Roller coaster read

>> George Saunders attacks and embraces
pop culture in his satirical short story
collection In Persuasion Nation

by JULIET WATERS

There’s been a debate going on in high-minded circles for a while about the responsibility of the writer, now that nobody seems to read anymore. (See Cynthia Ozick’s essay in this April’s Harper’s magazine for a more extended synopsis of the opposing manifestos.)

In one corner, there’s Jonathan Franzen, hero of narrative and depressive realism. Franzen believes in big-ass books that unite us in a collective social critique, just like in the glory days of Big Important Novels (but not the glory days of Oprah’s Book Club).

In the opposite corner, Ben Marcus, champion of experimental fiction and declared enemy of mainstream readers and the fiction they love. Marcus believes writers have as much responsibility to engage readers as top physicists have to dumb down their work for Science magazine.

I thought about this debate after I finished the paperback edition of George Saunders’ new collection of short stories, In Persuasion Nation. The hardcover’s been out for over a year, and it looks like there’s no danger of this book being embraced by huge droves of mainstream readers. In the 10 years Saunders has been publishing, he’s developed a loyal following, but no one would doubt this is experimental fiction. Saunders is so inventive, so ridiculous, so penetrating in his angry, dark, surreal satire of our world that the first comparison that came to my mind was Kafka.

Still, he’s so entirely entertaining that if I didn’t have a regular reviewing gig, I’d go back and read all his books in one sitting. Maybe I’d even read them again. Maybe I’d become a little like the polar bear in the title story, doomed to relive an eternally recurring vignette where he’s axed in the head as penguins dance a crazy dance, and the universe is ruled by an all-powerful scrap of green cellophane.

Reading Saunders is a little like reading the world’s highest roller coaster. It’s hard to describe just how Saunders manages to orchestrate giddy and deep, angry and light-hearted, accessible and challenging. But as I was struggling to describe it, I knew at the back of my mind there was another writer he reminded me of. Then I woke up this morning and learned Kurt Vonnegut was dead.

Just as it’s hard to imagine George Saunders getting involved in some shrill debate about the responsibility of the writer, Kurt Vonnegut, it seems, always had his priorities straight. Yes, he believed it was the responsibility of the writer to challenge, to depress, to keep one foot firmly planted in the fallow field that lies outside the worst forces of culture. Those forces that seek to normalize and numb and addict as many minds and souls as they can. But he still believed it was the responsibility of the writer to entertain and engage. Vonnegut, despite his legendary cynicism, was still always in there to win against whatever forces attempted to distract people from serious thinking.

Saunders also writes to win. There’s nothing preachy in his stories, though they do seem to argue in favour of our natural senses and boundaries over the invasive addictive elements of pop culture and technology. Characters struggle to see a simple Broadway show and are assaulted along the way by holograms that know every detail of their deepest desires and how to sell stuff to them. Teenagers attempt to escape a modern-day kibbutz where their memories have been replaced by those of Stepford moms and they are hooked up to regular doses of mood-altering drugs. At the same time, no one who didn’t authentically enjoy pop culture could write such entertaining stories about its evil influences.

Saunders’ fiction is like a declaration that if there’s going to be a fight between literature and popular culture, it should be a World Wrestling mud fight. Not some pouty “I’m not talking to you anymore, TV/movies/computers, or any of your friends.” When you write like this, you don’t need a manifesto.

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders,
Riverhead TRADE, pb, 228pp, $17.50