The Braindead Megaphone (Paperback)

by George Saunders (Author) "I find myself thinking of a guy standing in a field in the year 1200 doing whatever it is people in 1200 did while standing..." (more)
Key Phrases: inner fence, Huck Finn, Sister Lynette, United States (more...)

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

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade; Cover Worn, Underlined and Noted edition (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159448256X
• ISBN-13: 978-1594482564
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,375 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 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

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.

8 of 8 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)

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 4 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)

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.