10.02.2005
Stars upon thars
Having just read George Saunders' new book, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil in one long sitting, I'm having trouble deciding what it is I just read. Is it a children's book? A political allegory? A science fiction novella? All of the above? More to the point, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I liked it or not. It wasn't terribly satisfying, though Saunders' work is never dull. Forced to decide, I would call it a noble, yet unsuccessful experiment.
You can read volumes elsewhere about the story, but the best piece about the book was written by Saunders himself for Amazon.com. There, he tells of the dare that led to the book (an illustrator friend challenged him to write a book in which all of the characters were abstract shapes), and about how the story got away from him: "Soon the story was going off in an unexpected direction, and was becoming that rare and not-so-sought-after thing, a kid's story about genocide." What is perhaps most distressing is the fact that the book took six years to write and was pared down from 300 pages to its now-svelte 130 (You can read a dozen excised excerpts at the book's web site). It feels tossed-off, the kind of extended goofy riff one expects Saunders could crank out in a couple of weeks. That, coupled with what seems to be a steady fall off in his short fiction -- which has taken turns toward oddly pat endings and become increasingly absurd -- would seem to indicate that the fantastic voice of Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline might have been misplaced, if not lost.
Still, anything Saunders writes is worth reading, despite that relative worth being a wildly fluctuating thing. The thoughts he shares in interviews are as entertaining as the books about which he speaks (he's the rare author whot more than merits a book-length sit-down someday), and the arrival of this new book means plenty of Q&As. Two of the best -- and certainly the longest -- can be found at Maud Newton's blog and the Morning News (with the always on Robert Birnbaum).
Given the state of the world, the eager audience ready for a thinly veiled critique and the estimable talents of the author, I expected much, much more. What I got was "The Sneetches" for the new millennium.
You can read volumes elsewhere about the story, but the best piece about the book was written by Saunders himself for Amazon.com. There, he tells of the dare that led to the book (an illustrator friend challenged him to write a book in which all of the characters were abstract shapes), and about how the story got away from him: "Soon the story was going off in an unexpected direction, and was becoming that rare and not-so-sought-after thing, a kid's story about genocide." What is perhaps most distressing is the fact that the book took six years to write and was pared down from 300 pages to its now-svelte 130 (You can read a dozen excised excerpts at the book's web site). It feels tossed-off, the kind of extended goofy riff one expects Saunders could crank out in a couple of weeks. That, coupled with what seems to be a steady fall off in his short fiction -- which has taken turns toward oddly pat endings and become increasingly absurd -- would seem to indicate that the fantastic voice of Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline might have been misplaced, if not lost.
Still, anything Saunders writes is worth reading, despite that relative worth being a wildly fluctuating thing. The thoughts he shares in interviews are as entertaining as the books about which he speaks (he's the rare author whot more than merits a book-length sit-down someday), and the arrival of this new book means plenty of Q&As. Two of the best -- and certainly the longest -- can be found at Maud Newton's blog and the Morning News (with the always on Robert Birnbaum).
Given the state of the world, the eager audience ready for a thinly veiled critique and the estimable talents of the author, I expected much, much more. What I got was "The Sneetches" for the new millennium.
