ON BLURBERY Apropos of George Saunders, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline"

 

                                          Back Cover Blurbs on Paperback, CivilWarLand

On Blurbery

A spot replete with fakery is the back cover of any book, where the blurbers hold sway, trying to say only good things, often lying through their teeth about what they really think of the book. Why lie? Because these guys are writing books themselves, and when the time comes they will need favors returned, i.e., more lying blurbs for the backs of their books.

 

Here are some of the blurb-lies—annotated by me, with rebuttals—on the back cover of the paperback of the book by George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (first published in 1996):

 

“George Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice” …Tobias Wolff

 

Well, Saunders went on to become a writer of arresting brilliance; he probably is the best living American short story writer today. But back when he published CivilWarLand he still had a long way to go. His “sure sense of his material” was far from sure. The narratives of this book are often lacking in a sense of structure and the writing is ragged.

 

Saunders himself, in looking back years later (2012), at this, his first book, is aware of its faults. In his afterword to the paperback he tries to be kind to his former self. But interesting phrases slip into his afterword, ways of characterizing these stories: among others, “abrupt and telegraphic, truncated and halting.” He even suggests, at one point, obliquely, that the book is “a failed attempt.” As for the voice, yes, its resources are already apparently inexhaustible, and the Saunders voice will grow in power and assurance with each new book he writes.

 

“Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless.” …Jonathan Franzen

 

See the comment about the raggedness of narrative above. It took Saunders—as he admits in the afterword—“seven long years” to write the stories of this book, stories that often have the same setting and the same identical narrator. Readers in reviews on Amazon often complain that he writes the same story over and over. In reading this collection one has no sense of effortlessness whatsoever. On the contrary. The narratives are belabored.

 

“An astonishingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.” …Thomas Pynchon

 

The voice may be astonishing, but it is not yet tuned. That will come later. That “just the kinds of stories we need to get us etc., etc.” sounds like total fakery. In other words, BS. There is a certain kind of comic writer whose comedy, even when dark, uplifts us by the force of its art. Flannery O’Connor is such a writer. So is Raymond Carver, and so is Isaac Babel. In his afterword Saunders mentions each of these writers as models in great writing. He also notes that you must give up on imitating the greats and find your own unique way. I think that in the year 2020, George Saunders has found his way and has become that kind of writer. But not with this, his first book, far from it. You want to experience a bad dream, read CivilWarLand all the way through, cover to cover.

[Excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]