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CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 · rating details · 5,272 ratings · 524 reviews

Six short stories and a novella. Set in a dystopian near-future in which America has become little more than a theme park in terminal disrepair, they constitute a searching and bitterly humorous commentary on the current state of the American Dream.

Funny, sad, bleak, weird, toxic - the future of America as the Free Market runs rampant,the environment skids into disarray, a...more

Paperback, 179 pages

Published February 6th 1997 by Vintage (first published 1996)

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Mar 07, 2013 s.penkevich rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Paquita & Brian

Shelves: short-story, too_cool_for_school, ethics

‘What a degraded cosmos.’

We live in a world where cruelty towards others is becoming more and more accepted – how easy we rationalize our self-righteous anger against someone who cut us off, brought us an undercooked meal, said something stupid, etc., and even seen as funny. Saunders, like the ghost of Christmas future, would like to show us where that is leading us. Civilwarland In Bad Decline, his first collection of stories, paints a grim portrait of a near-future filled with everything from...more

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Jun 04, 2012 Jacob rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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

March 2011

Protest

[Photo of a young man with a protest sign standing in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol building. His sign reads "WA WA WALKER, HAVE YOU ANY SOUL? NO SIR, NO SIR, IT'S BEEN SOLD"]

The past four weeks have been...kinda crazy, to say the least. Surely you've been following the news: Back in February, Scott Walker, ~~shameless corporate whore~~ Governor of Wisconsin, announced that ~~he had depleted the budget by handing out tax breaks to corporations~~ the state was broke and ~~he was going to kill the unions~~ somehow he could fix everything by taking away the collective bargaining rights of the public unions ~~which had nothing to do with the budget, but do you really expect a Teabagger to tell the truth?~~ These are hard times, folks, we all have to make sacrifices. ~~Except the rich.~~

What followed, of course, was four weeks of outrage, protests, Democratic Senators fleeing the state to stall the vote, more protests, Teabagger counter-protests, Scott Walker's "fireside chat" ("No, Wisconsin, I expect you to die."), Scott Walker's fake corporate phone call, more protests, budget proposals/threats, shady voting procedures, protests, more protests, and the icing on the fucking cake: the stripping of all fiscal elements from a "budget repair bill" to push through Walker's union-busting plan without a Senate quorum. To be followed by protests.

We're used to it all now--impotent rage is just a routine, these days--but things were hard in the beginning. So it was probably a bad idea to read CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Don't get me wrong, it's a great book--great collection--but when the new asshat governor of one of the most progressive states in the US ignores that state's long pro-worker history and tries to bust its unions, a dystopian story collection drowning in nightmarish visions of a corporate-run America is the last thing a cynical young Wisconsinite needs to read. From the Civil War reenactment park overrun by gangs of feral teens, to the novella about the runaway mutant travelling a ruined America in search of his lost sister, George Saunders' collection is bleak, bleak, bleak. And really effing good. Some reviewers say it's not his best book, fairly weak compared to the rest, but I don't care. The stories here are pretty great (if bleak), and I definitely plan to read his other work.

Maybe I'll wait until Walker gets recalled. Seriously, does anyone want to trade Governors? Anyone? Come on, Arizona, we'll even take Jan Brewer off your hands. One good Wisconsin winter and that old girl will shatter.

Next: In Persuasion Nation
(less)

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Jan 19, 2012 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, favorites

Man, this little guy...I can't fault it a single sentence. Every story in this tiny collection made me want to high-five the author with one hand and cradle my hanging head in the other. Maybe I was a bit hard on his later Pastoralia because I needed to warm up to Saunders, maybe my head was just in the right space this time around, or perhaps this really is the superior group of stories. Whatever magical trippydippy cosmos aligning parade of "f*ck yeah" was going on, I dug the expletive deleted...more Man, this little guy...I can't fault it a single sentence. Every story in this tiny collection made me want to high-five the author with one hand and cradle my hanging head in the other. Maybe I was a bit hard on his later Pastoralia because I needed to warm up to Saunders, maybe my head was just in the right space this time around, or perhaps this really is the superior group of stories. Whatever magical trippydippy cosmos aligning parade of "f*ck yeah" was going on, I dug the expletive deleted outta this thing. To start the New Year off in tune with my hangover bluuuuues, I couldn't have asked for a more appropriate tone than Saunders' bomb crater soul with somehow but barely still beating heart, nihilistic we're all screwed so let's laugh...ness. Then again, I'm in one of those moods where I would kinda fancy taking a slingshot and a pocket full of acorns into a public square and firing at random. You may think he needs to lighten up.

I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.

Oh HEYALL yeah! I wanna marry those words and knock 'em up with, like, sixteen babies. Then in typical "Saunders hates Capitalism" fashion, there's this next quote concerning a Civil War reenactor who is--out of nowhere and to his dismay--tasked with the duty of firing live rounds at the pesky youth gangs that have been intruding on and defacing the park where he works.

"I'm an actor," Quinn says.

"Quinn's got kids," I say. "He knows the value of a buck."

"This is acting of the highest stripe," Mr. A says. "Act like a mercenary."

Buddy, you just said a mouthful.(less)

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Jan 03, 2011 A.J. Howard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bookshelf-fiction, finished-in-2010, short-stories

The past couple of months, two activities have dominated my leisure time: reading and watching NBA hoops. After reading CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, I was reminded of a hoops argument that I think should carry over to modern literature as well. The argument has to deal with the unceasing quest for the so-called next Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan was the transcendent athlete, if not public figure, of my childhood. There are a generation of kids who still drink Gatorade, buy Nikes, and wear Hanes...more The past couple of months, two activities have dominated my leisure time: reading and watching NBA hoops. After reading CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, I was reminded of a hoops argument that I think should carry over to modern literature as well. The argument has to deal with the unceasing quest for the so-called next Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan was the transcendent athlete, if not public figure, of my childhood. There are a generation of kids who still drink Gatorade, buy Nikes, and wear Hanes solely because at some point in their childhood they wanted to be like Mike. Whenever I play a pickup game, or even just shoot around I find my tongue subconsciously hanging out of my mouth when I drive to the basket. What separates Jordan from similar figures is he actually justified this adulation. Watching Jordan was watching a real life folk hero. I remember my Dad, who isn't an NBA fan, during the MLB strike of 1994 ranting about how all professional athletes are overpaid, then pausing and adding "with the exception of Michael Jordan. This is a guy who averaged a couple grand a minute during the late '90s. The Flu Game, The Shrug Game, The Blindfolded Dunk, The final shot of the 1998 Finals. No other athlete since Babe Ruth has been able to summon similar myth-making moments.

Yet as soon as he retired (for the second time) the media and basketball fans have become obsessed with finding the "Next Jordan." Around a dozen guys have been nominated as candidates, and while these guys are all extremely talented, it's doing them a disservice to compare them to Jordan. Jordan is Gretzky, Young Sandy Koufax, Mohammed Ali before the draft, and The Beatles combined, a truly once in a lifetime talent.

I've started to notice a similar thing going on in literature concerning David Foster Wallace. More and more it seems the DFW comparisons are used talking about contemporary authors. For Christmas, I received two books explicitly name checked Wallace on the back cover. This really doesn't bother me, and I don't think it causes the reader or the publishing industry any harm. When I think about it, there's nothing like a good DFW comparison to get me interested in a newly published book. But at the same time, I worry a little bit about it. The problem with the next Jordan controversy is that while Vince Carter has (or more aptly once had) the capacity for in-air improvisation that Jordan had, Dwyane Wade has the ability to put a team on his shoulders and almost single-handedly win playoff series, and Kobe has the clutch instincts and competitive intensity Jordan had, none of these guys are on MJ's level. While these guys, and others I haven't mentioned are very good to extraordinarily good at individual faucets of the game of basketball, Jordan was the best at everything you can ask a shooting guard to be good at.I wouldn't go so far as to completely equate the respective greatness of MJ and DFW, but there is an analogy here. Because, let's face it, anybody who reads an author expecting a David Foster Wallace doppelgänger is probably going to be disappointed as those who expected Harold Miner to be the next Michael Jordan.

Now that that's said, while this argument came to me while I was reading CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, I'm not sure this review is the best place to expound upon it. For starters, George Saunders writing style and story telling are both fundamentally different from DFW's. If you were to make a Venn Diagram of George Saunders and DFW, the overlapping segments of the circles would be a mere sliver, at least based on this book. In fact, I wouldn't be shocked if Saunders never read any Wallace before he wrote any of these stories. There are certain traits that Saunders and Wallace share. Both are able to write about a world that is fundamentally different from ours in very profound ways, but, at the same, make the reader feel some sense of almost eerie familiarity. Be it descriptions of wheelchair bound Quebecois assassins who were disabled in a bizarre rail-jumping ritual, or an account of an employee at a Civil War Era theme park seeking advice from the ghosts of an actual Civil War era family, both writers have an uncanny ability to treat the other-worldly in a causal manner. They both have incredible imaginations, but are able to resist what must be an overwhelming urge to let the "otherness" of their narratives overly dominate the storytelling.

I feel like I'm doing people a disservice when I tell them what the plot of Infinite Jest is about. While the world Wallace constructs is unbelievably intriguing, that's not what the book is "about." If you go into the book expecting to learn about The Entertainment and find out what's wrong with Hal, you're going to be somewhat disappointed. I feel similarly about the stories here. While the settings might suggest genre fiction, Saunders' writing reminded me more of Raymond Carver than Philip K. Dick or DFW. My one quibble may be is that while Saunders is definitely a unique storyteller, and I enjoyed all of the stories, there is nothing that really resonated with me or kept me up thinking at night. Beyond the polish of the background, I'm not sure exactly how much is new there.

I haven't come close to reading the complete DFW bibliography (or Saunders'), but it still pisses me off to no end that one day that wells going to run prematurely dry. Because, just as there was nothing like watching Jordan in his prime, there is nothing out there quite like reading David Foster Wallace. What makes experiencing greatness so extraordinary is the uniqueness inherent in it's nature. Like I said, I'm not sure how far anybody has ever gone with the Wallace comparisons to Saunders, so I'm not sure if any of this applies. And there's nothing wrong with comparing recent experiences with fondly recalled past experiences. But I worry that holding something to the level of past greatness, be it MJ, DFW, The Beatles, Brando, Scorsese, etc., does a diservices to both the new experience by holding it up to a standard that is impossible to reach without some glimmer of nostalgia, and the old experience by causing us to forget how unique the first was. (less)

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Feb 17, 2013 Sabra Embury rated it 3 of 5 stars

Based on the near perfection George Saunders reached with Pastoralia, I experienced no hesitation when I placed him on my favorite writers list. I couldn't wait to read more from him. This is why I feel terrible for not really enjoying most of Civilwarland; though, I have a favorite piece in this collection "the 400-Pound CEO," which struck a few chords with me.

I don't know if I'm eloquent or educated enough to explain why I couldn't get into most of the stories, but I felt in some sense Saunde...more

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Apr 12, 2008 Ken rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Ken by: Tim Hall

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’ 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 ow...more 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’ 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.(less)

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Jun 16, 2008 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

out-there, surreal, touching...loved it. what really made me want to read the book was this answer he gave in an interview, regarding his vision and why he writes what he writes:

"...I think at the very last minute of the world, after we've global-warmed ourselves, and it's 400 degrees and only the elite can live in these little refrigerators with plasma TVs, the people who are burning to death outside are gonna kind of be reaching for the hand of the person next to them or having a memory of chi...more

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Nov 12, 2007 Stacy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read an interview with Saunders in the Believer and saw him at Powell's and damnit if it wasn't about time that I read a little Saunders. So I read a little Saunders and loved a little Saunders. Stories so brisk you need goggles and a helmet. Most are tragicomedy, but one story in particular, "Isabelle", utterly devastated me over the course of 7 pages. Amazing. His style is infectious, too. I read an interview recently with Amy Hempel who said that she could always tell when her students were...more

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May 02, 2013 Ryan Mishap rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel

Saunders favors fictional theme park/museums for settings. These absurd, run-down, and improbable places satirize the myths and reality of the United States while affording the author a way to utilize what is basically fantasy/science fiction without being rated as a genre writer. Even the stories set in nominally real places are like theme parks--the drug war infested urban setting, for example.

These nearly succeed. I found myself nodding unconsciously as I read and matched up symbols with real...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Vanessa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Liked! A lot! Would read again! Was the clear predecessor to 10th of December, which I liked more, so reading them in reverse order probably did this one a disservice. But big ups, similar themes, etc. I find interesting that in the two George Saunders books I've read now, he really unpacks this theme of being a straight married dude with kids and a wife whose central anxiety is about how he hates his job, but needs to be a provider. I find this actually pretty compelling, the way he presents it...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Mike Carey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a very hard book to describe. I found it really compelling and hard to put down, but Saunders' view of the world is so desolate and harrowing that I came away emotionally sandblasted. I think that was part of the intended effect, and I don't mean it as a criticism.

The protagonists in Saunders' stories are mostly helpless and adrift in a world that's been trashed and pillaged by twenty-first century capitalism and then recreated by canny, cynical entrepreneurs as a heritage experience. Ci...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Mac rated it 2 of 5 stars

With George Saunders receiving so much positive press these days, I decided to try CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Now having read the short story collection, I can understand the acclaim. The stories are imaginative, distinctive, unusual, full of bizarre characters inhabiting bizarre worlds. Those characters are more weird circus freaks than everyday neighbors, and those worlds are theme parks you've never visited before. Throughout it all, the tone is an odd mix of resignation, hostility, and off...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Rachael Gilkey rated it 4 of 5 stars

The absurdity of these future Americas created in each of Saunders' six short stories and a novella is not for the faint of heart. On the surface they pull you in, satisfying that same curiosity that, for example, glues people to the screen to "reality" shows that seem to show a warped version of life that can only be fabricated for purposes of entertainment. Fabricated, that is, until you inspect a little more closely Saunders' ever present societal structures, casually communicated by each nar...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you buy this book just to read the short story "Isabelle," you'll get your money's worth. Ironically, it's the story that's most unlike the others. The stories are not directly related, but they're all set in some post-war, post-epidemic America where the population is divided into "Normals" and various kinds of down and out others. There are a lot of theme parks and a dizzying array of Proper Names for positions and places and actions that lend a militaristic feel to everything being discuss...more

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

Shelves: postmodernism, stories, dark, funny, 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 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Per some hype I'm hearing second-hand, George Saunders is the new David Foster Wallace. Well, that sure isn't the case based on this collection of short stories, for better and for worse. Yes, the central conceit of this book - reality-based theme parks for the elite, staffed by the poor and disabled - is very DFWesque, but whereas such a phenomenon would get five pages of description and fifteen pages of footnotes in a Wallace novel, Saunders assumes an insider's vantage point, relying on a ser...more

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Nov 10, 2012 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: couldn-t-finish-it, american

Me at 18: I read Vonnegut; I read Tom Robbins; I read Mark Leyner; I read Douglas Adams. I had just left the nest in a small Oklahoma town. I knew hardship, I knew the void of culture that threatens to suck you in like a black hole. I knew the vapid anguish that takes the center stage in Saunders' stories.
Humor was therapy then, the absurd a close friend. We scoffed at the religious majority and their follies, we poked fun at the consumerist drone of daily existence. Then came anger and resentm...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Aaron Arnold rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, read-in-2012

I picked this book up because Thomas Pynchon blurbed it, and while I'm not sure I enjoyed it quite as much as he did ("graceful" isn't necessarily an adjective I'd use), it was still good. It's a collection of similarly-themed short stories and a novella, mostly set in a post-apocalyptic America. All of the protagonists have horrible jobs and are miserable, possibly crippled people who endure lots of depressing life events. Saunders keeps the stories from being too suicide-inducing by using lots...more

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Aug 29, 2011 Heather Wilson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. I think I gotta take a break from fiction after reading Civilwarland in Bad Decline. There is nothing I can say to describe its whole composition that isn't already written on the cover: dark, ghastly, endish; Cormac McCarthy meets Kurt Vonnegut; devastatingly satirical, a sort of post-apocalyptic dystopia (what circumstance could be more severe?)

What I find most captivating and understated about this collection of "stories and a novella" is the impressively sly way that Saunders arranges...more

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Feb 24, 2010 Thurston Hunger rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The first of a flurry of Saunders' work that I read. This was the most compelling of the lot for me, bubble gum at its most fresh. It's like Saunders offers a more intriguing, colorful alternate reality to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road?" The world is split into Normal/Flawed camps, and the camp split into low comedy and high satire?

Saunder's invention alone is worth the journey. He's got an almost ad-man's ability to pitch his ideas, wrapping them up in purple pop prose. His characters fight off e...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Jack Waters rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2013, stop-everything-and-read-these-agai

This was my introduction to Saunders, and it's a delightful reread. I hadn't knowingly read him until he won the "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2006. A curious reader might benefit by starting with this collection. It's like Saunders shows you your heart's beat before you feel it. I'd love to see most of these short stories turned into short films. Ben Stiller bought the rights to them.

The title story is an enjoyable ride through a war-reenactment type theme park(similar things...more

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Nov 21, 2011 Drew rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmodern-toasties, boulder-public-library

This is the first Saunders I've read, and I have to say there are a lot of surface-level similarities with some Wallace stuff. The most obvious is that Saunders wants to communicate a really bleak message about late-stage capitalism, but he feels the need to make his prose consistently and manically funny so that people will bother to read it. I like a funny book as much as the next guy, but I do occasionally feel a little insulted by an author who seems to think I'll stop reading if the jokes d...more

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Jul 27, 2011 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars

George Saunders writes amazing sentences, even when he seemingly attempts to one up the preposterousness of each passing sentence. His humor always adheres to a larger grief. Often desperate beyond lonely and exhausted of all possibility, his characters reveal an extremity of our own circumstances. His satire never points directly at us and never suggests a Utopic alternative: every story pursues an angle by which people learn to live with the absurdity of the individual mind at a loss amid the...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Eric rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-short-stories

When I read The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip to my son earlier this year, I knew I'd have to check out some of the more adult work by Saunders. The interesting thing about these stories and the novella is that character and plot nearly always come secondary two setting. The dystopian futures are never as gruesome or grim as the world we see in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but they might be on the way there. The bizarre theme parks and failing businesses where the action takes place are the flu...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Phil rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century

I had read "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" in my short fiction seminar and it didn't really appeal to me, so I approached this collection not really expecting to care much for it. But these stories really surprised me by being both very enjoyable and critically fascinating.

Two elements most struck me about these stories. First, despite coming from an Anglo-American writer in Rochester, NY, these stories seem to fit well into magical realism, which is generally a Latin American aesthetic. Particul...more

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Feb 26, 2009 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories-to-kick-ass-by, do-you-believe-in-magic

I went into this book expecting something a little less... quirky. I was pleasantly surprised. Most of these stories are set in the very near future of not-quite-this reality - a run-down Civil War theme park under seige by local gangs, machines that alter/read/remove memories, a destroyed world in which people are tagged and devalued based on their mutations. All these settings end up feeling close enough to this reality to be frequently disconcerting. In part this is due to Saunders's matter-o...more I went into this book expecting something a little less... quirky. I was pleasantly surprised. Most of these stories are set in the very near future of not-quite-this reality - a run-down Civil War theme park under seige by local gangs, machines that alter/read/remove memories, a destroyed world in which people are tagged and devalued based on their mutations. All these settings end up feeling close enough to this reality to be frequently disconcerting. In part this is due to Saunders's matter-of-fact approach to them. He doesn't rely on the shock factors of these almost-but-not-quite places and situations. Instead, he talks about them as though we already know, have been familiar with the rampant gang activity or segregation of Flaweds and Normals for years, until by the end of the story it does feel familiar and we're fully on board with wherever he's taking us. Being able to create these slightly "off" worlds without drawing attention to them for their own sake and then populate them with complex characters that I can end up feeling for by the end of the stories... this is Saunders's greatest strength, and where he impresses me the most.

The more short stories I read, the more I struggle to really pin down any consistent formula for the form, especially how to end it satisfactorily. So often stories feel incomplete to me, abrupt in their endings. Several of the stories in this book are included in that unfair generalization, although by no means all of them. "The 400-Pound CEO" feels rushed at the end and the series of events in the final pages comes across as too convenient. At the close of "Bounty," I'm not sure what prompts the main character's change of heart, or if he's even had one - why does he seek out the group at the end? I really don't know and think I would like to. On the flip side of this, of course, the endings of "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" and "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror" struck me as pretty fantastic. Overall, I would definitely recommend this, especially for looking at treatment of unusual locations and good short story character development.(less)

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Apr 10, 2013 Chance rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

All of Saunders's stories are starting to run together for me. That's not necessarily a bad thing. He retells the same story over and over, really, but I really dig it. I say this because every story's theme is basically the same thing: bad guys trying to do good things. I use the term "bad" loosely because here's the rub: we're all bad. We're all bad people just trying to do good. Saunders's stories are a call to action: Do Good.

Now, the details:

"The Wavemaker Falters" is my favorite in this bu...more All of Saunders's stories are starting to run together for me. That's not necessarily a bad thing. He retells the same story over and over, really, but I really dig it. I say this because every story's theme is basically the same thing: bad guys trying to do good things. I use the term "bad" loosely because here's the rub: we're all bad. We're all bad people just trying to do good. Saunders's stories are a call to action: Do Good.

Now, the details:

"The Wavemaker Falters" is my favorite in this bunch. Clever symbolism and wordplay punctuated by tragic dark humor. "Leon's been rising steadily since we went through Orientation together, and all told he's saved three Guests and I've crushed the shit out of one."

"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," the title story is strong. It's like "Pastoralia" (published later, but read first by me) with a supernatural twist. Also, maybe arming crazy gun nuts to protect our safety from scary teenagers isn't a good thing.

"Bounty", the novella in this collection, is like an extended cut of "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline." With the weird mutations of the Flawed--clawed toes, vestigial tails--I see where Karen Russell gets her inspiration from.

"Isabelle" is a kick in the teeth. Goddamn. I don't know what else to say.

"Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz" is a heartstring puller. The closest thing to a three-hanky weeper you'll find in a George Saunders collection.

"Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of a Terror" is an amazing title that deserves a slightly better story, but, hey, transparent cow. I think this is a real experiment. This story feeds my desire for corporate sabotage.

"The 400-Pound CEO" reminds me to try hard, try so hard, not to judge people or be mean. This is hard for me. Saunders's stories are plum full of empathy. The narrator says "What do my colleagues know of Dad? What do they know of me? What kind of friend gets a kick out of posting in the break room a drawing of you eating an entire computer? What kind of friend jokes that someday you'll be buried in a specially built container after succumbing to heart strain? I'm sorry, but I feel that life should offer more than this." When people are down, we, as a society, keep them down. And then they want to stay down.

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Jan 23, 2012 Dan Schuna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, sick-fuck-book-club

This guy is a great example of what a well crafted short story can be. He has the dark, laughing in the graveyard humor of Chuck Palahniuk only less crass and more mature. The playfulness and meaning of Tom Robbins only less whimsical and more grounded in reality. Technically these stories are speculative fiction in that they all take place in a dystopian future America where consumer culture and entertainment have run rampant to the point of bankrupting the country. Everybody is broke and starv...more

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May 11, 2011 Carmen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you read this book from front to back, like I did, all of the stories blur together - the differences in the stories are too subtle to distinguish themselves.

The stories are fun, though underdeveloped, a black vision of America in the near future/alternate present. The author tries to make you laugh at the absurdity, though sometimes you can't laugh because it's all just too pathetic. There is an abundance of guilt-ridden, subserviant and emasculated males (and one woman who fulfills this ex...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Linnie Greene rated it 3 of 5 stars

Saunders is a master of prose; on a sentence level, this book was dreamy. Thematically, though, a different story. Or, more accurately, the same story, told in several different forms. I liked this book, but after awhile, the similarities between each story and the final novella ran together. Civilwarland's locations might be varied in the strictly geographical sense, but all are theme parks championing and idealizing a period of history in a dystopian world. It's the slightly off-ness that's so...more

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What is there to discuss? This was an amazing, funny book!	2	43	Oct 23, 2012 04:27pm

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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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“What I'm primarily saying,' he says, 'is that this is a time for knowledge assimilation, not backstabbing. We learned a lesson, you and I. We personally grew. Gratitude for this growth is an appropriate response. Gratitude, and being careful never to make the same mistake twice.” — 13 people liked it

“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.” — 10 people liked it

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