![]() ![]() The world he wrote about was recognisable but dialled up to dystopian levels, with gonzo reality shows such as How My Child Died Violently (in 2000's Pastoralia) or teenagers raised to speak in advertising slogans thanks to a "gargadisk" implanted in their head (in 2006's Persuasion Nation) or luridly named psychotropics like DARKENFLOXXTM (in 2013's Tenth of December) engineered to stimulate love or loathing. ![]() ![]() ![]() When he started writing, aged 37, after a career as a geophysical engineer, it was small-town America that held his focus, refracted – as in the novels of his contemporary, David Foster Wallace – through baby boomer concerns about the deleterious effect of a corporatedriven culture that Saunders both loved and hated. There are distinct themes we might have expected. While the clamour exposes some fairly flimsy prejudices about the relative value we put on different forms of fiction, it has been tantalising – a bit like when Bradley Wiggins said he'd do The Jump – to wonder how Saunders would manage the side-shuffle. A US headline a few years ago put it more bluntly: "George Saunders Needs to Write a Goddamn Novel Already". As far back as 2004, the American writer George Saunders admitted he "sometimes" felt pressure to turn from short stories to a novel. ![]()
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