He is primarily interested in American entertainment and advertising, and in this way the collection at times can ring a bit of DFW, but not venturing too far into that seemingly cornered market. This is not a mistake Saunders makes in this collection. Adam Johnson’s Emporium is a collection of great writing and ideas, but it leaves a reader feeling underwhelmed. In the best possible way, Saunders steers into a very Pynchonian vein while maintaining stories and prose that are uniquely his own.īut make no mistake, the meat of the collection is what drives it. Not only does Saunders reveal himself as leaps and bounds better than we already knew he was and could be, but he also becomes much bolder, willing to take a lot of risks that earlier stories could have used. Yet, this distance between reality and satire was a delight to find, as it was what CivilWarLand in Bad Decline lacked as a collection, particularly the final story, which at times could be called ham-handed. And this leads directly to the second aspect of In Persuasion Nation‘s appeal: the obvious growth as a writer. Of course, in typically Saunders’ fashion, this shot is taken through a Pynchonian romp of quirky and indescribable characters being put through absurd situations that, on face-level, seem to have little to do with reality. First, while it is noted far and wide that Saunders is our chief American satirist, In Persuasion Nation takes his most direct shot at what America claims to stand for compared to what it really stands for.
What makes In Persuasion Nation interesting as a short story collection is twofold. This is remarkably unfair to Saunders, but the mere fact that he rises to meet such expectations is yet another reason to continue to have them. Such talent can spoil a reader and, in a bizarre way, work against Saunders simply due to the expectations that he generates with every page. Saunders accomplishes so much, so efficiently, that he can encompass the full rise and fall of a great novel in less than ten pages. When Saunders is hitting on all cylinders, say in stories such as CivilWarLand in Bad Decline or Tenth of December, the pages fly and a reader becomes impossibly invested in the story. His problem, in a weird way, is that he is too good. George Saunders’ biggest problem is one of the most absurd problems anyone, let alone a writer, could possibly have.
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