Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Riverhead Trade (1997), Edition: 1st Riverhead trade paperback, Paperback, 192 pages
Description
A novella and short stories on a future America, a land of corporate hypocrisy, violence and pollution. Trendy attractions include pickled babies and cows with plexiglass sides, so you can see the milk made, people buy other people's more interesting memories for downloading into their heads.
User reviews
LibraryThing member GingerbreadMan
Saunders take on America is not quite like any other I've met. Perhaps playwright Richard Dresser is the closest relative of his I know, but Saunders tend to take it much further.
This collection of short stories is set in an America in a close future, where nothing of any real worth is produced
Saunders paints a very grotesque, deeply cynical world - funny, yes, but fun of a very unsettling dark variety. But this is not a cynical book. For his main characters are almost without exception good, honest people. Gentle, awkward men and women without pointy elbows, who are just trying to play by the rules and be decent at the same time. But, having to navigate within a system of inhumanity, they are all bound to fail miserably. In it's own way, this is often a very moving, even heart-breaking book. But don't expect a gentle ride.
This collection of short stories is set in an America in a close future, where nothing of any real worth is produced
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anymore. It's a nation in free falling, where scamming for an easy buck, selling useless products, kicking whomever you need to kick on to climb another pathetic step on your career ladder, and clinging to empty phrases of patriotism or self-improvement (noone can write a dialogue consisting entirely of "inspriring" clichés like Saunders) are all that remains. It's typical that almost all these stories are set in tacky, artificial theme parks, trying to profit on the nation's great history. But not succeeding: the paint is flaking, the machinery is breaking down and more often than not there are hungry slums outside the gates. In the long novella "Bounty", which makes up about half the book, dystopia is in full effect in an America where government has broken down, slavery is reinstituted and local fascist tyrants are calling the shots.Saunders paints a very grotesque, deeply cynical world - funny, yes, but fun of a very unsettling dark variety. But this is not a cynical book. For his main characters are almost without exception good, honest people. Gentle, awkward men and women without pointy elbows, who are just trying to play by the rules and be decent at the same time. But, having to navigate within a system of inhumanity, they are all bound to fail miserably. In it's own way, this is often a very moving, even heart-breaking book. But don't expect a gentle ride.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
These are the funniest future hellscapes I've ever read. I likely scared the neighbors with my crazed laughter about the brothel in the former Safeway and the pickled fetus exhibition. And the ghost swearing in Latin. And the slaveowner saying he is a kind and civilized man. But I digress.
These
Yet even where Saunders writes about these most pathetic and wormlike of souls, torturing them in the most hilarious outlandish ways, he shifts the tone and leaves us with the most irrational feeling of sensitivity or hope.
With the release of Saunder's newest collection of short stories, he has been readily proclaimed as the next David Foster Wallace. I must disagree. D.F.W. laid his own path, and Saunders took another. You do not need to take one over the other, instead go for both.
These
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stories, when taken together, revolve around the same hyperkinetic image of a future America, dreaming of eternal happiness while sloughing in mud, rich, violent and yet so fawningly humble, religious and whorish, fake and imitation, damning the pathetic and praising the rich.Yet even where Saunders writes about these most pathetic and wormlike of souls, torturing them in the most hilarious outlandish ways, he shifts the tone and leaves us with the most irrational feeling of sensitivity or hope.
With the release of Saunder's newest collection of short stories, he has been readily proclaimed as the next David Foster Wallace. I must disagree. D.F.W. laid his own path, and Saunders took another. You do not need to take one over the other, instead go for both.
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LibraryThing member b.masonjudy
Zowee! Saunders is hilarious but there is this moment in each one of these stories where he has a paragraph or instance that breaks your goddamn heart. It made me realized I haven't laughed while reading in some time. All these stories have an protagonist dealing with guilt or shame in some way
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(see "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz) and Saunders traverses the possible future where history repeats itself (see "Bounty") all under the backdrop of various theme parks or virtual reality set-ups that promote nostalgia and a wistful stretch for verisimilitude to distract from the current problems in the social landscape. Could this be the future? Could this be now? All I know is it's a damn fine collection. Show Less
LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
Tenth of December is one of the best book of short stories I have read, so I was excited to go back and read George Saunders's first collection, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. It isn't a strong or as varied as the later book, but it is interesting to see some of the themes repeat. He's got a wild
At the end of the book, Saunders explains his fascination with theme parks, telling us that when he put a theme park in a story, it removed the story into the realm of the comic, and ensured that his writing wouldn't sink under the weight of itself. I found Saunders' tale of how he became the writer he is one of the most powerful and interesting parts of this book.
A young girl gets extremely worked up on the honeymoon and the next thing she knows her new husband is scampering into the kitchen for a zucchini squash. Even through my crying he insisted, saying it would bring us closer together. Imagine the humiliation of being just eighteen and having to go to your family doctor with an infection difficult to explain. Finally he found it in a plant book.
But more than the theme parks, the common thread running through Saunders' stories here are the main characters. They're losers, both through their own misguided efforts and due to circumstances beyond their control. You can't help but feel for them, even as Saunders never allows the reader to forget their flaws. They are also men who love a woman, whether their sister, wife or repulsed co-worker, and much of each story revolves around those relationships; flawed, doomed or nonexistent though they may be.
If I could see her one last time I'd say: Thanks very much for dying at the worst possible moment and leaving me holding the bag of guilt. I'd say: If you had to die, couldn't you have done it when we were getting along?
While I would suggest that a reader who has never read anything by George Saunders begin with the superlative Tenth of December, if you are already familiar with his off-center view of the world, you will not want to miss reading his debut collection.
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imagination, which, in CivilWarLand centers much more on the theme park in a dystopian world idea. The title story is set in a historical park which has a full-time ornithologist to make sure the birds flying around are the same birds of two hundred years ago, but is so sloppy it has Chinese coolies building the Erie Canal. Then there is The Wavemaker Falters, a melancholic story involving accidental deaths, wayward nuns and several ghosts, including one who sometimes picks his nose. Bounty, the longest story in the book, and begins in a theme park set in a world which is divided between "normals" and "flaweds," who have no rights at all. At the end of the book, Saunders explains his fascination with theme parks, telling us that when he put a theme park in a story, it removed the story into the realm of the comic, and ensured that his writing wouldn't sink under the weight of itself. I found Saunders' tale of how he became the writer he is one of the most powerful and interesting parts of this book.
A young girl gets extremely worked up on the honeymoon and the next thing she knows her new husband is scampering into the kitchen for a zucchini squash. Even through my crying he insisted, saying it would bring us closer together. Imagine the humiliation of being just eighteen and having to go to your family doctor with an infection difficult to explain. Finally he found it in a plant book.
But more than the theme parks, the common thread running through Saunders' stories here are the main characters. They're losers, both through their own misguided efforts and due to circumstances beyond their control. You can't help but feel for them, even as Saunders never allows the reader to forget their flaws. They are also men who love a woman, whether their sister, wife or repulsed co-worker, and much of each story revolves around those relationships; flawed, doomed or nonexistent though they may be.
If I could see her one last time I'd say: Thanks very much for dying at the worst possible moment and leaving me holding the bag of guilt. I'd say: If you had to die, couldn't you have done it when we were getting along?
While I would suggest that a reader who has never read anything by George Saunders begin with the superlative Tenth of December, if you are already familiar with his off-center view of the world, you will not want to miss reading his debut collection.
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LibraryThing member kwohlrob
I can't help but feel like a jackass for coming to the game so late. It has been over ten years since Civilwarland in Bad Decline was first published and introduced George Saunders to the literary world. As a guy who is constantly pounding the table about the value of short stories, I look a bit o'
Saunders is amazingly comfortable in his own skin -- he's running with a great stride in these stories, carrying the reader along with him effortlessly. Nothing ever seems forced. Both Flannery O'Connor and Mavis Gallant had that same ability, and in many ways Saunders is as adept at writing stories that seemed to have been set down on earth and exist (you never feel as if you're reading, you are a witness).
It is an American vision, albeit a twisted, dark, and tragicomic one. The world of Saunders' stories is our America, but turned inside out, revealing our ugly insides. And that alone makes them a pleasure to read.
On the surface most of the tales in Civilwarland in Bad Decline focus around theme parks or attractions that at first seem absurd, but as you read into the story, don't seem that implausible. The Civilwarland theme park of the title story is savaged by teenage gangs, has authentic civil-war era tormented souls, and a reconstructed Eerie Canal complete with a historically inaccurate smell of Chinese food. There is the water park sporting a "Leaping Trout Subroutine" for authenticity and a very deadly wave pool. Oh and the not-so-perfect holographic projection franchise and the not-so-on-the-level raccoon disposal business and a science museum that includes pickled babies and cows with plexiglass stomachs. I almost forgot to mention the medieval times theme park staffed by mutants. But nothing works, or at least not the way it should. The bird count in Civilwarland is off so they have to kill several hundred orioles. The plexiglass cows keep dying. The wave pool sucks small children into the turbines. The holograph devices can actually siphon a customer's memories. It is a strange America that Saunders presents to us, but not so far-fetched. It is just our foibles and desires and sins amplified to comic effect. This is usually why most people cannot go three lines without mentioning Vonnegut when talking about Saunders' stories.
But the superstructures that hold up all these stories are simple morality tales. Most, with the exception of "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror," center around emasculated or down-trodden men having to face up to the consequences of their actions. It gives the stories their sadness and their hook. One moment you're laughing at Saunders wit only to be sucker punched by the reality of a character's situation. The narrator of the title story, discovering that his de facto security guard has taken his role a little too seriously upon capturing a teenage candy thief, is forced to bury a severed hand behind the theme park. As he digs, he's confronted by the ghosts of the park -- a civil-war era family who really haven't gotten over the whole death thing -- launching the otherworldly collective into a Macbeth like hand wringing scene. It breaks your heart.
And that is what makes these stories works so perfectly. They break you down, even as they have you laughing out loud. The best story in the collection, "Isabelle," is almost an odd-duck as it is a straight tale of small town life. But it destroys you. It lays you out flat on a slab. The prose is simple, precise, razor-sharp. In all good short story collections, there is always one piece that justifies the cost of the others. "Isabelle" is worth the price of the book alone.
The collection is not perfect. The final novella, "Bounty," while entertaining in parts feels like an unneeded, over-extended exclamation point to the stories in front of it. If I had to guess, the publisher included it so as not to make the collection seem too short. And in some ways, the recurring themes can start to feel heavy-handed as you get four or five stories into the book. But Saunders always saves the day. His writing is so perfectly witty, sharp, and poignant, that you're willing to drop the petty criticisms and follow the tale. That is a sign of great writing.
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the fool for having not read and known the value of Saunders' debut collection. What a way to kick in the doors and make an entrance into the literary world.Saunders is amazingly comfortable in his own skin -- he's running with a great stride in these stories, carrying the reader along with him effortlessly. Nothing ever seems forced. Both Flannery O'Connor and Mavis Gallant had that same ability, and in many ways Saunders is as adept at writing stories that seemed to have been set down on earth and exist (you never feel as if you're reading, you are a witness).
It is an American vision, albeit a twisted, dark, and tragicomic one. The world of Saunders' stories is our America, but turned inside out, revealing our ugly insides. And that alone makes them a pleasure to read.
On the surface most of the tales in Civilwarland in Bad Decline focus around theme parks or attractions that at first seem absurd, but as you read into the story, don't seem that implausible. The Civilwarland theme park of the title story is savaged by teenage gangs, has authentic civil-war era tormented souls, and a reconstructed Eerie Canal complete with a historically inaccurate smell of Chinese food. There is the water park sporting a "Leaping Trout Subroutine" for authenticity and a very deadly wave pool. Oh and the not-so-perfect holographic projection franchise and the not-so-on-the-level raccoon disposal business and a science museum that includes pickled babies and cows with plexiglass stomachs. I almost forgot to mention the medieval times theme park staffed by mutants. But nothing works, or at least not the way it should. The bird count in Civilwarland is off so they have to kill several hundred orioles. The plexiglass cows keep dying. The wave pool sucks small children into the turbines. The holograph devices can actually siphon a customer's memories. It is a strange America that Saunders presents to us, but not so far-fetched. It is just our foibles and desires and sins amplified to comic effect. This is usually why most people cannot go three lines without mentioning Vonnegut when talking about Saunders' stories.
But the superstructures that hold up all these stories are simple morality tales. Most, with the exception of "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror," center around emasculated or down-trodden men having to face up to the consequences of their actions. It gives the stories their sadness and their hook. One moment you're laughing at Saunders wit only to be sucker punched by the reality of a character's situation. The narrator of the title story, discovering that his de facto security guard has taken his role a little too seriously upon capturing a teenage candy thief, is forced to bury a severed hand behind the theme park. As he digs, he's confronted by the ghosts of the park -- a civil-war era family who really haven't gotten over the whole death thing -- launching the otherworldly collective into a Macbeth like hand wringing scene. It breaks your heart.
And that is what makes these stories works so perfectly. They break you down, even as they have you laughing out loud. The best story in the collection, "Isabelle," is almost an odd-duck as it is a straight tale of small town life. But it destroys you. It lays you out flat on a slab. The prose is simple, precise, razor-sharp. In all good short story collections, there is always one piece that justifies the cost of the others. "Isabelle" is worth the price of the book alone.
The collection is not perfect. The final novella, "Bounty," while entertaining in parts feels like an unneeded, over-extended exclamation point to the stories in front of it. If I had to guess, the publisher included it so as not to make the collection seem too short. And in some ways, the recurring themes can start to feel heavy-handed as you get four or five stories into the book. But Saunders always saves the day. His writing is so perfectly witty, sharp, and poignant, that you're willing to drop the petty criticisms and follow the tale. That is a sign of great writing.
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LibraryThing member Dog_Ogler
"[God] gives us [his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy] 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
- from "The 400 pound CEO"
Sanders's assessment of current-day American culture seems spot-on to me. What an amazing ability he has to be both serious and hilarious. He demonstrates that it's possible to contemplate our current world (or at least life in the USA) as it is and yet to not be completely daunted, desensitized and depressed into paralysis by its many hideous aspects. I am so happy to have discovered George Saunders.
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between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health."- from "The 400 pound CEO"
Sanders's assessment of current-day American culture seems spot-on to me. What an amazing ability he has to be both serious and hilarious. He demonstrates that it's possible to contemplate our current world (or at least life in the USA) as it is and yet to not be completely daunted, desensitized and depressed into paralysis by its many hideous aspects. I am so happy to have discovered George Saunders.
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LibraryThing member miriamparker
I think that Saunders is clever and of his collections, this is my favorite, but the characters are just SO reprehensible that they are hard to read and even harder to like.
LibraryThing member george.d.ross
I enjoyed having read George Saunders more than I enjoyed reading him. The stories themselves have a wearing sameness to them, each unfolding in a world of misery and oppression, populated by desperate, pathetic, and/or doomed characters. These dystopic visions all contain "cute" elements that work
Still, I appreciate Saunders' political engagement and his desire to show us a fun-house mirror version of our own culture. I just found it hard to read.
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as satires on our own world -- grotesque amusement parks, "infotainment", commercial enterprises that capitalize on human misery -- but while I know some people find these funny, to me they just accented the overall bleakness of the settings and stories. Still, I appreciate Saunders' political engagement and his desire to show us a fun-house mirror version of our own culture. I just found it hard to read.
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LibraryThing member gbill
In CivilWarLand in bad decline, George Saunders gives us six short stories and a novella. These are all rather dark stories, and as a criticism I would say the writing tends to get a little too one-note, with the recurring theme of working in lousy jobs, those that use high-tech but in ways that
Just this quote, on God, from The 400-Pound CEO:
“Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there’s a God above this subGod, who’s busy for a few Godminutes with something else, and will be right back, and when he gets back will take the subGod by the ear and say, ‘Now look. Look at that fat man. What did he ever do to you? Wasn’t he humble enough? Didn’t he endure enough abuse for a thousand men? Weren’t the simplest tasks hard? Didn’t you sense him craving affection? Were you unaware that his days unraveled as one long bad dream?’ And maybe as the subGod slinks away, the true God will sweep me up in his arms saying: My sincere apologies, a mistake has been made. Accept a new birth, as token of my esteem.”
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are dehumanizing, for horrible bosses. The writing is fantastic though, and the blend of humor with criticisms of humanity is compelling. Nowhere is it more successful than in the novella, Bounty, which imagines a dystopian America in which people with physical flaws are enslaved. Capitalism taken to excess, armed militia groups roaming the land, ecological hazards, and the depraved exploitation of the weak – it’s all here, and haunting in how close to the present day it seems.Just this quote, on God, from The 400-Pound CEO:
“Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there’s a God above this subGod, who’s busy for a few Godminutes with something else, and will be right back, and when he gets back will take the subGod by the ear and say, ‘Now look. Look at that fat man. What did he ever do to you? Wasn’t he humble enough? Didn’t he endure enough abuse for a thousand men? Weren’t the simplest tasks hard? Didn’t you sense him craving affection? Were you unaware that his days unraveled as one long bad dream?’ And maybe as the subGod slinks away, the true God will sweep me up in his arms saying: My sincere apologies, a mistake has been made. Accept a new birth, as token of my esteem.”
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LibraryThing member Eoin
Terrifying and hilarious, a friend and I read these stories aloud to each other, crying with laughter. You should do the same.
LibraryThing member DRFP
Saunders' prose is perfectly acceptable but the content of his writing bothers me. I don't mind melancholic or downer stories but the tales in this collection are something beyond that. They're so unrelentingly bleak that they feel like emotional torture porn. There's just a sad lack of humanity in
I'm prepared to give Saunders another shot because of his writing ability, I just hope next time he makes things a little more varied and not quite so pitch black.
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these stories, as if they were written specifically to be as depressing as possible and nothing else. There is dark humour in here too but the tone of these stories is so grim that I found the collection rather unenjoyable, even if competently written. I'm prepared to give Saunders another shot because of his writing ability, I just hope next time he makes things a little more varied and not quite so pitch black.
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LibraryThing member wunderkind
This is a collection of short stories that could be more accurately called Humanity in Bad Decline. Holy cow, these were the most depressing funny stories I've ever read. The vision of humanity, set in what's either the semi-post-apocalyptic near future or a sort of alternate present, is so
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negative it's almost off-putting. Saunders describes a place where hedonistic consumerism has run rampant and only the strong or psychotic survive while the decent and weak are used and abused. They're well-written and entertaining, but jeez...Where did all of that disgust come from? Or am I just naive? Show Less
LibraryThing member mckenz18
A journalist from The Philadelphia Inquirer refers to this book of stories (and novella) as “a nightmarish post-apocalyptic world that might have been envisioned by Walt Disney on acid.” I would not attempt to improve upon this observation, as it is concise and entirely appropriate. What I will
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add is that these stories are incredibly funny, but tinged with a darkness that is utterly depressing. On the whole, Saunders possesses a unique voice that rings out over the squabble of the masses yet is right at home in our cynical, consumer-driven times. Show Less
LibraryThing member jlparent
Fantastic short story collection; satirical, dark humor, dystopian scenarios, moments of hope & grace (especially in the end of the novella), and (to me) rather quirky overall.
LibraryThing member sturlington
Saunders presents a disturbing, cynical view of modern-day America in this collection of short stories and one novella. Each story exaggerates aspects of our culture to emphasize their absurdities, starting with a haunted Civil War amusement park plagued by marauding gangs and a psychotic security
The highlight of the collection is “Bounty,” a novella set in a collapsed America, where anyone who is “Flawed” is either a slave or forced to live separately from everyone else in their own amusement parks. A roadtrip through this bleak, dystopian landscape reveals an America taken to a logical extreme, inhabited by the ridiculous, bigots and buffoons, squabbling over the meager remains of civilization.
Saunders’ writing is depressing and bleak, outrageous and bizarre, funny and cynical, all at the same time. He makes the reader feel uncomfortable, because as outlandish as his stories are, underneath there is always something all too familiar. He has such a unique voice and point of view that he is very much worth reading.
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guard in the title story. Each story also features a protagonist who is so subjugated and victimized by the authority figures that surround him that he has no real hope of escape, except (maybe) death.The highlight of the collection is “Bounty,” a novella set in a collapsed America, where anyone who is “Flawed” is either a slave or forced to live separately from everyone else in their own amusement parks. A roadtrip through this bleak, dystopian landscape reveals an America taken to a logical extreme, inhabited by the ridiculous, bigots and buffoons, squabbling over the meager remains of civilization.
Saunders’ writing is depressing and bleak, outrageous and bizarre, funny and cynical, all at the same time. He makes the reader feel uncomfortable, because as outlandish as his stories are, underneath there is always something all too familiar. He has such a unique voice and point of view that he is very much worth reading.
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
I found this book strikingly funny. There, I do not think I have ever said that about a book before but this one just hit me in the face with its humor. Saunders' improvisations are often exhilarating as he regales the reader with wildly original, otherworldly scenarios of near-future America. Most
Whenever a potential big investor comes for the tour the first thing I do
is take him out to the transplanted Erie Canal Lock. We've got a good
ninety feet of actual Canal out there and a well-researched diorama of a
coolie campsite. Were our faces ever red when we found out it was actually
the Irish who built the Canal.
It's this kind of throwaway, wry detail that compels a reader to turn the page. Most of the six stories and one novella in Saunders's collection are simple and proceed as follows: the main character, a lowly yes-man in an unfeeling organization, usually a theme park, tells his own tale of woe; he's disdained by his wife, or he's disdained generally, for having no better career options and for taking so much abuse from his boss; ultimately threatened or duped by his boss, he ends up compromising what little integrity he has left and this gets him fired, maimed, or killed. The incongruous behavior and satirical disregard for the norm add up to a near riot most of the time.
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of these take place in decrepit theme parks run by megalomaniacal, thoroughly unscrupulous bosses who victimize, if not ruin, the pliant, well-meaning, but thoroughly ineffectual underlings who are the narrators of the stories. The title story, about a Civil War theme park terrorized by teenaged gangsters, opens:Whenever a potential big investor comes for the tour the first thing I do
is take him out to the transplanted Erie Canal Lock. We've got a good
ninety feet of actual Canal out there and a well-researched diorama of a
coolie campsite. Were our faces ever red when we found out it was actually
the Irish who built the Canal.
It's this kind of throwaway, wry detail that compels a reader to turn the page. Most of the six stories and one novella in Saunders's collection are simple and proceed as follows: the main character, a lowly yes-man in an unfeeling organization, usually a theme park, tells his own tale of woe; he's disdained by his wife, or he's disdained generally, for having no better career options and for taking so much abuse from his boss; ultimately threatened or duped by his boss, he ends up compromising what little integrity he has left and this gets him fired, maimed, or killed. The incongruous behavior and satirical disregard for the norm add up to a near riot most of the time.
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LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
Having just read "Tenth of December" , I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this book. I actually found this easier to follow and more entertaining. That being said, you can see the development of Saunder's work during the 15 years between this book and Tenth of December. I enjoyed his
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imagination and creativity. He does tend to be a little bleak but I recommend him for his entertainment value and his satirist needle. I will move forward with reading as much of his work as I can get my hands on. Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
The most astonishing thing about this collection of six short stories and one novella is that it is George Saunder’s first. Every story here is so well-formed, and well-judged in tone and diction that you could be forgiven for suspecting that this must be a writer in mid-career. All of the
Although Saunders’ dystopias are typically violent, debasing, and hopeless, he balances these tendencies with characters who rise above their environments, achieving something even if we can’t always be sure precisely what. “Isabelle” and “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz” and the novella, “Bounty”, end redemptively (even if not always believably). And even stories such as the titular “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” which falls back on violent spectral hauntings has a purgatorial air. The main character here never stops striving to do better and, more important, to do what is right.
Of course it is the remarkably rendered workplaces in these strange environments that rightly garner Saunders accolades. He has a near pitch-perfect ear for the underdog, beaten down by the system and by circumstance, but working however grindingly within the bounds of economic forces that allow no escape and no survival. The question to ask, I suppose, is why these stories don’t seem even bleaker than they are on the surface? Why doesn’t this meld into Cormac McCarthy territory? That it doesn’t, I assume, must have something to do with Saunders’ underlying optimism. Or with the natural tendency to optimism of his readers.
Always worth reading.
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characteristic Saunders motifs are here: the dystopian future which is slightly askew; the focus on the minutiae of labour versus the often bug-eyed view of management; the transactional nature of sex and sin and remorse; the demands of family, even if one’s family is extreme or excessive. Curiously, a number of the stories invoke spectral characters who haunt the living listlessly, as though they’ve just got no where else to go. And that itself is its own special form of atheism.Although Saunders’ dystopias are typically violent, debasing, and hopeless, he balances these tendencies with characters who rise above their environments, achieving something even if we can’t always be sure precisely what. “Isabelle” and “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz” and the novella, “Bounty”, end redemptively (even if not always believably). And even stories such as the titular “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” which falls back on violent spectral hauntings has a purgatorial air. The main character here never stops striving to do better and, more important, to do what is right.
Of course it is the remarkably rendered workplaces in these strange environments that rightly garner Saunders accolades. He has a near pitch-perfect ear for the underdog, beaten down by the system and by circumstance, but working however grindingly within the bounds of economic forces that allow no escape and no survival. The question to ask, I suppose, is why these stories don’t seem even bleaker than they are on the surface? Why doesn’t this meld into Cormac McCarthy territory? That it doesn’t, I assume, must have something to do with Saunders’ underlying optimism. Or with the natural tendency to optimism of his readers.
Always worth reading.
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LibraryThing member kszym
Ventured a little too far into absurdity for my taste. At times, I could feel the stories reaching toward genuine sentiment, but they never quite made it.
LibraryThing member aliceunderskies
My current entry for my annual litmus test to evaluate whether or not I've transformed into a Short Story Reader. This one didn't convert me, and failed to be one of the rare exceptions of the genre that excites.
Loved: the surreality of the settings, the dreamy decay of it all. Hated: the
Loved: the surreality of the settings, the dreamy decay of it all. Hated: the
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unexplored, unrelented darkness of the plots. Shock value much? It all left me cold with a veneer of active dislike; I don't think there was a single story that engaged me beyond the shallow level of dark fascination. Neutral: the quality of writing itself. I didn't notice it ever being great or even remarkable. Why the slavish adoration, World? I don't get it. Show Less
LibraryThing member Algybama
The short stories are all very similar and end up being One Big Short Story. They're great, still, but the collection suffers from a little redundancy. The novella Bounty, however, is completely awesome: a badass adventure story/travelogue of a post-apocalyptic America that somehow managed to
His condemnations are even-handed. Though definitely liberal, Saunders is not one-sided.
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salvage bureaucracy. Saunders' does some great stuff with dialogue here. Characters (one reviewer below called them "straw men" presumably because they often represent some kind of new-age bullshit philosophy via dialogue) speak in everything from neoconservative bizspeak, hippy-dippy law of attraction crap, or some kind of motivational speech gobbledygook. It had me laughing out loud. His condemnations are even-handed. Though definitely liberal, Saunders is not one-sided.
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LibraryThing member allrockkitty
Best short stories ever.
LibraryThing member stillatim
Hm... so reviewers seem to think Saunders was trying to be funny, which is odd; I thought he was doing a Rothko (who, you may or may not know, said he wanted his painting to make people break down and cry.) On the one hand, these stories look like your standard issue pomo cleverness. Lots of
The final story ends with a man entering a rebel camp: ""I'm here to help," I whisper, and the door swings open." George Saunders is here to help. Can't wait to get he rest of his books.
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possibly meta-theoretical feints and dodges; lots of simulacra; lots of meaninglessness. But it's actually backed up by something: an extraordinary anger and sentimentality. Saunders writes of a world you can't help but despise, and then at the end of his stories it finally hits you that this is *our* world, not a post-apocalyptic nightmare world. The final story ends with a man entering a rebel camp: ""I'm here to help," I whisper, and the door swings open." George Saunders is here to help. Can't wait to get he rest of his books.
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LibraryThing member lukeasrodgers
In these stories + novella, Saunders manages a delightful if dark combination of humour and social critique. He weaves threads of redemption and love into depraved, godforsaken, morally debased situations and characters. What most ties these pieces together appears to be an obsession with guilt:
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his characters hide from it, admit to it, are ruined by it, flee it, exacerbate it, go to perilous lengths to assuage it. Show Less
LibraryThing member amyfaerie
Saunders is funny and entertaining. I loved this collection, and there's really nothing like it. Easily accessible absurdist short fiction?
Awards
PEN/Hemingway Award (Nominee — Finalist - 1997)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction & Poetry — 1996)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1996
Physical description
192 p.; 8 inches
ISBN
1573225797 / 9781573225793