It is a unique sort of humor that will find as much appeal with me as it does with my mother-in-law, but George Saunders exhibited exactly that in a recent New Yorker Magazine article about sex and violence on television we both found topically on target as well as milk-blowing-out-the-nose funny.
Saunders' most recent collection of stories, In Persuasion Nation opens with a letter from a customer service representative at KidLuv Inc. to Mrs. Ruth Fanglia, dissatisfied with her I Can Speak!TM. The I Can Speak!TM is an electronic speech mask that fits over an infant's face and simulates conversation, consequently rendering the infant far more interesting to the parent as well as other adults. Any readers new to George Saunders are quickly brought up to speed with the realization that In Persuasion Nation, like much of Saunders' work, sets out to satirically skewer our consumer society.
Saunders' most recent collection of stories, In Persuasion Nation opens with a letter from a customer service representative at KidLuv Inc. to Mrs. Ruth Fanglia, dissatisfied with her I Can Speak!TM. The I Can Speak!TM is an electronic speech mask that fits over an infant's face and simulates conversation, consequently rendering the infant far more interesting to the parent as well as other adults. Any readers new to George Saunders are quickly brought up to speed with the realization that In Persuasion Nation, like much of Saunders' work, sets out to satirically skewer our consumer society.
The George Saunders landscape is the not too distant future of target marketing gone wild. In "My Flamboyant Grandson," an older man visiting New York with his grandson, is detained when, by removing his shoes, he confounds the on-street marketing campaigns triggered by the Everly Strips within his footwear, thus "sacrificing a terrific opportunity to celebrate (his) preferences."
The narrator of "Jon" lives in a market research compound where he and the other demographically important test subjects spend their entire lives responding to newly developed products. The laboratory rats of the consumer world, these youngsters are held in high esteem by kids on the outside who collect trading cards bearing the pictures of these "TrendSetters and TasteMakers." This is the most incisive story in In Persuasion Nation, in which Saunders combines a highly compelling premise with an utterly believable and sympathetic narrative voice:
The narrator of "Jon" lives in a market research compound where he and the other demographically important test subjects spend their entire lives responding to newly developed products. The laboratory rats of the consumer world, these youngsters are held in high esteem by kids on the outside who collect trading cards bearing the pictures of these "TrendSetters and TasteMakers." This is the most incisive story in In Persuasion Nation, in which Saunders combines a highly compelling premise with an utterly believable and sympathetic narrative voice:
Back in the time of which I am speaking, due to our Coordinators had mandated us, we had all seen that educational video of "It's Yours to Do With What You Like!" in which teens like ourselfs speak on the healthy benefits of getting off by oneself and doing what one feels like in terms of self-touching, which what we learned from that video was, there is nothing wrong with self-touching, because love is a mystery but the mechanics of love need not be, so go off alone, see what is up, with you and your relation to your own gonads, and the main thing is just have fun, feeling no shame!
In "My Amendment," Saunders crafts a manifesto that satirizes homophobic reactions to gay marriage, and "Brad Carrigan, American" is a send-up of the mindless and masturbatory content delivered to the American public via television.
In "My Amendment," Saunders crafts a manifesto that satirizes homophobic reactions to gay marriage, and "Brad Carrigan, American" is a send-up of the mindless and masturbatory content delivered to the American public via television.
Of the book's twelve stories, the title story is perhaps least compelling. Saunders, to be sure a master of intelligent satire, gets extremely tangential in this one, layering abstraction upon abstraction until the reader is certain that the piece once had a point but that it has long since been obscured by the author's mental acrobatics.
Long time Saunders fans will want to pick up this collection as many of the stories within are characteristically sardonic social commentaries. In Persuasion Nation may be worthwhile for initiates as well, though I would advise seeking out some of the author's prior work. There is no doubting the merit of a writer who every 3 or 4 years wins the National Magazine Award for fiction.
Long time Saunders fans will want to pick up this collection as many of the stories within are characteristically sardonic social commentaries. In Persuasion Nation may be worthwhile for initiates as well, though I would advise seeking out some of the author's prior work. There is no doubting the merit of a writer who every 3 or 4 years wins the National Magazine Award for fiction.
