Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella by George Saunders ISBN: 1-57322-579-7 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.53 (32 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: One-trick Pony... but it's a good trick.
Comment: George Saunders seems able to write only about near-future corporate hell and decaying theme parks. And, he writes the same types of characters into each story. The main characters cannot act out their desires, because their desires place them outside the system. This makes them somewhat pitiful. The ones who can act out their desires within the system are objectionable because they are tailoring their desire to the system itself. Saunders has staked out for himself this part of the torture of modern life.
In the hands of a less talented writer, this narrow focus of setting and character would be a drawback. The decayed settings and amoral characters of Donald Antrim's writings are similar, for example, but after a few Antrim stories, you see that there is no more depth than the surface chaos.
Saunders seems able to find new depth in the souls of his characters every time he looks into them. In his work, each main character finds his own way out of the rat race. Oh, it also doesn't hurt that Saunders' writing is hilarious and highly readable.
Rating: 5
Summary: funny, savage, absurd
Comment: Saunders is an exciting writer, one of the bona fide bright spots in contemporary fiction. I love his take on consumer society; it is the perfect antidote to the Wal-Mart-Land we McLive in. And apparently, given the subject matter of his latest collection, he has the critique-of-consumerism-via-unlikely-theme-park domain all to himself. Like Pynchon and Barthelme, Saunders is not a realist, but rather an absurdist with a biting sense of humor. There is, as one reviwer notes, a certain sameness to these stories, but the same could be said about Melville's novels, Stevens's poems, or Bruckner's symphonies. I can't recommend Saunders more enthusiastically, but those who prefer realism should beware.
Rating: 3
Summary: Great ideas but poor narration
Comment: George Saunders'prose rolls of the page slick and swiftly. Every one of these stories contains a fantastic and highly original Idea and mixes near future sci fi with elements of magic realism as each main protaganist confronts an existential problem in an insane world. So why not five stars? Nabokov said that a great storyteller should be an 'enchanter'and who could disagree? Saunders' plots work, I found myself able to suspend disbelief and the humour made me laugh often, these pieces are very inventive and insightful into the American Condition. Unfortunately for me, they were not very involving. The problem lies with his style of narration, I found that his lack of description and slow moments had me turning the pages fast, but upon finishing these stories I was left amused yet uncaring and feeling as though I had not been engrossed or 'taken in' - not enchanted. The reason for this is as I have mentioned, that these stroies are all action akin to the novels of Chuck Palahniuk, they keep you turning the pages so fast but overall, the resrained and unelaborate senences lack mood and atmosphere, I found it hard to fully put myself in the shoes and minds of the characters and imagine what the characters were going through. The world they inhabited was only ever partly convincing. Another gripe is that when stripped to the core, they are all essentially the same character facing the same problem. I'm English and the problem may be that this clipped, terse and minimalist style of prose has not, thankfully, caught on over here. Less is not allways more - try some of the shorter works by writers such as Will Self, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Poe, Maupassant, Peter Carey, Ballard - to name but a few - and see what I mean.
 |
Title: Pastoralia: Stories by George Saunders ISBN: 1573228729 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
 |
Title: The Age of Wire and String: Stories by Ben Marcus ISBN: 1564781968 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
 |
Title: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by Lane Smith, George Saunders ISBN: 0375503838 Publisher: Villard Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
 |
Title: Jesus' Son : Stories by by Denis Johnson ISBN: 0060975776 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 15 December, 1993 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer ISBN: 1573222348 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 10 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
