CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

Here's a collection of several short stories and a novella by George Saunders, a guy I'd heard too much about to keep ignoring. It's been ages since I've posted about a collection of short stories. Actually, I'm not even sure I've ever done so. Regardless, I'll bang this post out story by story before attempting a take on the collection of work as a whole.

"CivilWarLand in Bad Decline"

The book's first and eponymous story comes flying in at a fast pace and from all sorts of angles. In an unspecified location and time - but likely a slightly dystopian near future, which seems to be the case for most of the stories - there is a history museum-amusement park hybrid known as CivilWarLand, and as the title implies, it's seen better days. Most of the park has fallen into disrepair, staff are constantly being laid off or blackmailed into lower wages, and gangs of street youths vandalize the property and assault the dwindling number of paid guests that there are. What's more, the ghosts of an 1860s family done in by patriarchal murder-suicide pop in and out of the picture to recreate their own violent demise. Lawsuits are filed (and won) by guests who claim anxiety after being made to witness historical elements like slavery and the gallows, but there seems to be little law enforcement when it comes to all of the actual violence and danger associated with the park. One day a man who looks and acts the part of an old Western gunslinger shows up and offers to take up a job working park security. Despite admitting to being a convicted war criminal, he's hired on the spot. I won't spoil the story's climax, but it takes place on Halloween when the park is full of kids in costumes and, well, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks pretty well. At first, I was slightly underwhelmed by this story. Having lent its name to the collection, and batting lead-off, it already had a fairly high bar set. But in hindsight, I think I just spent a good chunk of this one growing accustomed to Saunders' writing style, an interesting blend of imaginative absurdity (a struggling Civil War-themed amusement park is haunted by ghosts) and starkly depressing realistic elements (a terrible economy has led to severe unemployment rates and a rise in violent juvenile delinquency). An interesting, if occasionally manic, read.

"Isabelle"

The shortest tale in the book and also the only one with an uplifting ending. The titular character is a hideously handicapped and disfigured girl who requires constant attention. The narrator, who starts off as a child and then witnesses some pretty terrible things, eventually grows into the role of her primary caretaker. This one was impressively economical, delivering a coherent and meaningful story; the narrator grows up, grows disillusioned by the lowlives he knows as his neighbors and family, and then ultimately finds happiness in caring for Isabelle full time, and all of this happens in just seven written pages.

"The Wavemaker Falters"

The narrator in this one is known simply as "Mr. Guilt," and for a reason. His own negligence while inspecting the grate covering a wave-generating contraption at a Basque-inspired water park has led directly to the gruesome death of a young boy. The boy's ghost haunts him most nights, which leaves him utterly incapable of sexually pleasing his wife, who instead begins to fuck his boss and biggest rival, a man who has saved a handful of people at the water park rather than indirectly killing one. The whole thing gets pretty depressing pretty quickly and hits a climax as the dead boy's father finally decides to kill the narrator. Mr. Guilt is done giving a shit and readily accepts his fate, but the story ends with a minor cliffhanger instead; Mr. Guilt decides he's already hit rock bottom, and determines to turn his life around. Interestingly, this is the second story out of three to deal with ghosts and obscure theme parks.

"The 400-Pound CEO"

In a book full of dark and depressing stories, this one is perhaps the darkest and most depressing. The narrator, Jeffrey, weighs 400 pounds and does paperwork for a company that traps raccoons for clients under the pretense of releasing them into the wild, only to kill them all out of sight and bury them in mass graves. Contrary to what the title would have you believe, Jeffrey is not the CEO; the CEO is a violent and demeaning asshole who makes Jeffrey's life a living hell - on top of the hell that it is to weigh 400 pounds, that is. About two thirds of the way through the story, an event occurs that leaves Jeffrey in a positive state of mind, but it all unravels pretty quickly and the story ends with Jeffrey in a situation that makes his initial one seem downright pleasant by comparison. So, yeah. Bleak.

"Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz"

The main character in this one is a guy who operates some virtual reality machinery that allows people to experience all kinds of fantasies, alternate lifestyles, and adrenaline rushes. Sheepish men come in and ask to be high school cheerleaders getting ravaged by the entire football team. Younger people ask to endure World War II combat in all of its grisly detail. Thrill-seekers request the experience of getting stalked by serial killers. An interesting concept already, but then comes the revelation: in order to "upload" these experiences to other people, the narrator first "offloads" them from the brains of others. This one is kind of all over the place thematically, exploring both positive and negative aspects of amnesia, Alzheimer's, and the idea of forgetting your troubles and worries for better or worse. One criticism; I just watched Total Recall, and as such, the ideas here seem far less original in my eyes.

"Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror"

Easily the most surreally depicted environment of all the stories, and also the one most lacking in any sort of plot. A 92-year old woman works at a grotesque biological museum of sorts, featuring exhibits like pickled fetuses in jars (one for every week of embryonic development) and living cows with plexiglass windows in their skin designed to let viewers see functioning organ systems. Enjoyable, but totally bizarre.

"Bounty"

At last we come to the novella, a story as long as all six others combined but not nearly as entertaining or powerful as that combination. This is essentially a brief adventure across a dystopian future America in which slavery is once again legal. These slaves are genetically mutated people known as "flaweds," and they've grown in abundance due to radiation levels or something similar. The main character has claws on his feet instead of toes, a relatively minor flaw and one that's easy to hide with shoes, and as such he is often able to pass for a "normal" when out and about in society. He undergoes a series of enslavements and escapes and then the story just ends completely abruptly, to the point where I'm still not convinced my book isn't just missing a final page. The author gets to use a lot more time doing world-building here than he does in his short stories, and I'll grant him that there are a few instances of really good social satire going on here, particularly with regard to disillusioned perceptions of morality. Still, I can't say that "Bounty" was either a great stand-alone story or a great component of this book in general.

In summation, then, what's my take? CivilWarLand in Bad Decline obviously had some recurring themes - guilt-induced depression, loneliness, the complete victory of capitalism over human virtue - and components - virtual or simulated realities, absurd corporations, murder through negligence - that give the entire collection a very specific feeling. At times, it's almost too specific, and I think there's a point of diminishing returns here where the value of each individual story is greater than the amount each piece contributes to the whole. George Saunders has earned plenty of comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut, and I can see similarities in both the frank-but-descriptive writing style and the humanist messages. However, I'd sooner draw comparisons to Joseph Heller, a slightly darker and more cynical writer than Vonnegut, who was just as capable of humor, but often came off as just a shade more angry and less sad. Regardless, I enjoyed George Saunders' debut collection and would readily read more of his stuff, but I'm in no rush to purchase his entire bibliography from Amazon or anything. Not yet, at least. Not yet.