Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables-all in this hilarious and heartbreaki...
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Jan 12, 2012
Jacob
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[Image: A photo of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker done up in heavily saturated red/blue colors like a 2008 Barack Obama campaign poster. The text at the bottom reads "CORPORATE STOOGE"]
It’s been a few months since Governor Scott Walker ruined my reading time. He’s still an asshole and an idiot, but he’s not going away anytime soon (damn that one-year recall waiting period!), and his asshole-idiocy has been outshined by all the other idiot asshole Republican politician More...
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May 07, 2008
He has cute ideas, but he drags them on to the point where they simply become annoying and boring. Reading him is like choosing one food to eat on a deserted island for the rest of your life. Good luck. Is he a cutting social satirist? I would look elsewhere.
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Jan 05, 2011
I'm sure this has been said before, but Madison Avenue suffered a grave loss when this guy decided to go into fiction.
I really enjoyed all the stories in the first, ad-themed section, but it's sort of been on a gentle downhill from there. Some of these -- like "The Red Ribbon," the only one I'd read before -- got too message-y for me. Still, I'm liking it. I've been embarrassed in public when it's been revealed that I'm the only one of my friends who has never read George S More...
I really enjoyed all the stories in the first, ad-themed section, but it's sort of been on a gentle downhill from there. Some of these -- like "The Red Ribbon," the only one I'd read before -- got too message-y for me. Still, I'm liking it. I've been embarrassed in public when it's been revealed that I'm the only one of my friends who has never read George S More...
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Dec 16, 2009
Ryan
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George Saunders is like The Onion for the literati. He's hilarious, to be sure, but also capable of parsing the 9/11 reaction by the U.S. in a brilliant five-page allegory.
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Sep 02, 2008
Maggie
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Last week I found myself in a bit of a pickle. I was supposed to have spent my summer tracking down supplementary readings for a unit on media manipulation, but as of two days before my due date I hadn't found one single thing. Honestly, I hadn't even bothered to try. In short, I was screwed. Fortunately, a friend came to my rescue by suggesting In Persuasion Nation, a collection of short stories by George Saunders, and it proved perfect for my needs. (And thank God I can read a book in a day. W
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Apr 13, 2008
pepe
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hypothetically, george saunders is an author i should like. he is unabashedly progressive, very experimental, and witty. also, i loved pretty much everything in "pastoralia." two years ago when i was in graduate school, i held him in the highest esteem, seeing him as something of a descendant of one of my favorites, donald barthelme (yes i am a snobby snob snob snob).
anyhow. this book thoroughly disappointed me. the great stories in it, less than half, were great stories. the More...
anyhow. this book thoroughly disappointed me. the great stories in it, less than half, were great stories. the More...
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Apr 22, 2008
Adam
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I like Saunders, although he does lay it on a bit thick at times. Subtlety is hard to put one's finger on...Anyway, He's got the right take on things, in the sense that he's opinionated in the same way about the same things I am, and expresses those opinions in a very smartass manner. Always willing to be preached to in the choir, here.
There's a dark streak to some of the stories, and the bits of black humor kind of fell flat with me. It was almost as if he's a nice guy who's got a g More...
There's a dark streak to some of the stories, and the bits of black humor kind of fell flat with me. It was almost as if he's a nice guy who's got a g More...
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Apr 20, 2008
Dan
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I cannot say enough about this book. It's a collection of short stories that was published a couple of years ago. I haven't read short stories in a really long time and reading this book was completely refreshing.
I don't know much about this author except that he contributes to the New Yorker, Harper's and GQ. I am now going to seek much of his work.
There is an impressive range in his material. Most of the time he is writing with this wry or absurd sense of humor. More...
I don't know much about this author except that he contributes to the New Yorker, Harper's and GQ. I am now going to seek much of his work.
There is an impressive range in his material. Most of the time he is writing with this wry or absurd sense of humor. More...
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Apr 13, 2007
Sarah
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George Saunders seems to have made a pretty solid career for himself by skewering the massively weird and distant ways we consume goods (and by goods here I mean history and information as well as pre-packed food dreck). After reading his last few books I admit I was a little worried for George--it seemed like he had found a good basic situation in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia, mostly the struggle to remain authentically human in a themepark simulation of the real world. These are
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Oct 03, 2008
Jason
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Until recently, Saunders’s fiction has hit the mark every time it’s attempted to do so. The short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (Riverhead, 1996) and Pastoralia (2000) were great surrealist fiction entries, as was the novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (Riverhead, 2005), but In Persuasion Nation (Riverhead, 2006) is a mixed bag. A few stories work. Most, however, do not....
Read the rest in the June 2007 issue of decomP. More...
Read the rest in the June 2007 issue of decomP. More...
Oct 03, 2011
Ajay
rated it:
This is truly the age of persuasion. Though people have been influenced by external factors from time immemorial, given the proliferation of print/visual media in the last decade or so the persuasion factor has multiplied greatly. One is assaulted from all ends with innumerable choices that one does not actually know what he wants, but ends up doing something just for the heck of it. In this scenario, George Saunders creates a dystopian world in his collection 'In Persuasion Nation', where More...
Feb 24, 2010
Thurston
rated it:
Long ago, before DVR's people were lined up at electron-gunpoint and forced to watch commercials. This planted an irritating seed in Saunders that nurtured by the decay of America's service economy has blossomed into this collection.
If I were to re-read this, I'd read one story...and then read some other stuff and then come back to the next story a few days later. Using some kind of magical bedpost to keep the bubble gum as fresh as possible. I did enjoy reading "i can speak TM" More...
If I were to re-read this, I'd read one story...and then read some other stuff and then come back to the next story a few days later. Using some kind of magical bedpost to keep the bubble gum as fresh as possible. I did enjoy reading "i can speak TM" More...
Jan 23, 2010
Karl
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Nov 28, 2011
Drew
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In Persuasion Nation's stories' main concern here, at least with most of the stories, seems to be the increasingly blurred line between advertising and regular life. One story's about a reality show that contains its own commercials; another is actually about the characters in commercials (specifically the schlemiels, the ones who always lose out). And most of it comes off as really absurd, especially when you add in other Saunders mainstays like ghosts and corpses. But mostly what I've been
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Nov 03, 2009
Colin
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This was not as good as The Braindead Megaphone, but there were many stories that really got to me. The one about gay marriage was pretty funny, considering all of the debate lately in Iowa, but the one that I loved the most was the first story about how we are constantly bombarded with advertising. A common theme of Saunders, but I found a beautiful quote from him that has haunted me since. "What America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not b
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Jan 23, 2010
Nicole
rated it:
Saunders has a knack for picking one less-than-ideal or slightly bizarre aspect of modern society, re-imagining it in a significantly more extreme form, and putting that world on paper. At its best, this is biting, intelligent commentary wrapped up creatively in a good (and often funny) story. Highlights for me included: "My Flamboyant Grandson," "Jon," "Brad Carrigan, American," and "In Persuasion Nation."
Quote of the week (from "My Flamb More...
Quote of the week (from "My Flamb More...
Jun 01, 2011
Jeanette
rated it:
The first 4 stories in this book are delightfully, satirically funny! They are very clever commentary on our current American lifestyle.
The very last story (commcomm) has some absolutely hilarious, laugh-out-loud lines poking fun at ultra-religious people and govt. bureaucrat-speak.
The rest of the book (pages 73 through 195) is mostly a waste of time and just plain stupid. I read through them hoping to find more good ones, but they were terrible, especially "93990"!
The very last story (commcomm) has some absolutely hilarious, laugh-out-loud lines poking fun at ultra-religious people and govt. bureaucrat-speak.
The rest of the book (pages 73 through 195) is mostly a waste of time and just plain stupid. I read through them hoping to find more good ones, but they were terrible, especially "93990"!
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Aug 04, 2011
Angela
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George Saunders is a style unto himself. How does he do it? I first discovered him in The New Yorker, and this is the first series of shorts by him that I read. I'm detecting the patterns now - the surrealism, anti-consumerism, satirical-yet-overly-earnest voice, the unreliable narrator/naive POV. The stories in this run a fair gamut, from the relatively relatable (a "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-style tale of institutionalized romance; similar to the other stuff he's written), to
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Feb 05, 2009
Can there be too much good Saunders? Critics praise the book but then admit that reading the stories in succession almost overwhelmed them. As he did in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia, Saunders takes our world to its logical extremes, sometimes to the point of oversaturation. If his work seems avant-garde, it's approachably so, probably because of his ability to "construct a story of absurdist satire, then locate within it a moment of searing humanity" (Boston Globe). Ther
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Dec 17, 2009
Paul
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Crazy funny. The first story of the collection, a response letter to a customer who is unhappy with her purchase of a device that fits over an infant's head and makes it look/sound/seem like the infant is talking (called I CAN SPEAK!(TM)), is absolutely hilarious. George Saunders is just really funny. The collection as a collection gets a bit heavy-handed, like, yeah, we all know that America is super commercial/ized, and everyone buys a bunch of worthless crap and watches junk on TV (there are
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Feb 11, 2011
R
rated it:
In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders
Riverhead Books, 2006
I actually finished reading this book over a week ago, and it's taken me all that time to get a proper review up, though I actually read it within a day. Why, you wonder, has it taken me so long to come up with something to say about this book? Well, In Persuasion Nation is a book of short stories, and I think it's really difficult to review short stories. I mean, it's difficult to consolidate my thoughts about collectio More...
Riverhead Books, 2006
I actually finished reading this book over a week ago, and it's taken me all that time to get a proper review up, though I actually read it within a day. Why, you wonder, has it taken me so long to come up with something to say about this book? Well, In Persuasion Nation is a book of short stories, and I think it's really difficult to review short stories. I mean, it's difficult to consolidate my thoughts about collectio More...
Oct 27, 2009
Sara
rated it:
George Saunders seems to know exactly which cultural buttons to push to strike utter terror into my heart. His stories are dystopian but not so far removed from our current world that they feel safely implausible. The unexplainable violence, the ridiculous reality shows, the invasive, insidious advertising - on my worst days these things all seem possible and in some ways are already happening. But there's also a lovely strain of hope through many of his stories. I think my absolute favorite her
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May 24, 2010
Frank
rated it:
It started off quite entertaining. Throughout, Saunders displays his great ear for comic dialogue and modern day speech. But on the whole, it left me a little disappointed. The first thing I read of his was 'Sea Oak' (from the collection Pastoralia), and for me these stories didn't fulfil the promise that story seemed to hold. The stories' message sometimes seems a little to one-dimensional and straightforward ("consumer society is bad, mmkay?"). When he's trying to be more ambiguous o
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Mar 30, 2010
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Aug 15, 2010
Tyler
rated it:
Nothing here compares to "Victory Lap"* (or 2 U) - the story I heard Saunders read at this year's AWP Conference, the best fiction reading I have ever been to - which is both more formally daring and more deeply felt than the stories in this book. I was actually a little baffled by some of what's in here. Two of the stories - "Christmas" and "Bohemians" - seem to have been written by another author altogether, some combination of Tobias Wolff and Denis Johnson. They
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Nov 21, 2010
Huh! I didn't think much of the title, and I'm not sure whether I'd want to read another Saunders book right away because, as other reviewers have noted, the tone is fairly consistent from story to story, but! BUT! Fans of social satire and dark comedy would probably like a lot of this--at least, I did, and that was even with the slight negative of listening to a lot of this through kindle text-to-audio, which doesn't really do a lot for one's enjoyment. I literally laughed out loud in the car a
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Jul 07, 2009
Kevin
rated it:
Could I love this guy any more than I do now? It's possible. There is one other book of his I haven't read yet.
This one doesn't have the breadth or scope of Pastoralia or CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, but it's easier to get at Saunders' morals and the units that make up his writing and stories here. Both are very satisfying and entertaining to see. He cracks me up as he makes me worried about humanity, which is hard to do and amazing to read. I liked his take on same-sex marriage in M More...
This one doesn't have the breadth or scope of Pastoralia or CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, but it's easier to get at Saunders' morals and the units that make up his writing and stories here. Both are very satisfying and entertaining to see. He cracks me up as he makes me worried about humanity, which is hard to do and amazing to read. I liked his take on same-sex marriage in M More...
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Feb 12, 2010
Flora
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Though I'm giving "In Persuasion Nation" 4 stars, some of the stories in this quick-reading collection deserve a full 5 stars. Saunders is incredibly inventive and drew me in immediately. Both subtle and brutal, the tales are a commentary on the spiritual bankruptcy of consumerist culture, when advertising defines the entire human experience (hence the title). It's a dystopian vision of a world we're dangerously close to. This is a familiar conceit, in the spirit of "Brave New Wor
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Apr 01, 2009
Mbreaden
rated it:
I always love George Saunders. He writes like Raymond Carver on LSD, I like to say. In fact, one of his shorter stories in here, "Christmas," is one of the most enjoyable I've ever read. (Not because it's the best he's ever done, just because I can identify with the main character.) Some of the stories get a little too trippy and abstract for me, I liked the deeply hopeless and fully fleshed-out characters in CivilWarLand a bit more. But there are some more basic Saunders-type gems in
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Nov 25, 2010
Alison
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Karl said it well in his review, so check that out. I love Saunders' outrage, his sentences, and his insistence that Feeling Good is never enough: one has to find a way to Be Good. But, and this is only a one-star demerit, I wonder to what extent Saunders' work is weakened by his emphasis on critiquing superficial-ad-TV-shopping-culture stuff. I hate that crap as much as the next thinking person, but still, I find the critique a bit facile. I wasn't particularly challenged, thrilled, or amus
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