Extrapolation

The Tenth of December made such a splash (and was IMHO so good) I'm continuing to catch up with Saunders's earlier work.  In Persuasion Nation (2006) is another collection of stories.  While not as varied, far ranging, and ambitious as The Tenth of December, these stories nonetheless are inventive and provocative.  Saunders excels at creating a particular slant, a certain view that is key to each story.  He requires a bit of trust and patience from his readers. At first you may not know where you are, what is real, what is not. But through skillful and creative use of language Sauders manages to paint a singular picture in each story.  It's a picture you view at first from only an inch away. Gradually you pull back and get the full image and the larger significance.

Saunders is particularly good at positing new future realities based on extrapolation of troubling trends observed in our present. In other words, if we take these disturbing present-day tendencies and follow them into the future, we might get this peculiar picture. He presents the image with verbal nuances and tricks, and part of the fun is gradually figuring out in each story what we're actually reading: working back from the strangeness of what we read and finding today's familiar reality embedded in the narrative.

It's a formula that can get tiresome, but there is plenty of inventiveness, humor, pathos, and just plain good writing here. My Amendment is a brilliant satire of conservative view on gender.  In Persuasion Nation is a terrific send up of ubiquitous marketing images. Brad Corrigan, American is a telling exaggeration of current trends in reality television and pop culture.

For someone so solidly entrenched in academic and highfalutin' literary circles Saunders is surprisingly in touch with popular culture. His eyes are open, and he's not spending all of his time in the ivory tower.  He's out among us observing, indeed perhaps taking notes as a secret agent that reports back the latest to headquarters. I hope HQ is listening.