George Saunders. (2012). CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella. Random House Publishing Group.

George Saunders. 2012. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella. Random House Publishing Group.

George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella. Random House Publishing Group, 2012.

George Saunders. CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella. Random House Publishing Group, 2012.

OverDrive Product Record

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CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

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1. • value: relationships
2. • value: literary fiction
3. • value: Humor
4. • value: short fiction
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6. • value: Fiction
7. • value: short story collections
8. • value: American fiction
9. • value: 1990s
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26. • value: funny books
27. • value: humor books
28. • value: humorous books
29. • value: George Saunders
30. • value: Literary gifts
31. • value: contemporary american literature
32. • value: short stories collections
33. • value: long short story

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Saunders, George
   • bioText: George Saunders is the author of eight books, including the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2013 he was awarded the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story and was included in Time’s list of the one hundred most influential people in the world. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
   • name: George Saunders
2. • role: Author of introduction, etc.
   • fileAs: Ferris, Joshua
   • name: Joshua Ferris

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Random House

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2012-11-27T00:00:00-05:00

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title

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

fullDescription

Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way. In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. With a new introduction by Joshua Ferris and a new author’s note by Saunders himself, this edition is essential reading for those seeking to discover or revisit a virtuosic, disturbingly prescient voice.
 
Praise for George Saunders and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
 
“It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Saunders’s satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it’s also ferocious and very funny.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
 
“George Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice. [CivilWarLand in Bad Decline] is scary, hilarious, and unforgettable.”—Tobias Wolff
 
“Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless.”—Jonathan Franzen
 
“Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith
 
“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

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 1996
     In this debut collection of seven dystopian fantasies, some of which have appeared in the New Yorker and Harper's, America in the near future is a toxic wasteland overrun by vicious thugs and venal opportunists who prey on the weak and misshapen. Saunders's feverish imagination conjures up images as horrific as any from a Hieronymus Bosch painting: a field full of braying mules toppled over from bone marrow disease; a tourist attraction featuring pickled stillborn babies; and cows with Plexiglas windows in their sides. The black humor and vision of American enterprise and evangelism gone haywire are reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's early works. In the novella ``Bounty,'' for example, the clawed-foot narrator, who flees slavery under the ``Normals'' to find his sister, sees a McDonald's that is the headquarters of the Church of Appropriate Humility, aka ``the Guilters.'' ``In Guilter epistemology,'' he observes, ``the arches represent the twin human frailties of arrogance and mediocrity.'' Despite the richness of the vision and the occasionally heart-melting prose, however, there is little difference in voice to distinguish one story from another. Read in one sitting, they blur into a bleak and unsettling vision of the world to come.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 1996
     This group of stories focuses on characters who work in a theme park called CivilWarLand in the future United States. Environmental pollution and genetic mutation have taken their toll, dividing the population into Normals and Flaweds. America's farmland lies fallow. All scramble to feed themselves and their families. Cars are hauled by horses, barges are hauled by humans, and technology continues its amazing feats, such as "off-loading" human memories, which are then sold as virtual-reality experiences. People continue to struggle for recognition, for wealth, and for the American Dream in the face of grinding poverty and limited opportunities. Saunders's surreal depiction of a bleak future for the country is both startling and believable. Here's hoping he is not a prophet. The author is a teacher and consultant for Raytheon. This is his first work of fiction. Recommended for public libraries.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Continuing Education Lib.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     January 1, 1996
     Saunders presents his unique vision of America in the near future in this debut collection of short stories. In a landscape littered by gutted Wal-Marts and condemned Arbys, Saunders' astoundingly naive characters encounter high-tech absurdity and savage cruelty. Throughout this collection, the author parades one stunning image after the next: see-through cows, a virtual-reality entrepreneur who off-loads and sells his own memories for $3,000 per decade, a cheesy theme park with a SafeOrgy Room and shrink-wrapped clients. These stories are all of a piece, all stamped with Saunders' hallucinatory, feverish images, so that there is no clear line of demarcation between his pieces. That seems a small quibble, though, in view of his uncanny ability to take readily recognizable elements from the present and warp them just enough to scare and dazzle his readers. These stories are inventive, hilarious, and terrifying. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1996))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1996, American Library Association.)

popularity

372

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Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in esteem from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form, inspiring an entire generation of writers along the way. In six stories and a novella, Saunders hatches an unforgettable cast of characters, each struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. With a new introduction by Joshua Ferris and a new author’s note by Saunders himself, this edition is essential reading for those seeking to discover or revisit a virtuosic, disturbingly prescient voice.
 
Praise for George Saunders and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
 
“It’s no exaggeration to say that short story master George Saunders helped change the trajectory of American fiction.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“Saunders’s satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it’s also ferocious and very...

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