The Braindead Megaphone [Paperback]

George Saunders (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 2007

The breakout book from "the funniest writer in America"-not to mention an official Genius-a trade paperback original and his first nonfiction collection ever.

George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is comprised of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. Emblazoned with his trademark wit and singular vision, Saunders's endeavor into the art of the essay is testament to his exceptional range and ability as a writer and thinker.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Best known for his absurdist, sci-fi–tinged short stories, Saunders (In Persuasion Nation) offers up an assortment of styles in his first nonfiction collection. Humor pieces from the New Yorker like Ask the Optimist, in which a newspaper advice column spins out of control, reflect the gleeful insanity of his fiction, while others display more earnestness, falling short of his best work. In the title essay, for example, his lament over the degraded quality of American media between the trial of O.J. Simpson and the 9/11 terrorist attacks is indistinguishable from the complaints of any number of cultural commentators. Fortunately, longer travel pieces written for GQ, where Saunders wanders through the gleaming luxury hotels of Dubai or keeps an overnight vigil over a teenage boy meditating in the Nepalese jungle, are enriched by his eye for odd detail and compassion for the people he encounters. He also discusses some of his most important literary influences, including Slaughterhouse Five and Johnny Tremain (he holds up the latter as my first model of beautiful compression—the novel that made him want to be a writer). Despite a few rough spots, these essays contain much to delight. (Sept. 8)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

George Saunders’s Braindead Megaphone uses the fiction author’s trademark ability to, as the Boston Globe puts it, "convert his sorrow about mankind into exquisite comedies of disappointment" and applies it to the sometimes surreal and often discomfiting world around him. While most critics appreciate Saunders’s attempt to provide a counterpoint to America’s vitriol-filled but ultimately meaningless media punditry, both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times ridicule his humanistic approach as naïve and overly optimistic. One’s reaction to Saunders’ essays seems to hinge largely on one’s acceptance of his liberal perspective, his faith in the power of narrative, and his primary assertion that "the stories we choose to consume take our measure as a species" (Boston Globe).

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159448256X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594482564
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,326 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

George Saunders's political novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil was published by Riverhead Trade Paperbacks in September 2005. He is also the author of Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, both New York Times Notable Books, and The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, a New York Times children's bestseller. In 2000, The New Yorker named him one of the "Best Writers Under 40." He writes regularly for The New Yorker and Harper's, as well as Esquire, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. He won a National Magazine Award for Fiction in 2004 and his work is included in Best American Short Stories 2005. He teaches at Syracuse University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable, October 21, 2007

By 

Orlando Zepeda "oz" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Braindead Megaphone (Paperback)

For the title essay alone, this is the nonfiction book of the year. Saunders coins this term "The Braindead Megaphone" for our mass media and the circus its made of everything from the OJ Simpson Trial to the War in Iraq - and how we end up thinking and talking about such events, from the most ridiculous to the most serious, in equivalent terms. Both the term and the essay are pretty much right on, and eminently useful...And you have to keep in mind that Saunders is hands down the funniest writer in the business - funny like Stewart or Colbert, but smarter and more humane, less of a shtick. BUT that essay is just the beginning. What follows is a series of essays that are basically the antidote to everything he diagnoses at the beginning - if the media is deadening us, Saunders finds ways to end-run it: he travels to the Middle East, to the Mexican border, and to Nepal, and he tells his stories with the expected charm and humor, but also with a surprising insight and honesty (I never thought he would admit to LIKING the Minutemen he meets - but it makes the whole essay so much more effective when he does). All told, it's just a brilliant book - exactly the book we should all be reading. It's not heavy-handed and it's so much fun to read, but it made me take events in the world more seriously, made me take a fresh look at things, made me think about how I treat people. Wow, that sounds really hokey, but it's true. It also made me laugh a lot.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A decidedly mixed bag, January 21, 2008

By 

David M. Giltinan (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Braindead Megaphone (Paperback)

Based on this collection, George Saunders joins David Foster Wallace on the bench of terrifically smart writers I admire tremendously and who seem like wonderful, funny, mensch-like people.... this sentence needs a but, so here it is:

BUT, whose very cleverness can sometimes sabotage their writing. Ultimately, an excess of cleverness marred 'In Persuasion Nation' for me, and the same is true of this collection.

There are some terrific pieces - the title essay, in particular, is a tour de force. I loved his analysis of the Barthelme story and the essay on Twain. The piece on Dubai and 'Thought Experiment' were great, but I think both have been anthologized previously, as I'd read each already. Although 'Buddha Boy' was well-written, the subject matter didn't interest me all that much.

'A Survey of the Literature', 'Ask the Optimist' and 'Manifesto' were considerably less successful, each bogging down in its own cleverness long before reaching a merciful end.

So, this collection stacks up pretty much like every David Foster Wallace collection I've ever bought (and I've bought them all) - two or three essays so brilliant they leave me breathless, three or four more that are good, but not great, and some that are just headache-inducing.

Except that generally Wallace's brilliance lands him a fourth star. Not the case for Saunders, for this book at least.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Megaphone, not brain dead, February 18, 2008

By 

S. Stephens "The Booker" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Braindead Megaphone (Paperback)

Insightful and funny at the same time. No one should miss this. I hadn't read anything by Saunders until my son told me about him. Like Sterling, as far as social and scientific commentary is concerned, he's way ahead of the curve. Not only that, he's extremely funny. I'm a voracious reader, especially science and science fiction.

If you've never read George Saunders, this is the one to begin with.