CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella

George Saunders has seen the future of America and it is funny. Bleak, yes, and sad and toxic and greedy — and very, very weird — but funny, too. With today's malls and theme parks and ecological disasters as their foundation, these stories build a tomorrow inhabited by fat executives in despair, genetic mutants in servitude, virtual-reality merchants in Chapter 11, and American Dreamers everywhere in trouble. A lot of this book's business is business in an America whose culture and economy are falling apart, business on the fringes, business on the skids. The marginal entrepreneurs who people its pages hawk everything from glimpses of a living see-through cow to raccoon meat to old ladies' memories. Deregulation rules and brigands thrive. But at the center of George Saunders's fiction stand those hapless souls who suffer most keenly. the injustices and inequalities that a Free Market dishes out — the guys who just can't make it or run into plain old bad luck. A self-abasing minion at CivilWarLand suggests a way to rid the premises of the teenage gangs that prowl the grounds at night, only to find the cure far more dangerous than the disease. Another poor sap, who runs a wavemaking machine, allows himself a moment of underling's vanity and accidentally kills a kid frolicking in the artificial surf. And in the picaresque novella "Bounty," a futuristic descendant of Huckleberry Finn with claws for feet travels across the ramshackle country to rescue his sister, also a mutant, who has been bought by a Normal for pleasure and, possibly, profit. These astute stories recall not only the work of Mark Twain but also such diverse figures as Jonathan Swift and Kurt Vonnegut. At once cautionary and, in their humor, entertaining and redemptive, they help us see our society and ourselves in new and startling ways.

"An astoundingly tuned voice — graceful, dark, authentic, and funny." Thomas Pynchon

"George Saunders' first collection arrives with ecstatic blurbs from Thomas Pynchon, Tobias Wolff, and Garrison Keillor, and what the hell, the guy actually deserves it. The author, a geophysical engineer, specializes in pitch-black satire. His stories take place sometime in the near future, and many of them feature entrepreneurial concepts to die for. One character runs the Burn 'n' Learn franchise, with "a fully stocked library on the premises and as you tan you call out the name of any book you want to these high-school girls on roller skates." Others work in virtual-reality theme parks, which offer shabby duplications of the Civil War or a Day at the Beach. Saunders has a great ear for professional jargon, and his descriptions of these dystopian Disneylands invariably ring true.

"In the title story, for example, the narrator manages a crew of Adjunct Thespians, Verisimilitude Inspectors, and Historical Reconstruction Associates. Another theme park — a fake farm called Our Nation's Bounty — includes among its exhibits a cow with a see-through panel in its stomach. ("The idea was to provide schoolchildren insight into the digestive process of a large mammal.") Given their satiric slant, these stories aren't particularly plot-driven. In most of them, the employees are falling apart at about the same speed as the business, and it's a race to see who will last longer. But Saunders' voice, deadpan and hilarious, keeps you coming back for more, and not even the occasional patches of tough-guy lyricism can succeed in derailing it." James Marcus, Salon

"The stories in this volume are peopled with grotesques — a misshapen girl nicknamed Boneless, a 400-pound businessman, a black boy with skin so fragile that it tears, an ex-convict con man who practices bondage and discipline. Some of these characters do despotic things, but Saunders presents all of them in their full humanity, never sentimentalizing, ever withholding judgment. This example of consummate mastery and literary control belongs in public libraries and in college and university collections." R.B. Shuman, Choice

"This book is a rare event: a brilliant new satirist bursting out of the gate in full stride, wildly funny, pure, generous — all that a great humorist should be." Garrison Keillor

"Scary, hilarious, and unforgettable....George Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality." Tobias Wolff

"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathaniel West and Kurt Vonnegut, perhaps a distant relative of Mark Leyner and Steven Wright. . . . Mr. Saunders' satiric vision of America is dark, and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny".--"The New York Times".

CivilWarLand in bad decline — Isabelle — The wavemaker falters — The 400-pound CEO — Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz — Downtrodden Mary's failed campaign of terror — Bounty.