Die kurze und schreckliche Regentschaft von Phil

by George Saunders, Frank Heibert (translator)

Man-Booker-Preisträger George Saunders erzählt eine aufrüttelnde Geschichte von der Zerstörungswut eines Populisten. »Der Schriftsteller für unsere Zeit.« The New York Times

Willkommen in Innen-Horner, einem Land, das so klein ist, dass es nur einen Bürger gleichzeitig aufnehmen kann. Die anderen sechs Bürger müssen in der Kurzzeitaufenthaltszone des umliegenden Landes Außen-Horner warten, bis sie dran sind. So haben es die sonderbaren, nicht ganz menschlichen Bewohner des Landes untereinander vereinbart. Doch als Innen-Horner plötzlich schrumpft und drei Viertel seiner Bevölkerung über die Grenze in das Gebiet von Außen-Horner gezwungen werden, sehen die Außen-Horneriten eine Invasion im Gange. Sie geraten in den Bann des machthungrigen und demagogischen Phil - was der Beginn ist seiner kurzen, dafür umso schrecklicheren Regentschaft...

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Humor, Fantasy, Satire, Novella, Politics

155 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 6, 2005

About the author

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 geophysics crew, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse.

After reading in People magazine about the Master's program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.

He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges.

He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.

He is married and has two children.

His favorite charity is a project to educate Tibetan refugee children in Nepal. Information on this can be found at http://www.tibetan-buddhist.org/index...

Reviews

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

A witty and scary parable for the current political climate. A slippery slide can't even be stopped by divine intervention it seems, with us and them perpetually at odds.
Strength is, sir, and I expect always will be, a lure for the ambitious and clever.

Amazingly this was written in 2005 by George Saunders far before Trump, hence making comparisons with Animal Farm more poignant. In a fairytale manner The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil tells the story of inner and outer Horner handling a decrease in country size. This triggers a cascade of measures ever more inhumanly, masked by acronyms and euphemisms, and power grabs by ambitious people seeing an opportunity in the situation.

In the end only interventions from outside seem to be capable to alter the course of events, a sobering message, with dissent from within “us” being quelled as effectively as any resistance from those “thems” perceived as being from the outside. The us versus them rhetoric seems entrenched and insurmountable.

Despite the overal tone being light (I’m not saying that at all. You are no more old or fat or nostalgic or ineffectual than you were yesterday) and the characters fun and caricature like (plus distinctly non-human), the underlying message is clearly and terrifyingly conveyed.

I can imagine this as a new classic, if slightly less in impact than the works of George Orwell.
3.5 stars for this sobering lunchtime read.

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

ida know. i love george saunders, but this one was just too lightweight for me. i wish i could just stand behind anything george saunders did, but i must remain objective and trustworthy, because of the importance of goodreads.com reviews.

come to my blog!

[Jakob J. 🎃 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal Preface:
I will begin with something that is sure to become dated very quickly, but the date on which the review is posted can be seen in the top right corner of the review anyway, like a school paper, so I suppose it can become an electronic time capsule, as everything already is on the internet.

So far, not much, I said to myself after asking what I’ve accomplished this night. I'm having one of my strange vibes, even though vibes are abstract concepts. Vines aren’t, they’re tangible, but vibes aren’t real and yet I hang from them. It’s all very difficult to explain, but I feel as if I’m in a tasteless, scatological motion picture that inundates me with shame for being human, and with poop. You see, I have been reading reviews for an execrable (execr[emental]?) film called Movie 43 which stars such class acts as Oscar winners Kate Winslet and Halle Berry, among butt loads of others. I couldn’t possibly be as offended over the content of the film as I already am that I would be expected to laugh at it. I won’t see the film that Richard Roeper called "the Citizen Kane of awful", not because he said so, but because I know their publicity stunt is to lure people into wondering how far it could really go. However, like watching, as a child, Celebrity Deathmatch, or Mad TV’s reimagining of Rudolph, it is clear that just reading about this movie exemplifies my theory of personal aesthetic masochism. I don’t need to say it again, about assaulting boundaries, but laughing at female humiliation, like when a friend of a friend tells a racist joke, is not something I am equipped to oblige. My raised ire shall be signified by an eyebrow that does the same, and a subsequent slow sip from my drink, all while staring at the goon. On top of this, the scorching oil in my engine fills my car with smoke and I am nauseous with olfactory offenses which deepen the rot of the most absurd existential crisis I have ever encountered.

With my senses aflutter and my head spinning, objects falling out of vision from one side only to reappear, still descending, from the other (think Super Mario Brothers 3 for original Nintendo, my inner-world with comparably only so wide a circumference, and cyclical)I couldn’t possibly focus on intellectual essays or dedicate myself to advancing in the novels I’m reading. To still my fingers and quiet my mind, I grab the shortest book within reach, which happens to be by a writer who has been prevalent in my thoughts recently. I’m speaking of Ayn Rand’s former lover, George Saunders.

Okay, Here’s the Review Now, So if You Were About to Abscond…
George Saunders is a genius, and he received a grant for so being. This techno-fantastical Animal Farm reminiscent tale is by turns hilarious and prescient. A tiny province known as Inner Horner which can only harbor one individual at a time is dug into, and so a life form toppling into the surrounding province, Outer Horner, is akin to an invasion. And so Phil, the malcontent with peremptory ambitions hatches the plan to tax this intruder, who cannot fit in his own land, for entering theirs illegally, and we can see where things might escalate form there. Not surprising from one who declared that “God the Almighty gave us this beautiful sprawling land as a reward for how wonderful we are… God Almighty gave them that small crappy land for reasons of His own”. Patriots with good intentions, an obedient border guard, and muscle-bound meatheads who thrive on occasional compliments are easily persuaded to do the bidding of one power-grabbing being; made all the easier due to a forgetful, negligent, and nostalgic president—who would long for each moment after it passed, and long for when he longed for each moment gone—with a mirror-faced advisor (symbolism? Where?!). Days of infamy or valor (according to Phil) would be commemorated using ludicrous labels (e.g. Dark Dark Thursday, a.k.a. Amazing Heroic Thursday).

Phase I of the Review-Space Area Improvement Initiative is Complete:
I think the best endowment in this book is its implementation of hysterically pathetic euphemisms in socio-political language. Here is a quick multiple choice question. Which of the following terms do you suppose is used as a satirical term for confinement and/or torture and/or oppression in this story? A) Concentration Camp, B) Enhanced Interrogation Technique, C)Liquidation and Relocation, or D) Peace Encouraging Enclosure? Of course anyone with any amount of historical education knows that answer, but is one of them more ridiculous than the others? Not by much.

“Working crosswise to my bold national, fate interdicted my glorious, and due to nefarious, all grand uplift purposes crash down, flags droop, crowds go home.”

This is a wonderful piece exposing Nationalistic tautology and incoherence, and indeed a suggestion against attitudes that could lead to colossal errors in decisions and discourse (about which the media would retrospectively claim they warned us). It is also a portrait of innate barbarism and tribalism and paranoia. It also explains why we Americans don’t always get as much pleasure from drinking our coffee as we should, but more immediately important, it was what I needed to calm my nerves after an anxiety attack involving feeling like a disgusting claymation character cracking apart in stop-motion increments.

[Ernst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erschien im Original bereits 2005, hat aber thematisch „dank“ Trump (der es vielleicht als Ratgeber aufgefasst hat, wie schaffe ich es ins weiße Haus?) und anderen seltsamen „Regenten“ heute wieder stark an Aktualität gewonnen.
Man könnte es aber auch als satirisch überhöhte, grotesk, fast comicartig verfremdete Allegorie auf Putin, seine „Spezialoperation“, die Rolle seiner Vasallen und Mitläufer, und die Rolle der angepassten Medien lesen.
Oder als Parabel menschlicher Einfalt und geistiger Trägheit, die sich nach einem Anführer sehnt und in einer Art perversen Symbiose mit einem passenden Egomanen, der dieses Vakuum füllt, den Weg zur perfiden Diktatur ebnet.

Man könnte es als schräge Dystopie bezeichnen, ein gemaltes Daumenkino von Picasso & Chagall, dann als Lebendmodell zusammengeschraubt von Dr. Frankenstein höchstpersönlich unter tatkräftiger Beihilfe des technischen Consultant Daniel Düsentrieb, und schließlich literarisch ausbuchstabiert von George Saunders der den Außen- und Innenhorneriten eine eigene Sprache und Kultur verleiht, nicht zu vergessen die Größer-Kelleriten, mit ihrer hedonistischen Glücksphilosophie.

Saunders schafft einzigartige sprachliche Ereignisse, Faszination pur, mittlerweile mein fünftes Buch des Autors. Mit anderen Autoren kann ich ihn irgendwie schwer vergleichen, er belegt eine ganz eigene literarische Nische, wo am ehesten total abgefahrene, schräg/groteske, sprachkreative, sich selbst exzessiv auf die Schippe nehmende, aber doch mit megaernsthaftem Kern, zum Nachdenken anregende Literatur zu finden ist, deren einziger mir bislang bekannter Repräsentant Saunders zu sein scheint. Zumal immer auch sein Credo, wir sollten alle netter miteinander umgehen, durchschimmert. Aber ich würde sagen, in der Nische nebenan könnten schon mal Matt Ruff (G.A.S.) oder Vladimir Sorokin (Eis, Opritschnik etc.) gesessen haben, wobei Ruff nicht das thematische, ethische Gewicht und Sorokin nicht den leichtfüßigen Humor von Saunders haben. Und noch eine Ecke weiter könnten dann Tom Robbins (Salomes siebter Schleier) oder Italo Calvino (Baron auf den Bäumen) einquartiert werden und Lars Gustafsson war auch schon mal als Gast hier (Das seltsame Tier aus dem Norden).

Mein bisheriges Saunders-Nischen-Ranking:
Fuchs 8 (10/10)
Zehnter Dezember (10/10)
Die Regentschaft von Phil (10/10)
Tag der Befreiung (8/10)
Lincoln im Bardo (4/10)

[A. Raca · Rating 4 out of 5]

MEDYA, MEDYAYA FAZLA MI ODAKLANIYOR?

🌈

[Darwin8u · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Our country is big, let us be big.”
- George Saunders

This novella is one part Animal Farm, one part Gulliver's Travels. Part parable, part satire, it is (not to give to much of too little away) a short novella about border disputes, leadership, the media, and standing up to oppression. It was published in 2005 under the GWB administration, but feels (because of global border disputes) more relevant today in 2019 than even it was in 2005.

It is cute, at times funny, quick, and narratively interesting. It just isn't Saunders great. It is a minor moon and not even a planet in his solar system. But still, it is a "lush, full moon" at that.

[Jon Adcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil is a satire and political allegory that I picked up a few weeks ago, not knowing how prophetic it was going to turn out to be. In this surrealistic novella, Phil, an opportunist and demagogue, takes control of the nation of Outer Horner by appealing to nationalistic feelings and scapegoating immigrants.

The world in the story is bizarre and surreal. Inside the country of Outer Horner lies Inner Horner, a nation so small that it can only hold one citizen at a time. The remaining citizens wait patiently in Outer Horner for their turn while confined in the Short-Term Residency Zone located next to the border. Then one day, Inner Horner suddenly shrinks, forcing 3/4ths of it’s current resident over the border into Outer Horner. Quickly inserting himself into this crisis, Phil attempts to take advantage of the situation in order to seize power.

The bizarreness of the story extends to the characters themselves. The people in the story are human in actions and behavior, but very non-human in appearance: “the President was a small but impressive man, consisting of a jumble of bellies, white mustaches, military medals, and dignified double chins, all borne magnificently about on three wobbly legs”. Many of the other characters are machine-like and one is described as resembling a “gigantic belt buckle with a blue dot affixed to it, if a gigantic belt buckle with a blue dot affixed to it had been stapled to a tuna fish can”

The story is savagely satirical and funny in a “Douglas Adams on acid” way: “Far East Distant Outer Horner, a lush verdant zone where cows’ heads grew out of the earth shouting sarcastic things at anyone who passed, which, though lush and verdant, was unpopulated because the cow’s sarcasm was so withering”

The story plays out like some fantastical combination of Animal Farm and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The satire is sharp enough to draw blood and Saunders has written a subversive political allegory that’s well worth reading in the times we find ourselves in

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 4 out of 5]

george saunders'ı çok seviyorum.
bu novella hem çok komik, hem de doğruluğuyla sinir bozucu :)
beyni düştükçe (bahsedilen varlıklar insan değil :)) hamasi bir biçimde vatan millet sakarya vurgusu yapan phil'in gerçekliği, yarattığı hayali düşmanlar, binbir dalavereyle başkan seçilmesi... o kadar sinir bozucu ki insan gülüyor. (medya ve yardakçıları unutmamak lazım)
neyse sonu en azından umut verici ;)
ama şunu da söylemeliyim ki saunders çok iyi bir fikirbaz, mucit gibi bir yazar ama yazarlığının doruk noktası arafta'ydı.

[Kayıp Rıhtım]

“Lütfen milletin iradesini yerine getirin!” – Phil

80 sayfacık, minicik bir kitapta bir diktatörün doğuşunu, yükselişini ve çöküşünü izlemeye var mısınız? Hem de dünyanın en iyi öykücülerinden sayılan George Saunders’ın kalemiyle.

Size söz veriyorum, başlarda çok eğleneceksiniz. Yine söz veriyorum ki, sonradan dehşete düşeceksiniz.

İç içe geçmiş iki ülke hayal edin. Biri geniş ve ferah olsun. Vatandaşları için kocaman yerler ayrılmış cinsten hem de. Bolca, fazla fazla yer var. Ona Dış Horner adını verelim, çünkü yazar da öyle yapmış. Dış Horner’ın içine de bir küçücük bir nokta koyup ona da İç Horner diyelim. İç Horner öyle küçük, öyle ufacık olsun ki aynı anda yalnızca bir (1) vatandaş içinde durabilsin. Hepi topu 6 yurttaşı olan İç Horner, tek ağacı, tek nehri ve tek toprağıyla diğer vatandaşlarına kucak açmak için orada beklesin. Tabii sıraları geldiğinde.

Ancak bir gün, nedeni kitapta hiç açıklanmayacağı şekilde İç Horner birden daha da küçülüyor! Çekiyor! Böylece içindeki tek vatandaşın da bir kısmı istemsizce Dış Horner’a kayıyor. İşte, tam burada bir diktatörün doğuşuna şahit oluyoruz. Kitabın adında ismi geçen o malum Phil, bu anda sahneye giriyor. Bir daha da hiçbir şey eskisi gibi olmuyor.

Phil, öyle ahım şahım biri değil. Kompleksli ve zeki olduğu da söylenemez. Ama ağzı iyi laf yapan bir faşist olduğunu rahatlıkla söyleyebiliriz. Hepsi öyle değil mi zaten?

Phil’in yaptığı her şey demokrasi kılıfında bir zulüm. Olan hep İç Hornerlılar’a oluyor. Eziliyor, sömürülüyorlar. Dış Horner hep onlara sayısız yardım etmiş konumunda. Ama İç Horner her gün bunu kötüye kullanmış biçimde yansıtılan 6 kişilik bir grup.

Phil bağırıyor. Ara ara beyni yerinden çıkıyor. Başkanlığı ele geçiriyor. Onun kontrolsüz, faşistçe bağırışları başkalarını etrafına çekiyor. Ve Phil’in İç Hornerlılar’a yaptığı her zulüm “milletin iradesi” olarak adlandırılıyor. Ancak bu zulmün vardığı boyutlar kitabın o mizah yönünü yavaş yavaş söndürüyor ve kara kısmını hepten açığa çıkarıyor.

“Lütfen milletin iradesini yerine getirin!”

Böyle diyor Phil. O böyle dedikçe okur da irkiliyor.

İç Hornerlılar’ın pek çok şeye susması canınızı sıkacak. Ama tanıdık da gelecek. Dünyanın farklı yerindeki ülkeleri düşüneceksiniz. Yakın zamanda yerle bir edilmiş, ya da iç karşılıklara teslim edilmiş farklı yerler gelecek aklınıza.

Görüyoruz ki en tepede olanlar da dünyamızdan farksız. Phil’in çığırtkanlıkla topladığı yandaşlar ve ortaya çıkan vergilerle beli bükülen İç Hornerlılar, Dış Horner’ın başkanına bir mesaj atıp ilk direnci gösterdiğinde en tepedekilerin duyarlılığının da şaibeli oluşuna tanık oluyor. Bu olay yine Phil’e yarıyor. Yine mağduru oynuyor. Halkın iradesiyle, o anda yapılan oylamayla (bu söz sizi daha sonra iyice dehşete düşürecek bir hal alacak) her şey meşrulaştırılıyor. Böylece Phil, yetmezmiş gibi bir de devlet içinde yetkili biri hâline geliyor.

Bu kitabın her bir satırı günümüz dünyasından bir kareyi aklınıza getirecek. Bu bir distopya. Bu, karakterleri makine ve bitkilerin karışımından oluşmuş, dünyası da bir o kadar tuhaf 80 sayfalık bir gerçekler parodisi. Rahatsız edici ve bir o kadar eğlendirici bir tokat. Her bir karakteri ve 3 ülkesi de pek çok yoruma açık, aynı anda birden fazla şeyi temsil eden bir semboller bütünü.

İnsan dayak yemekten hoşlanır mı? Eh, hani dayak cennetten çıkmaydı? Yanağınızı uzatıp bu tokadı bir kere yiyin derim. Pişman olmayacaksınız.

- Hazal ÇAMUR

İncelemenin tamamı için: http://www.kayiprihtim.org/portal/inc...

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

I have had Phil on my list now for years. A very long time. So long that it first appeared on a list I kept in a Moleskin because I wasn’t on gr just yet. I find it on a page which also contains the titles Omega Minor and At Swim, Two Boys (with a note on the latter, “1st edition only--prefatory difficult Irish (drunkard)”). I’ve read the prior and acquired the latter (in the correct edition). Apparently I’m mistaken as to how and why Saunders first got added to my legendary list. The context is a bit arbitrary -- prior pages include lists of Vollmann, Theroux, Mano ;; following pages find a note about Gibbon plus a list from the ToC of Tom LeClair’s The Art of excess (GR, Something Happened, J R, Public Burning, W&M (I write “smile”), LETTERS, and Always Coming Home).

I thought it had originated in my search for that post=DFW writer. That short=lived list included Eggers (I read his first), Zadie Smith (I’m one shy of completion), Nicholson Baker (had seen an article claiming Baker the missing link twixt Updike and Dave), and this Saunders. Be that as it may, Phil suggests closer kinship with Leyner than DFW. [I also have the impression that Larry McCaffery or someone or other had it on one of their list things ; but apparently knot?]

Why did it take me so long to read this slim volume? Because it is so damn’d expensive!!! Seriously makes RURD, W&M, The Dying Grass, ZT, and an hd of GR look like christmas pennies!! New it lists at US$13. The Village Bookshop has nearly always had it in stock for something like $8.95. And it was pretty much always on the shelf. But that’s some seriously overpriced shit! I know I know Coover does the thing with the microbook too (‘novella’ is the polite word for a hundred sparsely worded pages). But with Coover his books are kind of rare so you have to snap them up whenever you see them at whatever price. And the Saunders is always everywhere, but never for the reasonable price of One Dollar. So I hadn’t picked it up yet. Then the other day I saw it at a little hole in the wall bookshop for like Eight Bucks and I thought to myself, It’s about time I read this thing and this is a nice shop and I’d be willing to donate eight dollars to it because it would seem to need my Eight Bucks more so than does The Village Bookshop where I already spend too much money.

[so but speaking of The Village Bookshop ; I once went to The Village Bookshop to hear Saunders read from a thing but Saunders had been on Television so much recently that the entire store was packed so I just shrugged, walked over to Fiction, found the S’s and walked out with Four Volumes of Arno Schmidt at a very reasonable price.]

So I spent the Eight Bucks -- price of a movie ticket -- and read it. Value of seeing an Eight Dollar movie. Yes. (but I’m too cheap to pay that much for a movie either).

And so but I do recommend you read this little nugget. Especially in today’s climate. And may the Reign of Trump be truly Brief, but please, we’ve had enough Frightening already.

[Mohsen.khan72 · Rating 5 out of 5]

خیلی خوب بود.
چه از لحاظ این که با طنز رسانه ها رو هدف قرار داده بود و به سخره گرفته بود. خلقت رو نشون داده بود و کار خالق رو.
قلب آدمی رو و این که چقدر میتونه سنگ دل و بی تفاوت یا چقدر رئوف باشه. یه نظام حکومتی که توش خیلی چیزا رو نشون داده بود و کلی حرف داشت اینها همه و همه در رمانی که به قلعه حیوانات مدرن معروف، کم و درجه یک.

[Renklikalem · Rating 4 out of 5]

tek adam yonetimine ve suru mantigiyla hareket etmeye dair tuyler urpertirken guldurmeyi de basaran harika bir novella ve ozellikle muhtesem bir son. kisacik ama oldukca tatmin edici bu kitabi cok begendim.

[Literatursprechstunde · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Die kurze und schreckliche Regentschaft von Phil" ist etwas für die Dystopie- und Science Fiction Fans unter Euch. Wie schnell kann sich eine Demokratie in eine Diktatur verwandeln?! Saunders 2005 erstmals veröffentlichte Satire ist nun stark verkürzt neu übersetzt erschienen bei Luchterhand und ist thematisch aktueller denn je.

Saunders hat ein Szenario erfunden, in dem es zwei Städtchen gibt, zum einen das klitzekleine Innen-Horner, zum anderen ein sehr viel größeres Außen-Horner. In Innen-Horner gibt es immer nur Platz für einen einzigen Einwohner, die verbleibenden sechs Einwohner müssen sich in Geduld üben bis sie an der Reihe sind im eigenen Land zu leben.
In Außen-Horner gibt es sogenannte „Kurzzeitaufenthaltszonen“, in denen Menschen verweilen, die in ihrer eigentlichen Heimat Innen-Horner keinen Platz finden.
Tja, wie könnte man die Situation nur verbessern?! Die Außen-Horner müssten einen Teil ihres Landes an die Innen-Horner abtreten, damit diese mehr Platz hätten - doch wo kämen wir denn da hin?! Interessenskonflikte, Streitigkeiten und Übellaunigkeit sind also hier vorprogrammiert.

Phil ist seines Zeichens Außen-Hornerit mittleren Alters und durchaus als sonderbarer Zeitgenosse zu bezeichnen, der sich als machthungriger Intrigant wie er im Buche steht entpuppen wird. Denn als das sowieso schon viel zu kleine Innen-Horner zu schrumpfen beginnt, beginnen Grenz- und Territorialkonflikte, die Phil zum Anlass nimmt seinem Machtrausch freien Lauf zu lassen. Er drangsaliert seine Nachbarn mit immer bizarreren Auflagen, Verboten und Beschränkungen und übertrifft sich dabei immer wieder selbst. Nicht zuletzt eine Kränkung, eine Zurückweisung in Liebesdingen, die ihm einst vor Jahren seitens einer Innen-Hornerin wiederfuhr, stachelt ihn zu immer größeren Abscheulichkeiten an. Rache ist süß - oder so ähnlich?!

Mich hat „Die kurze und schreckliche Regentschaft von Phil“ sehr stark an George Orwells „Animal Farm“ erinnert. Nur dass dort die Protagonist*innen Tiere wie das Schwein Napoleon waren, dessen Autokratie immer größere Auswüchse annahm und der Kommunismus hin zum Stalinismus thematisiert wurde. In Phil habe ich ehrlich gesagt viele Züge von Trump erkannt und wäre das Buch nicht bereits 2005 geschrieben worden, hätte ich steif und fest behauptet, George Saunders hätte ihn als Inspiration für seine Figur und Satire genommen. Aber nun gut, Wahnsinn jedenfalls, wie gut es darauf anwendbar ist.
Doch ich will ehrlich mit Euch sein: Orwells „Animal Farm“ hat mir wesentlich besser gefallen und George Saunders Werk erscheint dagegen wie ein Abklatsch. Ich hatte Probleme mit dem Setting und dem Plot, das für mich mehr ausgebaut hätte sein müssen, es fehlt der Feinschliff, die Finesse. Bei Orwell verbünden sich die Tiere gegen die Menschen, die Schweine führen das Regime, aber bei Saunders (ich will Euch nicht komplett Spoilern) ist die Story für mich nicht rund.
Als bekennender Saunders-Fan, bin ich traurig zu schreiben, dass es bisher sein schwächstes Buch für mich war. Aber bitte verschafft Euch Euren eigenen Eindruck und lasst mich gerne Eure Gedanken dazu wissen (gerne auch in Bezug auf Trump und Orwells „Animal Farm“).

[Jesse · Rating 1 out of 5]

A horribly failed experiment. The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil is thirteen dollars for eighty pages, partnered with abstract photos to try and illucidate what is ultimately a too-abstract text. For someone who adores being challenged I was forced to bite my tongue about "never being challenged enough" - the absolute inaccessibility of this text was mind-blowing.

The plot itself is water thin. A weak attempt at a dogmatic strike once more for a more socialist formation of democracy, arguing in the style but not the skill of Animal Farm against governmental doctrines and identity identifiers, the book goes so far as to remove the human element - only to forcibly throw it back in the face of the reader.

"See, this is what you are, because even oil cans can be so ridiculous!" If executed better, the book would have been maddeningly beautiful. Sadly, it remains as is.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overly-obvious political parable featuring six inhabitants of an increasingly impoverished and minuscule nation. My favorite part was the Kellerites and their Enjoyment statistics. My least favorite aspect was meanie Phil's falling-out brain.

[Mattia Ravasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFxG_...

Satirical fiction a-la Abbott's Flatland meets Calvino's Cosmicomics. As The Times said "it's relevant, but not too relevant," and that's the novella's best asset: it clearly shows the absurdity of something, but not something so clearly specific as to make this book a political statement. It's just a great book instead.

[Argos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kitap tanıtımında yazdığı gibi Hayvanlar Çiftliği'nin modern versiyonu. Orwel Stalin dönemini nefis anlatırken Saunders çağımıza-günümüze yönelik bir anlatım seçmiş ancak ustasından çok daha zayıf ve biraz da savruk bir uslıupla.

[Krok Zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok yes, Saunders in fable/allegory mode is not as great as Saunders writing stories about flesh-and-blood characters. And the concept here could play like the most obvious, bush-league satire ever. But I really dug this because it's still a book that only George Saunders could have written. His uniquely stylized dialogue, his anger toward societal injustice, his empathy for emotional turmoil, his boundless imagination, his cracked and hilarious sense of humor--it's all here, in concentrated form, in this breezy, awesome little novella. I laughed many times while reading this. Gives me confidence he's got a great novel in him. Or, you know, any novel.

[ceyda · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Hepinize tavsiyemiz, Keyif alın! Hayat güzelliklerle dolu. Neden savaşasınız ki? Neden nefret besleyesiniz? Keyif almayı öğrenin, o zaman savaşmanız gerekmez, savaşma arzusu duymazsınız! Hayatı sevin, kahveden keyif almayı öğrenin! Bunu yapar mısınız? Deneyeceğinize söz verir misiniz?”

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saunders himself describes this as a "children's story about genocide" (see "Why I Wrote Phil").

[Melek · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Saunders’ten okuduğum ilk kitap oldu Phil’in Dehşet Verici Kısa Saltanatı. Okurken bazen gülümseyip bazen de kızabildiğiniz bir eser. Çok aşırı beğenmedim ama yazarın külliyatına başlamak için bence güzel bir seçim olabilir.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book perhaps more relevant to today than when it was written in 2005. Phil is a funny and disturbing novella that has all of the allegorical and satirical charm of Animal Farm. The cult of personality, the corrupting influence of power, the failure of a people to stand up to oppression before it’s too late are all themes that manifest in Phil.
As far as the writing goes, Saunders is tight and doesn’t waste any time over the 130 pages. Imagery is clear and shocking (where it needs to be) and the dialogue and characterization are done on the run.
Great novel. Worth the read. 5 stars

[Ümit Mutlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Güzel bir girişim. İyi bir çaba.

İncecik bir anlatıda; diktatörlük denen nanenin, sadece insanoğlunun değil, ne olduğu belirsiz varlıkların bile derdi olabileceğini, belirli şartlar ve psikolojiler altında her yerde zorbalar çıkabileceğini açıklamaya çalışmış yazar. Başarmış da. Bir yanıyla da geçmişin bir alegorisi olarak ele alınabilir, kâh Nazi Almanyası, kâh Stalin Rusyası.

Ya da günümüz Türkiyesi!

[Jason Pettus · Rating 2 out of 5]

(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 confess) I only became aware of his existence a month ago, because of a passionate recommendation from my friend and Chicago science-fiction author Mark R. Brand, with Saunders' new book, tour, and interview opportunity being merely a fortuitous coincidence. And that's because the vast majority of Saunders' output has been short stories, while regulars know that my own reading habits veer almost 100 percent to full novels, which means he's simply and unfortunately been off my radar this whole time; but of course I'm happy to make room in my life for exquisite short-fiction writers once I learn about them (see for example my revelation after reading John Cheever for the first time a few years ago), which means that I tore through all seven books now of his career in just a few weeks recently, so I thought I'd get one large essay posted here about all of them at once, instead of doing a separate small review for each book.

And indeed, as I mentioned during the podcast as well, like Cheever I think Saunders' work is going to be at its most powerful once his career is over, and all the stories collected into one giant volume that a person reads all at once, instead of debating the merits of one individual collection over another. And in fact this is something else I said in the podcast, that I find it fun to think of Saunders' stories as essentially interchangeable tales in one big comic-book-style shared universe, albeit the most f-cked-up shared universe you'll ever spend time in: a possibly post-apocalyptic America, although whether through slow erosion or one big doomsday event is hard to determine, where the only businesses that still thrive are outlandish theme parks designed for the amusement of the now "natural betters" of our new Mad Max society, and staffed by the permanent class of have-nots which now includes a large population of genetically modified freaks, a place where ghosts are real and magic exists and the new normal is extreme cruelty at all times for all other humans left in the wreckage of a crumbled United States. And so if you look at the four story collections that Saunders has now put out -- 1996's CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, 2000's Pastoralia, 2006's In Persuasion Nation and this year's Tenth of December -- you'll see that the vast majority of all these pieces fit at least somewhat into the general paradigm just described, although with others that are much more realistic in tone but still with the same unbelievable cruelty and darkness, many of them set among racially tense situations in eroding post-industrial cities.

Yeah, sounds like a big barrel of laughs, right? And in fact this was the biggest surprise for me as well when first reading them, that Saunders is not just on the stranger side of the bizarro* subgenre, but is one of the most wrist-slashingly depressing authors you will ever find, yet this Guggenheim and MacArthur grant winner is regularly on the bestseller lists, has appeared on David Letterman and The Daily Show, gets published on a steady basis in such hugely mainstream magazines as The New Yorker and GQ, and is adored by literally millions of fans out there, many of whom would never open the cover of a book from Eraserhead Press to save their life. And that's because Saunders never talks about these things specifically to be depressing, but rather as a way of highlighting how important simple humanity is to our lives, the simple act of being humane and optimistic about the world, which he does not by writing about the humane acts themselves but what a world without them would look like. And that's a clever and admirable thing to do, because it means he sneaks in sideways to the points he wants to make, not beating us over the head but forcing us to really stop and think about what he's truly trying to say, to examine why we get so upset when this fundamental humanity is missing from the stories we're reading. Ultimately Saunders believes in celebrating life, in trying to be as helpful and open-minded to strangers as you can, in being as positive about the world at large as you can stand; but like the Existentialists of Mid-Century Modernism, he examines this subject by looking at worst-case scenarios, and by showing us what exactly we miss out of in life when this positivity and love is gone.

*(For those who are new to CCLaP, "bizarro" is a hard-to-define term but one we reference here a lot; also sometimes known as "gonzo" fiction, sometimes as "The New Weird," a lot of it comes from either the wackier or more prurient edges of such existing genres as science-fiction, horror and erotica, while some of it is more like Hunter S. Thompson or William S. Burroughs, a conceptual cloud of strangeness that has a huge cult following in the world of basement presses and genre conventions, as well as such literary social networks as Goodreads.com. If you want to think of famous examples, think of people like Kathy Acker, Mark Leyner, Will Self, Chuck Palahniuk, Blake Butler, China Mieville…and, uh, George Saunders!)

Now, of course, in all honesty, there are also a few clunkers scattered here and there in these collections as well, which is simply to be expected in a career that now spans twenty years; and when it comes to the small number of other books he's put out besides story collections, I have to confess that I found those to be a much iffier proposition. For example, there's the 2000 children's book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, cute enough but as inessential to an adult as any children's book is; then there's his one collection of nonfiction essays, 2007's The Braindead Megaphone, an uneven compilation of random pieces which includes some real gems (one of the best being that GQ piece mentioned, where Saunders is sent George-Plimpton-style to Dubai, and instead of the usual decrying of the ultra-rich he is surprisingly charmed by all the vacationing middle-class families), but that has an equal amount of throwaway pieces done for highly specific commissions; and then there's the only stand-alone fiction book of his career so far, the 2005 novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, which I have to confess is the only thing of Saunders' career that I actively disliked -- written in the middle of the Bush atrocities, it's obviously an attempt to do an Animal Farm-style satire about those years, but is labored in its execution, too on the nose, and in general has too much of a "quirky for the sake of being quirky" vibe, the exact thing that can most quickly kill a piece of bizarro fiction. (But then again, we perhaps shouldn't blame Saunders for this; as I've talked about many times here in the past, it seems that no indignant artist was able to write satirically about Bush in the middle of the Bush Years without producing an overly obvious ranting screed, whether that's Saunders or George Clooney or Michael Moore or Robert Redford. No wonder no good books about Nazis came out until after World War Two; as we all learned in the early 2000s, it's nearly impossible to actually live under a fascist regime and also be subtle and clever in your critique of it.)

But those are all small quibbles, of course; Saunders' bread and butter is in his short fiction, and I'm convinced that he will eventually be known as one of the best short-fiction authors in history, joining a surprisingly small list that includes such luminaries as Cheever, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, GK Chesterton and more. Plus, as a fan of edgy and strange work, I'm thrilled that a guy like Saunders is out there, serving as a gateway of sorts between mainstream society and an entire rabbithole of basement-press bizarro titles that's just waiting for newly inspired fans to tumble down. If you're going to pick up your first Saunders book soon, go ahead and pick up the newest, Tenth of December, because it's just as good as all the others and particularly easy to find right now; but I also encourage you to dig deeper into this remarkable author's career, and to see just how far he'll pull you into the murky depths of ambiguous morality before coming bobbing back to the surface. It's been a true treat to become a fan of his work this year, and I urge you to become one as well.

Out of 10 (Tenth of December): 9.6

[Kurt Neumaier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book, but I think George Saunders George Saunders'd a little too close to the sun

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Power doesn't just corrupt. Power is corrupt. Inherently all too often. And assured in power, it's all too easy for a stronger nation or people to blame a weaker for its misfortunes, and take its state as justification not only in denying aid, but heaping further misfortune. The exploited will continue to be easy targets for exploitation. This minimal, absurd fable would seem to be a bit too on-the-nose if we weren't doing exactly this, as a nation, at the present moment. Now more than ever, and certainly more than when Saunders presciently penned it 10 years ago.

Bonus points for the level of extreme reduction that disassembles characters into mere collections of object/attributes to an extent that Urmuz would surely approve of.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few people seem disappointed with this, and I was for a while, but once I'd finished I actually really liked it. Of course it's funny, and of course it's biting, but it's even more allegorical than the other Saunders I've read. The blurb on my edition call it a fable, and I think that's about right. Just when you think you've got it all worked out, and that it's a bit obvious, the story twists around and becomes much more mysterious than it otherwise would be. It looks, to begin with, like a bland allegory of America's recent wars, but then expands and looks like a mildly interesting allegory of war in general, and then expands again and looks like a fascinating allegory about modern political and ethical life. In the end I actually liked it more than CivilWarLand in bad decline.

[negar heshmat · Rating 4 out of 5]

...این بار با هم مهربان باشید.یادتان باشد، تک تک شما دلتان می خواهد شاد باشید و من هم همین را می خواهم. تک تک شما دلتان می خواهد بی هیچ ترسی زندگی کنید و من هم همین را می خواهم.تک تک شما در دلتان از این می ترسید که زیاد خوب نباشید اما هستید.به من اعتماد کنید،شما خوبید. ...
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کتابی خوب نزدیک به سبک کتاب قلعه حیوانات :)

[Stacia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining, if light, political allegory.

[Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok cool. So...PSA: George Saunders can predict the future. This was published in 2005, people. TRUMP HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE.