george saunders

Brilliance!

what an honor for that moose, to be on the Internet

he writes like you, scott.

hahaha, i was actually writing something and i stopped to read the saunders thing and my first reaction - after i stopped laughing - was: jesus, maybe i should stick to reading.

The theater company I belong to in Chicago is doing a stage adaptation of "Jon" in October, and he'll be here at least for the opening.

re-reading civilwarland (and will probably follow with a re-reading of everything else)

love this man deeply

cannot believe there have been no film adaptations of his work yet

Most of his the good stuff happens in the narration, or inside people's heads, for the most part: hard to translate to the screen.

wasnt there going to be an adaptation of civilwarland? or did i make that up

with ben stiller? i think?

or possibly i mean affleck. someone with the forename benjamin.

ben gurion

Sounds like a disaster in the making.

FILM:

Currently in development is a screenplay for CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, optioned by Ben Stiller who has commissioned Mr. Saunders to write the screenplay.

Mr. Saunders has already completed the screenplay for Joysticks which is based on the story "Sea Oak," to be directed by Keir McFarlane.

"Sea Oak" is probably my favorite story of his, but it's hard to imagine it working as a movie. Maybe animated it would.

the stiller thing has been talked about for years. probably would never happen but i could see him being cast as the vietnam war veteran--but that would be weird following tropic thunder.

I'd like to see it.

I just reread Gappers and Phil and In Persuasion Nation and I don't know how I feel about this guy anymore -- the first time i read the latter I thought it was amaaaaazing and now I'm finding his various tics like show up? a little more? -- not his dialogue, actually, but eh I don't know.

Like, the last story, forgotten the title. The one about the guy who works on some kind of Air Force base coming up with press releases downplaying snafus, and who goes around trying to deal with his annoying boss and Christian coworker with self-help slogans, and not doing very well with it; except this guy also lives with the ghosts of his parents, and that bit takes over at the end. And I started feeling it was basically kind of arbitrary? where that aspect took over? And not just at that point in that story, but almost in the collection as a whole? -- like it's organized into these subunits and everything is sort of almost linked, and it started to seem to me like the whole thing was trying to carry too much weight on too glib a structure.

But: I also kind of think I might find more to enjoy in his earlier collections, now, if I went back; that maybe the stuff that's bothering me now is more of a thing in that last collection, maybe even why I enjoyed it more than the first two in the first place.

Also now I think maybe was there a long argument earlier on in this thread about basically the issue I'm having but in relation to where the fantastic stuff took over in a different story? I haven't reread the thread yet. Might do that, now.

see, everything you mention about the last story, Comm Comm, the connectivity and stuff, is everything i love about it

i suspect my issue with that one might be different to my issue with the others. i think maybe the only reason i'm having a problem is that the sections, the way they're prefaced by the extracts from the made-up book, how there's a section of 'realist' ones and a section with the more gonzo ones, put the stories into a position where they look like they ought to have a cohesive argument - which they don't - and that also makes it seem like all the departures from realism working in the same way - which they really don't

i suspect he didn't place them in the order that he did to make a cohesive argument, though, but instead, grouped like minded stories together so they could play off one another. it is my guess that saunders doesn't want to make an argument or a point with his fiction, other than to create the stories themselves.

and by point i mean, well of course each individual story has a point and a theme, but i think you're looking for an argument in these stories that just isn't there for me at all.

no i don't think there is, either - i think the arrangement is intended to do what you're saying, but i feel like it ends up giving a contrary impression. is the thing.

i guess i am still wondering what this contrary impression is. so you think putting the like minded stories together makes them seem flimsier?

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2010/01/25/100125sh_shouts_saunders

dope interview - http://www.moreview.org/content/dynamic/view_text.php?text_id=819

(just realised it's old, new to me tho)

thx

Love his response here:

Interviewer: So much of your fiction is charged with social import. Given our recent political upheavals, have you ever thought of writing overt political satire?

Saunders: I'm not very interested in that kind of satire because it works on the assumption that They Are Assholes. Fiction works on the assumption that They Are Us, on a Different Day.

..which relates back to his notion of compassion/satire not being mutually exclusive earlier in the interview.

Great interview (I love "Escape from Spiderhead" too): http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/12/george-saunderss-wild-ride.html

If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he’s made of sugar.

"Isabelle" is as stupendous a story as I'm aware of from the last 40 years or so. Blunt and pure.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Friday, September 9, 2005

Unexpected! I just discovered him. I realized I'd read "The Falls" in The New Yorker some years ago. Anyway, "Isabelle" is terrific.

where have you guys been!

haha i was like shit yeah i'm ahead of alfred on something

alfred that was quick! did you buy civilwarland today or something?

New book of stories, "Tenth of December," is aces.

Well, newish, not out til January but I have a review copy.

She took my face in her hands and turned my head so I was looking in the window at Ryan, who was heating a bottle at the kitchen sink.
“Does that look like a hitter?” she said.
“No,” I said.
And it didn’t. Not at all.
“Jesus,” I said. “Does anybody tell the truth around here?”
“I do,” she said. “You do.”
I looked at her and for a minute she was eight and I was ten and we were hiding in the doghouse while Ma and Dad and Aunt Toni, on mushrooms, trashed the patio.

profile in the nyt magazine - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/magazine/george-saunders-just-wrote-the-best-book-youll-read-this-year.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

That's a great link. Thanks.

i don't know about 'the best book you'll read this year'

i mean, i'm brining war and peace to the hospital next week

salt war tol.

This is sitting on my table right now. I sort of have to wait for my gf to finish reading it first but still, stoked.

i don't know about 'the best book you'll read this year'

I've surely mentioned before the reviewer quoted on rhe blurb of Mason & Dixon, which came out, what, 2001? who said "If there's a better book this decade, I'll literally eat my hat."

Actually, for me, M&D might save this reviewer all sorts of gustatory indignities, which in no wise reduces the absurdity of the comment.

looking forward to reading this anyway.

I think it's actually "if America produces a novel better than this all decade, I promise to eat it" - I think Mason & Dixon came out in 1998 so that was a pretty safe bet at that point in the decade, but then again it was Philip Hensher and anything that makes him uncomfortable is okay by me.

It is that, thanks. Never let every single crucial detail about an anecdote being wrong put you off trying to tell it.

Matt DC, what have you got against Philip Hensher particularly? (i ask from a totally agnostic p.o.v. - never read a word of his fiction, enjoyed the odd review of his in the spectator, remember reading an unsolicited letter in private eye which testified to at least one moment of decency)

oh and looking forward to the new saunders, even tho i think it's all been downhill since Civilwarland...

Ward Fowler - I was just being facetious really, I find Hensher's writing style irritating and I didn't enjoy The Northern Clemency, but that's about the extent of it. I'm willing to believe he's a good guy really who's on the right side of many important issues.

I enjoy his reviews in the spectator and i think he's smart and funny, if a little conceited, but i can't get myself interested in reading any of his novels