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In Persuasion Nation

4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 · rating details · 3,056 ratings · 348 reviews

Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables-all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection. The best work yet from an author hailed as the heir to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.

"The first thing you ought to know is that Saunders is the funniest writer in America... [But] Saunders's laughs are a cove...more

Paperback, 228 pages

Published March 6th 2007 by Riverhead Trade (first published 2006)

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Community Reviews

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Jun 04, 2012 Jacob rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-fiction, 2011, salinger-sandburg-saunders

Previously: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

July 2011

[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...more

8 likes · like · see review

May 07, 2008 Yulia marked it as left-unfinished

Shelves: short-stories

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.

6 likes · like · see review

Jan 05, 2011 Jessica marked it as sampled-a-few

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 Saunders. I guess this...more

4 likes · like · see review

May 09, 2007 Ryan Chapman rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: fiction

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 rated it 4 of 5 stars

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...more 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. Way to cut things close, me.) I wasn't planning on reviewing this book since I read it for work, however I really enjoyed it, and so what the heck - we're mixing work with pleasure over here today.

The cover of In Persuasion Nation depicts a man leaning over to sniff the solitary flower standing in the center of a wasteland - an appropriate image for a collection of stories whose protagonists are often searching for something real, pure and true in a plastic world that values consumerism over humanity. Often humorous, rather quirky and usually disturbing, Saunders' stories serve as a sort of protest of our corporate culture, warning what we very well may one day become if we choose to continue on our current path. The heroes in these stories are the misfits of this modern world. There's Brad, whose life is a sitcom which he is in danger of being written off of once he finds he can no longer continue smiling along with the laugh track, ignoring the world's ills. In the title story, an army of frustrated characters from smug television commercials rise up and refuse to continue being humiliated while hawking Ding-Dongs, Mac and Cheese and Doritos. And, in what I thought was the best story of the lot, there's Jon, an orphan who's spent nearly his entire life as a member of a product focus group, knowing no other way of communicating his feelings but through advertisements.

While some of these stories succeed better than others, the overall collection proves timely, affecting, inventive and highly entertaining. Like the best satirists, Saunders is thought-provoking, but with heart. Fans of Vonnegut and Pynchon should approve.(less)

5 likes · like · see review

Apr 13, 2008 pepe abola rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 rest were all faile...more

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Apr 22, 2008 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Summer readers, smartasses, lefties (politically)

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 great concept...more

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Apr 20, 2008 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

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. But then you'll move onto the...more

1 like · like · see review

Apr 13, 2007 Sarah Smith rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more

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Oct 03, 2008 Jason Jordan rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 .

1 like · like · see review

Jan 16, 2013 Jason Pettus rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, stories, dark, funny, alt-history, hipster, smart-nerdy, personal-favorite

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

I had the pleasure of getting to talk with legendary author George Saunders for CCLaP's podcast last week, a rare treat given how in demand he is on this latest tour even among the major media; but that meant I had to do some serious cramming in the few weeks leading up to our talk, in that (I guiltily con...more

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Jan 12, 2013 Ryandake rated it 5 of 5 stars

some books, i don't really know what to say, except that i know genius when i read it.

this book of short stories gives a person more to think about life than a rack full of self-help books. Saunders is telling us crucial things about contemporary life in some funny, bitter, outrageous, out-there ways that (at least to my limited skill) defy description.

i guess the most accurate thing i can say about his work is that each story is like a zen koan--just when you think you've got a grip on it, it m...more

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Aug 21, 2012 Justin Evans rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I like that every reviewer says this collection is uneven, and then everyone goes on to list different stories as the good ones. It is uneven. My two cents: the more 'experimental' the story in this collection is, the better it is. The whole "looks cynical and ironic... looks a little less cynical... turns out to have a real heart beneath the irony... oh my god I'm in tears" thing only works if you don't jump straight to the tears as we do in 'Christmas', and only works if you don't skip the rea...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Ajay R rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 the g...more
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 the general theme is the persuasion of people in the consumer era. What's more this is a world where most people are not even aware that they are being persuaded, but are happily integrated into the dystopian environment. The landscape though set in America, could as easily be applicable to any developing/developed country.

The collection kicks of with the story 'I can speak' which perfectly illustrates this point. Presented a letter written by a salesperson to a customer who has returned a product produced by his company, it shows how banal one can get while producing/selling consumer goods. What's the product being returned? It's a face mask for small kids who can't yet talk. The mask takes care of the kids not talking but giving intelligent replies when their parents are talking, replies that are beyond the comprehension/intellect of the kid on whom the mask is placed. Why is this needed, what's the purpose in getting an illusion that a kid is talking much before the natural time, the salesperson gives an eloquent justification for this as he tries to persuade the customer to try the product once again. Does he succeed, we don't know as the story ends with the letter being completed, but considering the gullibility of customers these day, he may actually do.

When we talk about consumerism and people being persuaded to buy goods they don't need, another related thing to be noted is that how do corporates get in touch with the customers, how are they able to market their products. In some way, the proliferation of consumerism could also been linked to the gradual declining of a consumer's privacy. Whether it is a form you sign up when you go to a store, or an online form that you fill up when you visit a site, all these things are used to track your preferences and market goods based on that. The story 'my flamboyant grandson' illustrates this a bizzare way. This is world where all consumers are given some sort of electronic shoes based on which the consumer's preferences are tracked as he walks through the stores. What happens then? Holograms of various products are visible to the customer based on his buying pattern/preferences. Each consumer gets to see his own customized holographic advertising. (If you have not bought a burger for the past 2-3 weeks, a hologram reminds you about the taste of burger and urges you to buy it). You can't escape it, if you remove the special shoes you are fined by some entity which operates the whole things. Sounds too unrealistic. Maybe for now, but this is something that could happen in the future. And consider the fact it's not even necessary that you explicitly specify your preferences, just think of the digital fingerprints you leave whenever you come online, even based on that your preferences are gathered. I imagined a scenario reading this where my preferences are gathered based on this blog/post and am assaulted by the images of publishing houses pitching their books to me. How crazy would that be to see.

When we talk of persuasion, we cannot limit it to consumerism only. It happens at a policy level too, where the opinions of people are manipulated to achieve a certain end. George talks about that in the allegorical story 'the red bow'. It starts with a tragedy where the narrator's little daugther is killed by a rabies infected dog. The narrator and his friends then kill the dog and a couple of other dogs which were in cotact with the infected dog and are themselves infected by rabies. So far so good. Then they go a step further, they start killing dogs based on the suspicion that they may be affected, even on the hypothesis that they may get affected in the future. A meeting of the town people is held where it is decided to put down all dogs that are under the suspicion that they could affected. It evens goes to the extent to planning to kills birds, fish and most other creatures in the town. Most people in the town agree to it, the dissenting voices are suppressed. Link this story with the fact that it was written after the Iraq invasion and that the author himself says that 'this is a reaction of the cultural climate at that time, where people were becoming more aggressive' and you interpret what the author is trying to convey. There is no moralizing here, neither is the tragedy at the beginning trivialized or justified. But it raises questions on the way in which people are manipulated into forming a certain option, from where it's just a short step to hatred.

The title story 'In Persuasion Nation' is more bizzare than the other stories. We sometimes get tired of the same advertisements hammered day in day out into us. In some cases, we start identifying and relishing some ads. What about the characters in the ads. What happens to them. Initially we are shown vignettes of several advertisements where people to any extent to get their hands on a particular product. (One man watches his grandmother die while he eats a pizza, another betrays his friend to get his hands on a car). Now what happens is that the characters form two coalitions and start fighting each other. (The grandson and the betrayer form one group and the grandmother and the betrayed friend another group). This crazy scenario is made even weird when two characters of an advertisement get sick of doing the same thing day in and day out, they join forces and exit the ad. The trope in the story is somewhat similar to the one in which characters of a story get their own lives, but george gives it a twist by setting it in the world of advertisements.

It's an easy way out to blame corporations alone for the current state of affairs. We as consumers are culpable in some way when we give in to the temptations offered. 'Jon' is one such story, where the protoganist is nicely settled in a plastic, almost antiseptic environment (some kind of community centre) where everything is controlled, fixed in advance with no free will at all. (There can be no sexual intercourse, people are given a specific time where they have simulate the act themselve). But it is drilled into them that they are leading a fine life. Jon's dilemma in wanting to live in such a place and his inner wish to live outside the community where there are not so many facilities, but where one can make his own choices reflects the consumers dilemna in buying/doing something because it is said to be good and doing something that he actually wants.

'The Amendment' talks about alternate sexuality and the persuasion that is done on them. Sexual minorities have been persuaded for a long time that their orientation is a disease, it is curable and they can change it. This is the crux of the letter that is written by the character in this story. Not just alternate sexuality, he goes even beyond that in profiling people based on his conclusions. As per his conclusions even a hetrosexual marriage could be construed as manifestations of a latent gay orientation. He gives the idiotic example of marriage of a man with a normal voice with a woman who has a deeper voice, which implies that the man wants to live with another male while the woman wants to share her life with another female and so they are implicity living their subconsious fantasies. To avoid such marriages some rules have to be put into place. Seriously, how much more idiotic one could get. This seems funny at the surface, but shows the perception that most (so called) normal people have of people with a different orientation from theirs. It also indicates the homophobia that is present in most of us.

These stories may look far fetched, but are actually not so. Some time in the future we may be living in a similar consumer/political/social hell and what's worse even enjoying it. So as a paradox to this collection, I highly recommend this collection and author, at least this is a persuasion of a good nature.(less)

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Feb 24, 2010 Thurston Hunger rated it 3 of 5 stars

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" to my wife and t...more

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Jan 23, 2010 Karl Steel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmedieval_fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Fans of Saunders (from the equally great CivilWarLand, Pastouralia, and Brief and Frightening Reign) will already be familiar with the character types (crap jobs), settings (dystopic), and style: tottering clichés, market-driven solecisms, syntax scrambling past mere commercial hyperrealities into as-yet-unreified feelings.

If we bracket off the atypically hilarious opening story, "I CAN SPEAK!tm," IPN's trajectory is from hopeful to (kind of) hopeless. Its (really) opening story, "my flamboyant...more Fans of Saunders (from the equally great CivilWarLand, Pastouralia, and Brief and Frightening Reign) will already be familiar with the character types (crap jobs), settings (dystopic), and style: tottering clichés, market-driven solecisms, syntax scrambling past mere commercial hyperrealities into as-yet-unreified feelings.

If we bracket off the atypically hilarious opening story, "I CAN SPEAK!tm," IPN's trajectory is from hopeful to (kind of) hopeless. Its (really) opening story, "my flamboyant grandson," in which a loving and befuddled and heroic grandfather (natch) takes his gay toddler grandson (natch) to the city for a show, suggests some human(e), non-teleological emotion can survive total market penetration, but we have to think the boy will grow into the world of Section iii. Here we move from what might be called the Animal Studies answer to Harrison Bergeron (93990)--incidentally, a good fit on a syllabus with Coetzee's Lives of Animals--to the the lives of sitcom and commercial characters struggling to find a life oriented towards compassion. But nothing they do in their (hyper)life ultimately matters, except, I suppose, the effort of decency itself, witnessed so long as someone still reads Saunders' stories.

The collection finishes with "commcomm," in which Saunders offers a way past the commercial dragon, significantly, through death, as he concludes with the otherworldly, retrospective hope of a ghost returning to the world to undo his cruelty and stupidity. Contempt for the world would have been the easy route. Thus, it's worth comparing this ending to the dead Troilus's disdain in one of the several endings to Troilus and Criseyde. On the one hand:

And down from thence fast he gan avise
This little spot of earth that with the sea
Embraced is, and fully gan despise
This wretched world, and held all vanity
In réspect of the plain felicity
That is in heaven above; and at the last
Where he was slain his looking down he cast.

And in himself he laughed right at the woe
Of them that wepten for his death so fast,
And damned all our works that follow so
The blinde lust the which that may not last,
And shoulden all our heart on heaven cast;
And forth he wente, shortly for to tell,
Where as Mercúry sorted him to dwell.

On the other:

Snow passes through us, gulls pass through us. Tens of towns, hundreds of towns stream by below, and we hear their prayers, grievances, their million signals of loss. Secret doubts shoot up like tracers, we sample them as we fly through: a woman with a too-big nose, a man who hasn't closed a sale in months, a kid who's worn the same stained shirt three days straight, two sisters worried about a third who keeps saying she wants to die. All this time, we grow in size, in love, the distinction between Giff and me diminishing, and my last thought before we join something I can only describe as Nothing-is-Excluded is, Giff, Giff, please, what made you come back for me?

For the answer, tolle, lege.

(incidentally, I encourage you to pass "my amendment" on to anti-gay bigots. Not that it's hard to befuddle them, but, what the hell, befuddle them some more: the story (dramatic monologue, really) concerns a marriage amendment banning what he calls "samish-sex marriage," where, for example, feminine men could not longer marry masculine women. Brilliant!)(less)

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Nov 28, 2011 Drew rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmodern-toasties, boulder-public-library

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 thi...more

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Nov 03, 2009 Colin Hogan rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 buying. A...more

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Jan 23, 2010 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 Flamboyant Grandson"):
"What America is to me, is a guy doesn't...more

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Jan 20, 2008 Jeanette rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, all-fiction

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"!

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Aug 04, 2011 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 the charmi...more

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Feb 03, 2013 Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013books

I guess I don't love George Saunders the way some of my friends love George Saunders. And by that I mean, I merely love George Saunders, who is a mortal man. Some of the stories in this collection are pitch-perfect heart-breakers; some are just great. One or two I could take or leave.

(One of the dangers of reading a bunch of stories back-to-back-to-back is that some tricks of the trade start to become slightly too apparent. There's a particular comedic sentence structure that I started to notice...more I guess I don't love George Saunders the way some of my friends love George Saunders. And by that I mean, I merely love George Saunders, who is a mortal man. Some of the stories in this collection are pitch-perfect heart-breakers; some are just great. One or two I could take or leave.

(One of the dangers of reading a bunch of stories back-to-back-to-back is that some tricks of the trade start to become slightly too apparent. There's a particular comedic sentence structure that I started to notice, but the good news is that I think I could write a decent Saunders-parody: "Veblin the Dunce tried to remember his address. He tried to remember it very hard via striking the side of his head repeatedly." Usually the tipoff is "via" but there are others as well. Regardless.)

The real genius of Saunders and these stories is the tweaking and twisting of reality to recognizable but demonstrably weird heights. In less skillful hands that could be disorienting and annoying. In this book the disorientation remains intriguing and there's always just enough "real" to relate to. There's a deep, cold sadness in the heart of most of these stories, which is somehow balanced by an equally deep sense of hopefulness and human connection. It's a complex emotional bedrock upon which you could build almost anything. And Saunders manages to build strange and thought-provoking structures time and again. Given all this, I don't find what he writes terribly funny, per se. There's a lot of sad deadpan and an equal amount of wry absurdity, so one tends to read with a smile...but there's just too much heartbreak for these pieces to be "funny," to my mind. Better words than "funny" include "acerbic," "melancholy," "amusing," & "depressing" -- all used in their best possible meanings.

I think I have always enjoyed the one-off stories of George Saunders that I have read in various magazines over the years more than 200+ straight pages of his disparate stories all collected. He is not my god, but he is a certifiable "genius" and should be treated as such. Like with reading his stories. Like with marveling at satiric absurdities. Like with appreciation.(less)

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

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). There is some

...more

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Dec 17, 2009 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

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...more 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 also these forgettable little interludes between the four parts of the collection that are meant, I think, to solidify the theme and tie everything together, but these are, like I said, pretty forgettable). So I think the subject matter could have been a bit more varied (which isn't to say it's monotonous, but I think Pastoralia is a better collection for this (among other) reason(s)). There are also times when Saunders is clearly just trying to be funny, which is fine, because he totally is, but in some of the stories, the characters are only there to serve/strengthen the jokes, versus the other way around. Which isn't to say there aren't well-formed characters here. There are. But don't read this collection if you're looking for some heavy drama. Crazy stuff happens, often really bad, violent things, to a lot of Saunders' characters, but because it's so crazy/wacky/surreal, it's not like you're upset when someone gets his head chopped off, then in half, then smashed by a passing truck.

There's a lot of DFW in here, tonally, though emotionally the two authors are really different. Overall, Saunders just has a crazy way of seeing things, and he seems able to pull anything off on the page. None of the stories are unsuccessful in what they set out to do, which is just really fun to sit back and observe. He's great at what he does. The word unique is overused to the point of I'd argue it doesn't mean anything anymore, but if it did, it would totally apply to Saunders, for definite.(less)

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Feb 11, 2011 R rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, short-stories

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 collections of stories i...more

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Oct 27, 2009 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

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...more

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May 24, 2010 Frank rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

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 or mysterio...more

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Jun 22, 2012 matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

this is so good. it's so varied. it's dark and miserable, it can be hilarious, it can be all of that at once. the title story is one of the funniest things ive ever read. saunders is like a post-mescaline barthelme. some stories are set with the backdrop of absurd dystopias of full commercial embodiment in our lives, like being fined for not wearing a device that allows highly personalized ads to appear as celebrities one was once or is still fond of, who implore that you purchase what theyre se...more

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Mar 26, 2012 David Gallin-Parisi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Much like reading the best comics, where humor expresses sadness and gore provides confusing catharsis. Stories about commercials and commericals' possible characters, actors who actually live in commercials, embodied lifestyles, and living, breaking, walking implications. That barely makes sense. Talking symbols emerge from commercials, then possibly die. That also doesn't make any sense. Reading just one of Saunder's short stories is a whirlwind of narration that goes all over the place, compl...more

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Mar 30, 2010 Ana712 added it

Shelves: seventh-grade

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. One of the short stories, Brad Carrigan, American, is set in the future, in a rather upsetting idea of what George Saunders thinks the future will be like. Brad's life is basically a reality television show, until he get's written out of it. His wife isn't his anymore, his wife is an ex-stripper, and married to his worst enemy. His reality show doesn't belong to him anymore, and he's thrown into a world of absolute nothingness.

In a not as painful way, I've felt that too. That I was written out o...more

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About George Saunders

George 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 geophysi...more

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“There comes that phase in life when, tired of losing, you decide to stop losing, then continue losing. Then you decide to really stop losing, and continue losing. The losing goes on and on so long you begin to watch with curiosity, wondering how low you can go. ” — 20 people liked it

“She said America was a spoiled child ignorant of grief.” — 9 people liked it

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