümlü "kusurlu"larla dolu bir eğlence parkı ve o parktan kaçıp insanlıktan nasibini almamış bir ülkeyi gözlemleyen bir kusurlu, öykünün iskeletini oluşturuyor. Distopik bir Amerika yolculuğuna çıkan kahraman, hem öteki olmanın zorluğunu acı deneyimlerle aktarıyor hem de insanların kötülüğünün bir sınırı olmadığını kanıtlıyor. Elbette kahramanın yaşadığı bu belirsiz çağ aslında günümüzün bir yansıması; zira herhangi bir kusura sahip olmadıkları halde milyonlarca insan da şu an tam bir öteki hayatı yaşıyor ve kısacık ömürleri sefaletle geçiyor.
Diğer öyküler de son derece güçlü. Kitaba adını veren "İçSavaşDiyarı Feci Düşüşte" yine bir tema parkı ve parka çekidüzen vermesi için alınan bir savaş suçlusunun ortalığı birbirine katışını anlatıyor. "180 Kiloluk Genel Müdür" travmalarla dolu bir zihni yansıtıyor, "Dalgayapar Bozulunca" vicdan azabını, "Isabelle" ırkçılığı öne çıkarıyor. "Ezik Mary’nin Başarısızlıkla Sonuçlanan Terör Harekâtı" işverenlerin daha dikkatli olması gerektiğini vurgularken, kitaptaki en bilimkurgu öykü olan "Son İndirme Bayan Schwartz İçin", sahip olduğumuz anılarla yaşamanın aslında ne kadar zor bir iş olduğunu anımsatıyor.
Yani Saunders’ın kahramanları yine her zamanki kadar garip gureba, fakir fukara, absürt, rezil, üçkâğıtçı ve yalnız. Hatta yapayalnız... Bu yalnızlığın, insana hiç hesaba katmayacağı şeyler yaptırdığını ve insanın hayattaki en büyük gayesinin yalnızlıktan kurtulmak olduğunu gayet iyi kavrayan Saunders, karakterlerini de son derece kalın çizgilerle çizerek onları yalnızlıkla dolu bir dünyanın içine atıveriyor. Yani hikâye, karakterlerin çevresinden akıyor.
Elbette, Saunders’ın resmettiği manzaralar Amerikan kültürüne oldukça bağlı. Fakat öyküleri aynı zamanda evrensel de kılan şey, karakterlerin sahip olduğu bu derinlik. Herhangi bir öyküdeki herhangi bir karakter, herhangi bir yazarın herhangi bir öyküsüne yerleştirilse yine pek sırıtmaz. Çünkü yazar, insana dair, insanla ilgili şeyleri anlatıyor ve bu yüzden, kısıtlı bir dönem anlatısının ya da basit bir olay örgüsünün tuzağına düşmekten kurtuluyor.
Öyle ki, Amerikan İç Savaşı’nı arka planına aldığı ve doğrudan doğruya Abraham Lincoln’ün oğlunu anlattığı Arafta’da bile kültürel bir duygu sömürüsüne gitmiyor Saunders. Ölümü, yaşamı ve ikisinin arasında kalmışlığı anlatmak için o yılları bir paravan olarak kullanıyor.
George Saunders, "kendine has" tanımlamasını kesinlikle hak eden bir yazar. Gerek öykülerinde yarattığı atmosfer gerekse birbirinden özgün karakterleriyle, modern edebiyattan hoşlanan ve çağımızın dertlerinden mustarip olan okurları kendine mıknatıs gibi çekmeyi başarıyor.
August 10, 2021
Chulada de sátira. 6 cuentos y una novela corta que retratan con mucha comedia y sarcasmo, la miseria humana.
Saunders nos enseña de empatía con historias que podrían parecer episodios de Black Mirror pero que en lugar de tecnología, usan los problemas sociales, culturales y económicos como lección. Échense un clavado en este libro que retrata lo peor que ofrecemos los humanos en mundos verosímiles con sus propias reglas; reglas ojetes y egoístas que en primera instancia dan para abajo, pero que ayudan a entender mejor el mundo en el que vivimos.
Creo que mi favorita fue la novela corta, Bounty, un clásico viaje del héroe que sustituye batallas contra villanos por batallas contra la discriminación, esclavitud corporativa y su propio esquema moral para salvar a su hermana y finalmente, a él mismo.
Saunders nos enseña de empatía con historias que podrían parecer episodios de Black Mirror pero que en lugar de tecnología, usan los problemas sociales, culturales y económicos como lección. Échense un clavado en este libro que retrata lo peor que ofrecemos los humanos en mundos verosímiles con sus propias reglas; reglas ojetes y egoístas que en primera instancia dan para abajo, pero que ayudan a entender mejor el mundo en el que vivimos.
Creo que mi favorita fue la novela corta, Bounty, un clásico viaje del héroe que sustituye batallas contra villanos por batallas contra la discriminación, esclavitud corporativa y su propio esquema moral para salvar a su hermana y finalmente, a él mismo.
April 8, 2020
"Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he had yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three. I see the dead kid's mom unable to sleep, pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her son's hand. I see the pain I've caused. I see the man I could have been, and the man I was, and then everything is bright and new and keen with love and I sweep through Sam's body, trying to change him, trying so hard, and feeling only hate and hate, solid as stone."
March 24, 2018
George Saunders' debut short story collection places us in a series of strange dystopian settings. His characters navigate absurd realities, lamenting the unfair hand they've been dealt and hoping for something more. They do questionable (sometimes unforgivable) things, and then seek redemption in a world that may not offer it. What I love about Saunders is that he consistently takes us to the far reaches of despair and post-modern irony while reassuring us that earnestness is still possible.
January 9, 2019
Saunders yapıtı işte; her cümlesi vasat katili, her öyküsü duygularınızın mikseri.
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