CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

I could have picked anything by George Saunders, really. He’s the closest thing I have to a personal deity. Such is the level of awe and wonder that he invokes in me, I actually find him difficult to discuss. It’s like trying to look directly at the sun.

Suffice it to say that CivilWarLand in Bad Decline—the title refers to a failing theme park—is like all of his other short story collections. It’s beautiful and wise and heart-breaking and deeply intelligent and, yes, desperately funny. I would pay a lot of money to be able to read it again… show more.

Most of us, at one point or another, have had a job that puts us in an ordinary but terrible position: Do destructive and unethical work, and suffer spiritual/moral disgrace, or refuse to do destructive and unethical work, and suffer material/worldly disgrace. I’ve certainly been there. No book brings that dilemma to life more vividly than this story collection about hellish jobs. The comedy is bleak, brilliant, and mean. It might shock you; in recent years, Saunders has acquired a reputation as a Buddhist literary saint.

All jobs are awful, all bosses are cruel, and all employees are crushed by the corporate machine. Some of them, the ones that narrate these stories, try to fight back, to maintain some semblance of dignity. Saunders’ vision of the workplace is satirical and unsparing—a fantastical nightmare of free-market capitalism. The humor is sharp and savage, and the compassion for these underdogs is deep and affecting.