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Narrated by George Saunders
George SaundersUnabridged — 2 hours, 4 minutes
Narrated by George Saunders
George SaundersUnabridged — 2 hours, 4 minutes
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An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone. Over six years in the writing, and brilliantly and beautifully packaged, this novella is Saunders' first stand-alone, book-length work-and his first book for adults in five years.
Includes an original song by the author.
“The Phil Stomp” was written and performed by George Saunders, and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Peter Coleman at Indigital Studios in Santa Cruz, California.
All this can be amusing, even if it doesn't betray much effort; this is just talent speaking, the comic voice without the woundedness or anger that truly animates the satirist, like Saunders himself in his earlier work.
— The New York Times Book Review
Saunders's prose is like a drug candy, compulsively swallowed, sweetly addictive... Anarchic and startling.
Screamingly funny.
Artful and sophisticated...truly unusual. Imagine Lewis's Babbitt thrown into the backseat of a car going cross-country, driven by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Harvey Pekar or Spike Jonze. That'd be a story Saunders could tell
The bold successor to Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut.
A searing satirist with a peculiar sensibility that allows him to wreak havok on a cheesy American landscape that is often uproariously implausible yet sickeningly familiar.
A brilliant distortionist who devises dark, hallucinatory arenas and sets fierce satires against countercurrents of grotesque sentimentality.
Saunders is a provocateur, a moralist, a zealot, a lefty, and a funny, funny writer.
The shift of target to Iraq War-era America proves problematic for major 1990s satirist Saunders (Pastoralia), who here checks in with an allegorical novella centered on the tiny imaginary nations of Inner and Outer Horner. The citizens of Inner Horner, live-and-let-livers who have a lot of unproductive discussions, are countable on two hands, and they are not-quite-human: one man's torso is simply a tuna fish can and a belt. (There are 15 b&w illustrations scattered throughout.) When their nation suddenly shrinks, the group spills into Outer Horner, and a border dispute results. It paves the way for the rise of an everyman Outer Horner dictator named Phil-a jingoistic, brute-force bully. The eventual fortuitous military intervention by Greater Keller, a neighboring technocapitalist nation of latte drinkers, comes after much lingering over the mechanics of Phil's coup. (There are multiple references to the "spasming rack" from which Phil's brain periodically slides.) Despite press-chat comparisons to Animal Farm, the book lacks Orwell's willingness to follow his nightmare vision all the way out to the end. Saunders delivers some very funny exchanges and imaginative set-pieces, but literally has to call in a deus ex machina to effect Outer Horner's final undoing. It's entertaining, but politics and war don't really work that way, allegorically or otherwise. (Sept. 20) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
With an absurdist wit as playful as Monty Python's and a vision as dark as Samuel Beckett's, a post-modernist spins a provocative parable of political power and its abuses. This novella from Saunders (Pastoralia, stories, 2000, etc.) concerns the tensions between two countries, Inner Horner and Outer Horner. Inner Horner is the smallest country imaginable, so small that only one of its seven inhabitants can fit within its borders at a time. Then it inexplicably gets even smaller, making it impossible for Inner Hornerites to avoid "invading" the boundaries of the surrounding and more prosperous Outer Horner. Because their country is larger and has greater resources, the Outer Hornerites feel that they are favored by God, and that the fate of the Inner Hornerites reflects their innate inferiority. Citizens in this society are some combination of plant and machine; Outer Horner's president has multiple mustaches and chins (and three legs); and the media are mindlessly inept, parroting what they're told, distorting what they see. (Maybe this isn't so different after all.) As an Outer Hornerite pursuing a personal agenda against Inner Horner, a bitter citizen named Phil seizes power from the apparently senile president and bends the political apparatus of his country to his will. He imposes an onerous tax on the citizens of Inner Horner whenever they enter Outer Horner (where at least some of their body parts invariably intrude), thus turning victims into criminals. He then convinces his fellow citizens that those criminals are the embodiment of an absolute evil that must be exterminated. Tightly packed with detail, dialogue and black humor, the fairy tale narrative resolves itself in a mannerthat breathes fresh life into the Latin term deus ex machina ("god from the machine"). For those who appreciate speculative, experimental fiction, a mind-bending work inviting readers to ponder the nature of parable and the possibilities of language.
Praise for George Saunders:
"An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times."—Thomas Pynchon
"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut. His satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"A master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction."—Salon.com
| BN ID: | 2940169298130 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 05/28/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,138,390 |
