an
uproarious and outlandish place that it is so hilarious precisely
because it is so close to home -- a nation that at once feels deeply
foreign and as familiar as the nation we call our own.
Table
of Contents
Reviews
“So imaginative,
so wickedly diverting that the undertow takes you before you even
feel a chill...Saunders has been likened to other great American
social satirists—Nathanael West, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon—and
it’s a valid comparison in terms of effect. But he is definitely
a voice of his own time, keeping up with the heaving cultural tide.”
—Minneapolis
Star Tribune
“Laugh
out-loud, uncontrollably urinating-on-yourself hilarious.”
—Time Out New York
“Saunders
is a hilarious, wicked, and pitch-perfect satirist of our times,
of course, but for a satirist he has a whole lot of heart.”
—Esquire
“Stunningly
effective …The title story of In Persuasion Nation—about
a doomed rebellion against the brutal and degrading skits used to
advertise consumer products—is [Saunders’] wildest yet.
Set is the psychic space of a series of television commercials (all
of them absurd, some of them grotesquely violent), the story is
at once insanely inventive and calmly convincing…. [But] the
fantastically talented George Saunders…can also do old-fashioned
realism. In ‘Bohemians,’ about a clutch of misfit kids
from ‘unraveling households’ in a working-class neighborhood,
Saunders demonstrates a delicate human touch….There’s
movement beneath the surface of these simple sentences, a ripple
of emotion that makes the laughter, the budding friendliness, ring
true.”
—The
New York Times Book Review
“So funny,
so surreal and so disturbing…Few today can match Saunders'
depth of inventiveness…This book should persuade the nation
that we are in the presence of a talent that can, without exaggeration,
be called unique.”
—Hartford
Courant
"If you
are a new reader of George Saunders, the first thing you ought to
know is that Saunders is the funniest writer in America...The competition--David
Sedaris, Tom Wolfe, Christopher Buckley--isn't even close.It is
easy, therefore, to pigeonhole Saunders, to think of him largely
as a wit and an absurdist extraordinaire. This would be to miss
his point. Saunders's laughs are a cover, a diversion, beneath which
reside some profoundly serious intentions regarding the morality
of how we live and the power of love and immanent death to transform
us into vastly better creatures than we could otherwise hope to
be. These are the biggest intentions an artist can have...Nowadays,
in a time of the most limited sense of possibility and ambition
in American literature, where even the discussion of the requirements
of art, as opposed to success, feels obsolete and embarrassing,
I can't think of another writer who would try to do what Saunders
is doing, or anything close to it. This is an important book."
—The Nation
“A blast
of savage Swiftian satire, a vision of an America well past its
expiration date…It’s Babbitt, updated and unhinged…[it’s]
like Kafka trapped in a Jerry Springer universe.”
—The
Philadelphia Inquirer
“George
Saunders is a goddamned genius….If you haven’t yet been
exposed to Saunders’ singular point of view and knockout storytelling
ability, In Persuasion Nation is a fantastic place to start.”
—Giant
“Back
when Philip K. Dick asked ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’
who could have imagined that George Saunders would answer? Or that
his reply might be, we are the electric sheep…Saunders’
caustic wit, imaginative flair and the Ping-Pong speed of his dialogue
are on full display here.”
—Los
Angeles Times
“Pynchon-meets-Wonder
Showzen.”
—Entertainment
Weekly
“The 12
brilliant entries of In Persuasion Nation explore, through hyperbole,
the most heinous aspects of contemporary America, as it merrily
eats and pollutes itself to death…[Saunders] has a singular
skill at manipulating language. It’s almost as though he learned
English from watching television and reading poetry, and then fermented
his findings into a weird new language all his own. His sentences,
bursting with barely perceptible tweaks to standard usage, are multilayered
and profound, yet instantly digestible. ‘Think these things
up in your heart,’ one of his characters says. ‘Treasure
them around, see what it is.’ Treasuring Saunders around,
you find yourself laughing, a bit moved and ultimately won over.”
—Time
Out Chicago
“George
Saunders, the brilliant satirist who writes like a marketing expert
gone mad, sends us bulletins from the alternate universe that he
alone inhabits, yet just may be our future home…Few today
can match Saunders’ depth of inventiveness…This book
should persuade the nation that we are in the presence of a talent
that can, without exaggeration, be called unique.”
—The Hartford Courant
“In Saunders’
latest collection - In Persuasion Nation - teenagers interned
in a terminal focus group, the deranged star of a Truman Show screenplay,
scientists, and product specialists speak, with disarming fluency,
the language of the commercial voiceover artists in residence inside
all our brains…Some of the slickest, most relentlessly satirical
stories yet produced on this planet.”
—The
Village Voice
“Alternately
the funniest and most heartbreaking book ever written involving
castrated dogs, talking candy bars and the eternal recurrence of
parental death.”
—New
York Press
“In
Persuasion Nation offers oddball looks at the creeping—and
creepy—influence of marketing and business into daily life,
whether by invasive advertisements of giant bags of snacks. But
the man can also write, short, sharp jabs—like the story ‘Adams,’
about feuding neighbors—that haunt you long after you’ve
set the book down. And did we mention he’s really funny?”
—E!
“In In
Persuasion Nation, the scarily smart George Saunders focuses
his piercing satirical vision on our proud country.”
—Vanity
Fair
“Everyone
who reads him knows that George Saunders is one of the funniest
writers at work today. What’s less remarked on is his capacity
to wrench pathos from comedy. While other writers seek out beauty,
Saunders restricts himself to America’s chintzy landscape,
our vocabulary of bureaucratese and self-empowerment….[But]
where David Foster Wallace paints a world utterly dehumanized by
these conditions, Saunders finds great humanity.”
—The
Boston Phoenix
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