In Persuasion Nation

The birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and the Julias are blogging. I know you are thinking I am crazy for being inside on such a wonderful day, but I just could not resist the urge to get the word out on a new book I just finished reading. The book is In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders and holy shit it is good. I finished the whole thing in one day and you need to read it! I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a dramatic and hyper school girl, but this book is not only good, it is important.

The book is a collection of his newest short stories and each one is genius without exception. The work is mostly satire? But I’m not sure if the work is angry enough to be considered satirical. Because in every piece there is something inherently good going on in an inherently bad world. It is obvious that Saunders has a major beef with conformity and pop-culture (he exaggerates each to such an extreme it almost feels like sci-fi) but he does it in such an unexpected way. He does it mostly through language itself.

My favorite story in the book is the one that is most language intensive. Jon is about a young man who is a kind of human database/model of commercialism and consumerism. He lives inside a warehouse with other models like him and they have an expansive knowledge of every commercial ever made. All of the models are unusually stupid and naïve and are under the care of bosses who are like family. However, it is because of the language that the stupidity and naivety comes across and what makes the piece so successful and unique. Jon says in the story, “I had a look, and tell the truth it did not look that good, such as the Rustic Village Apartments, out of which every morning these bummed-out-looking guys in the plainest non-designer clothes ever would trudge out and get in their junky cars. And was someone joyfully kissing them goodbye, like saying when you come home tonight you will get a big treat, which is me? No.” The bizarreness of the language instantly grips me from the beginning. I don’t think I would have even needed a plot to love the story.

I have some experience with language based poetry…but very little with language based fiction. Saunders seems to be creating a new kind of language for each story and the needs of that story’s plot…and the result is mesmerizing. The work almost takes on a poetic feel because of the bizarre nature of the language. Are a lot of authors taking this language based approach to fiction now? I guess this work just got me confused over what direction fiction is heading. I wrote an old post about what fiction should be doing…and I said it partly needs to be doing something fresh and new. Well Saunders is certainly doing that and his work is precisely what I hope for when picking up new fiction.

In Persuasion Nation was one of three finalists for the 2006 Story Prize for best short story collection of the year. And I cannot wait to see what kind of work Saunders produces in the future.