In Persuasion Nation

George Saunders is a unique social satirist, and his stories of regular people with weird problems subversively highlight the outlandish states toward which our society is headed. Saunders' treatments of the dark side of American consumerism and family values seem goofy on the surface but are strangely disconcerting. Many of the short and snappy stories in this volume deal with the personal damage caused by consumerism and entertainment run amuck. Cheesy gratification trumps parental enjoyment in "I CAN SPEAK(TM)," while "Jon" shows the emotional costs of relentless product placement and continuous network feedback. Several other stories, such as "The Red Bow," "Adams," and "Commcomm"" show caring people committing crimes or contributing to social inequality by trying to maintain the personal values that are held so dear by their society. Meanwhile, Saunders takes regular swipes at our culture's obsession with entertainment and short-term fulfillment, and that's the focus of this book's best stories. The bizarre "Brad Carrigan, American" is told from within a reality show that keeps becoming more and more brutal, based on continuously collected ratings information, with "real" reality show people becoming unreal products of audience whims. Meanwhile, the goofy but sensitive "In Persuasion Nation" is told from the point of view of characters in commercials who know they're contributing to their culture's decline into shallow consumerism, with no appreciation for the social and human consequences. In his stories of humans being forced by culture and business into inhumanity, Saunders offers great views of humanity's near future, from which it just might emerge victorious. Maybe. [~doomsdayer520~]

I've read Orwell, I've read Burgess and Huxley and a smattering of satirical short stories...and I never expected the dystopian could be so hysterically funny. His gift for humour, and his uncanny ability to pin down the ridiculous aspects of our current, heavily commercial society, put Saunders in a class all his own. The only weak story I might choose would be 93990 - all other stories were strikingly original, fluently written, and offered a message that went beyond mere wordplay. An extremely strong collection of stories that everyone should read.

This is a fantastic book. Readers of Saunders's work will recognize his style as well as some stories from The New Yorker, Harper's and elsewhere, but that familiarity should just enhance the experience. Nothing is lost in the second or third reading of these pieces except perhaps surprise. And even that quality remains, since his minimalist extravagances keep yielding new meanings even as they strip language down to its most crass and inarticulate forms. The structure of the book is intriguing: the four sections organize the stories thematically, but I could only sense the organization. In this "persuasion nation" advertising and paranoia are fused into a twisted positivism that relies on heedless change, commercial success, and cynical manipulation of political/religious values. It looks like our world of Fox, Botox, and Vioxx, but all restraints have been removed. The corporations have got it all: disorder, chaos, and fear run rampant. And it's all very funny, thanks to the branding, slapstick, dry wit, science and math, love of cliché, and masterful elision. None of this prevents deep sadness from oozing to the surface, either. The characters are flat and blasted, but their predicament is still pathetic enough and their yearning for light, hope, and meaning real enough to elicit our sympathy. While murder and cruelty reign, a spark of humanity still shines through the darkness. The cover picture, which seems to illustrate the end of "jon," is about right: a damaged boy finding a precious flower on stony ground still has the power to move us. When I finished In Persuasion Nation, I didn't feel that I'd been given a key to reality, but I looked at our bloated, terrorized world with a bit more distance and a wry smile. We need all the irony we can get.

And not only because it is his best work to date. More so, because the stories start out in the realm of reality, albeit Sci-fi/futuristic reality and slowly initiate the reader into the warped world of Saunders. Or, maybe it is only the real world shown, to us, in its true form. I suggest anyone interested in this book read the first chapter. If it makes you laugh and then hurt and then wonder, I can honestly say you will enjoy the rest of the book. If you read it and wonder what the heck is going on then this is not for you. Come on in; visit the future, talk to ghosts, and learn what it is to be in existance for "buying".

For objectivity's sake: I am a big fan of George Saunders' fiction and non-fiction alike. I see In Persuasion Nation as a step forward into new territories and places (always in Saunders' fiction, there is the place -- CivilWarLand, the land of Inner Horner, alternate universes where our advertising creations live lives close to our own), if not a giant leap ahead. Saunders' keeps it simple, but provocative: the world and all of its inhabitants are sacred, so why do we squander all of that precious sanctity brutalizing each other? This theme winds its way throughout this collection in ways both stark and hilarious. The prose is grounded in the way we say things, which casts an even stronger light on those passages that are transcendent in their simple and precise lyricism (here I am thinking especially of the ending to "CommComm", which I think is maybe Saunders' strongest story yet). If Saunders' deep concern with humanity comes across as saccharine at times, I think that's more of a comment on where we're at than where his fiction is, cause if you can't come to care for this cast of characters (which includes an orange and a polar bear with a hatchet in his head), then, well . . .