CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella (1996)

Having just read "Tenth of December" , I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this book. I actually found this easier to follow and more entertaining. That being said, you can see the development of Saunder's work during the 15 years between this book and Tenth of December. I enjoyed his imagination and creativity. He does tend to be a little bleak but I recommend him for his entertainment value and his satirist needle. I will move forward with reading as much of his work as I can get my hands on. ( )

Ventured a little too far into absurdity for my taste. At times, I could feel the stories reaching toward genuine sentiment, but they never quite made it. ( )

My current entry for my annual litmus test to evaluate whether or not I've transformed into a Short Story Reader. This one didn't convert me, and failed to be one of the rare exceptions of the genre that excites.

Loved: the surreality of the settings, the dreamy decay of it all. Hated: the unexplored, unrelented darkness of the plots. Shock value much? It all left me cold with a veneer of active dislike; I don't think there was a single story that engaged me beyond the shallow level of dark fascination. Neutral: the quality of writing itself. I didn't notice it ever being great or even remarkable. Why the slavish adoration, World? I don't get it. ( )

These are the funniest future hellscapes I've ever read. I likely scared the neighbors with my crazed laughter about the brothel in the former Safeway and the pickled fetus exhibition. And the ghost swearing in Latin. And the slaveowner saying he is a kind and civilized man. But I digress.

These stories, when taken together, revolve around the same hyperkinetic image of a future America, dreaming of eternal happiness while sloughing in mud, rich, violent and yet so fawningly humble, religious and whorish, fake and imitation, damning the pathetic and praising the rich.

Yet even where Saunders writes about these most pathetic and wormlike of souls, torturing them in the most hilarious outlandish ways, he shifts the tone and leaves us with the most irrational feeling of sensitivity or hope.

With the release of Saunder's newest collection of short stories, he has been readily proclaimed as the next David Foster Wallace. I must disagree. D.F.W. laid his own path, and Saunders took another. You do not need to take one over the other, instead go for both. ( )

This collection of short stories and novella are satires of the postmodern workplace. The outrageous settings—a Civil War theme park, a raccoon-extermination business, a virtual-reality franchise—are inhabited by sympathetic outcasts and the surly ghosts who haunt them. The hyperbolic descriptions and rapid pacing propel the narratives, but the close first-person perspective ensures that the stories’ primary concern is the characters’ emotional distress. ( )