Review
From the book jacket: George Saunders has earned enthusiastic acclaim
and a devoted cult-following with his first two story collections and the recent
novella
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. With his new book,
In
Persuasion Nation, Saunders ups the ante in every way, and is poised to
break out to a wide new audience.
The stories in In Persuasion Nation are easily his best work yet. "The
Red Bow," about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National
Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European
widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short
Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that
first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this
volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds...
Beyond the Book
George Saunders was born in 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In
1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines
in Golden, Colorado. According to his bio he has been an environment engineer, a
technical writer and geophysical engineer, he has also worked in Sumatra, as a
doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a
guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West
Texas slaughterhouse.
In 1988 he received a masters in creative writing from Syracuse
University, and has been on the faculty since 1997 (he has also been a visiting
writer at various universities, and an adjunct professor at others).
To date he has published three volumes of short...
