In Persuasion Nation

On the jacket of George Saunders’s most recent collection of short fiction, In Persuasion Nation, the publishers claim that the stories inside “attest to a new level of empathy and emotional conviction in Saunders’s writing.” While it’s true that these stories are empathetic and full of emotional conviction, these qualities are certainly not new to Saunders’s writing. In many ways, this collection is another bus tour through the dystopic America that Saunders knows so well. The characters, whose language and psychology Saunders perfectly mimics, often have limited moral guidance in a world full of complex moral dilemmas. As in his past collections (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia), Saunders raises his satiric mirror to the face of America, flicks on the bulb of humor, and reveals wrinkles that turn to scars in the harsh light of his writing.

Each of the four sections of In Persuasion Nation are introduced with excerpts from Taskbook for the New Nation by Bernard “Ed” Alton, which, at first, the reader may think is a not-so-subtle suggestion for further reading. However, Mr. Alton and his book are fictional, deepening the reality of the future America that Saunders seems to write from. These excerpts also remind the reader that Saunders is, at least in part, writing about the political landscape of America and its leadership.

In “Adams,” perhaps this collection’s most successful story, Saunders transplants the psychology behind The Bush Doctrine and the justification for invading Iraq into the suburbs and a relationship between neighbors. As always, Saunders is at his best when writing in first person. The story begins:

I never could stomach Adams and then one day he’s standing in my kitchen in his underwear. Facing in the direction of my kids’ room! So I wonk him in the back of the head and down he goes. When he stands up, I wonk him again.

This verb, “wonk” is the narrator’s coverall word for describing violence, his violence towards Adams especially, which the narrator justifies in bursts of hyperventilated, uneven reasoning. “Wonk” is used with prefixes several times (“proxy wonk” and “mini-wonked”) and in total appears 15 times in a piece well shy of 2000 words. The narrator uses the word as a way of muting the gritty detail of his violence, thereby avoiding any guilt about it since, after all, he’s not physically assaulting Adams, he’s merely wonking him, and with good reason.

“Adams” was first published in The New Yorker in 2004, as the Mess-o-potamia in Iraq was just getting started, and so, it’s hard not to notice that simply by moving the “s” at the end of “Adams” to the beginning of the word, we are greeted by America’s favorite former dictator, Sadam.

“The Red Bow” offers another opportunity to enjoy Saunders’s gift as an imitator of a misled, confused narrator. In this story a heart-broken father, whose little girl is killed by a pack of rabid dogs, finds himself in the midst of a town-wide campaign to kill every dog, cat, mouse, bird, and fish that could possibly be infected. Must like the War on Terror, the town’s campaign against infected animals becomes a stage for power-grabbing and fear-mongering. The narrator in “The Red Bow,” in contrast to the narrator in “Adams,” takes a passive approach to the story’s conflict, and with tragic consequences. Too distraught with guilt and grief to think clearly, the narrator yields control of the campaign against infected animals to Uncle Matt, who the narrator introduces: “It was funny about Uncle Matt, I mean funny as in great, admirable, this sudden stepping up to the plate.” Uncle Matt, who we learn has recently lost his job and has a perennial chip on his shoulder, is at the epicenter of the campaign’s scare tactics, which hold captive the town’s emotional attention. He carries an ever-growing copy of his dead niece’s red hair bow, which he holds in the air to silence any criticism from his fellow townspeople.

What Saunders does best in this collection is to reveal the psychology behind the dystopic America that he knows so well. If there is a moral lodestone in this collection, it is a warning: be vigilant, think for yourself, don’t be dopey like these characters.

As in all collections there are a couple of stories that don’t quite land. “Christmas” feels a bit like a doodle when the narrator, who failed to intervene in a tragic situation, simply leaves town and starts a new life somewhere else. Also, Saunders’s philosophical agenda causes some characters to become somewhat mouthpiecey, as when Brad in “Brad Carrigan, American” expresses his desire to help the starving Filipino children:

There’s just so much suffering. We have so much, and others have so little. So I was just thinking that, you know, if we took a tiny portion of what we have, which we don’t really need, and sent it to the people who need it…

But Brad stops mid-good intention because his wife is upset by the mention of starving children. It simply depresses her: “I don’t see why you always have to be such a downer,” she tells her husband.

The title story, “In Persuasion Nation,” is an ambitious and entertaining collection of vignettes (i.e. commercials) of personified food products and commercial characters who wander aimlessly in their hyper-dystopic world of commercial land. Though, at times, sharp with satire and ironically full of punch-lines taken from the worst of sitcoms, this story ultimately disorients the reader and fails to culminate around a particular character, theme, or mood.

The rare misses in In Persuasion Nation are far outweighed by the classic Saunders-style homeruns, along with several surprises into new territory, like “Bohemians,” which recounts the young narrator’s realization that adults sometimes lie and that first impressions can be false ones. The weight of Saunders’s wit and the precision of his ever-prophetic eye in In Persuasion Nation emphatically remind readers of Saunders’s status as a topnotch satirist and the most guffaw-inducing writer of his generation.