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~ (Author) "It's one thing to be a small country, but the country of Inner Horner was so small only one Inner Hornerite at a time could..." (more)
Key Phrases: connecting parts, Outer Horner, Inner Horner, Border Area (more...)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
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Book Description
Welcome to Inner Horner, a nation so small it can only accommodate one citizen at a time. The other six citizens must wait their turns in the Short-Term Residency Zone of the surrounding country of Outer Horner. It's a long-standing arrangement between the fantastical, not-exactly-human citizens of the two countries. But when Inner Horner suddenly shrinks, forcing three-quarters of the citizen then in residence over the border into Outer Horner territory, the Outer Hornerites declare an Invasion In Progress--having fallen under the spell of the power-hungry and demagogic Phil.

So begins The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. Fueled by Saunders's unrivaled wit, outlandish imagination, and incisive political sensibility, here is a deeply strange yet strangely familiar fable of power and impotence, justice and injustice--an Animal Farm for our times.

Praise for George Saunders
Author of Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline

"An astoundingly tuned voice--graceful, dark, authentic, and funny--telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times."
--Thomas Pynchon

"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut. [His] satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction."
--Salon.com

Amazon.com Exclusive
Want to know the story behind the story of award-winning author George Saunders's new novella, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil? Then read "Why I Wrote Phil," an exclusive essay from Saunders concerning the genesis of his new work, which has been praised as possessing "an absurdist wit as playful as Monty Python's and a vision as dark as Samuel Beckett's."

Read George Saunders's Essay, "Why I Wrote Phil"

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From Publishers Weekly

The shift of target to Iraq War–era America proves problematic for major 1990s satirist Saunders (Pastoralia), who here checks in with an allegorical novella centered on the tiny imaginary nations of Inner and Outer Horner. The citizens of Inner Horner, live-and-let-livers who have a lot of unproductive discussions, are countable on two hands, and they are not-quite-human: one man's torso is simply a tuna fish can and a belt. (There are 15 b&w illustrations scattered throughout.) When their nation suddenly shrinks, the group spills into Outer Horner, and a border dispute results. It paves the way for the rise of an everyman Outer Horner dictator named Phil—a jingoistic, brute-force bully. The eventual fortuitous military intervention by Greater Keller, a neighboring technocapitalist nation of latte drinkers, comes after much lingering over the mechanics of Phil's coup. (There are multiple references to the "spasming rack" from which Phil's brain periodically slides.) Despite press-chat comparisons to Animal Farm, the book lacks Orwell's willingness to follow his nightmare vision all the way out to the end. Saunders delivers some very funny exchanges and imaginative set-pieces, but literally has to call in a deus ex machina to effect Outer Horner's final undoing. It's entertaining, but politics and war don't really work that way, allegorically or otherwise. (Sept. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 144 pages
  • Publisher: Riverhead Trade (September 6, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594481520
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594481529
  • Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.8 x 0.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #77,926 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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George Saunders
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Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
It's one thing to be a small country, but the country of Inner Horner was so small only one Inner Hornerite at a time could fit inside, and the other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turns to live in their own country while standing very timidly in the surrounding country of Outer Horner. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
connecting parts
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Outer Horner, Inner Horner, Border Area, President Rick, Short-Term Residency Zone, Old Gus, Greater Keller, First Daughter, First Lady, Outer Ilorner, Presidential Palace, Peace-Encouraging Enclosure, The Phil, Certificate of Total Approval, Brow Clip, Leon the Border Guard, New Horner, Presidential Cravat, God Almighty
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24 Reviews
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3.7 out of 5 stars (24 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Saunders hits another one out of the park, September 6, 2005
Another winner from one of contemporary literature's funniest and most original writers. If you're a fan of Saunders's previous story collections -- "Pastoralia" and "Civilwarland in Bad Decline" -- you'll read this in one sitting, and then immediately start all over again. (At least that's what I did.) If you're unfamiliar with Saunders and enjoy surreal, topical fiction, this is one you should definitely check out. The critics' default comparison to "Animal Farm" is not entirely inaccurate as Saunders does seem to favor the absurd allegory over traditional realism, but don't assume that he's a second-rate Orwell imitator. For one thing, his stories are infused with more pathos and heart than Orwell's, and more hope than Vonnegut's (another frequent comparison). In short, if the top writers working in America today were to play a game of king of the mountain, Saunders would have a good shot at pushing others off the peak. But if the handling of his subject matter is any indication of how Saunders regards his fellow man, instead of pushing he'd extend his hand and help pull others to the top, all the while making sure everyone had enough room and a steady foothold. Buy and enjoy.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Depressing book with a happy ending, February 23, 2006
By James A. W. Shaw (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Comically, George Saunders' new novella--The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, a delight of absurdism and fantasticality (if that's a word)--starts with the most improbable disclaimer, on the copyright page:

"This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental."

Remember that when you consider how Saunders describes the character of Cal: Cal "resembled a giant belt buckle with a blue dot affixed to it, if a gigantic belt buckle with a blue dot affixed to it had been stapled to a tuna fish can." And that's a literal description--not a metaphor to be found. I mean, it's not like I sat next to a guy like that in high school.

This great little story is about the struggle of the populations of Inner Horner and Outer Horner. Inner Horner is so small that only one resident can occupy it at a time. The rest wait for their turn in the nearby Short-Term Residency Zone. Outer Horner, by contrast, is a vast and glorious land, plenty of room for all. The Outer Hornerites assume their land's glory is the result of their valiant collective character. Their national anthem is called: "Large, Large, Large Beloved Land (If Not The Best, Why So Very Dominant?)." Eventually, along comes opportunistic and fascist Phil.

In some sense, you can enjoy this as nothing but a fun, silly little book, good for giggles, and with incredible illustrations, too. But all of the laughs are just a patina for the deeper political and social points Saunders seeks to make. Who is Phil? In various shades, he ranges from Hitler, Stalin, Amin to Reagan, Bush (I&II--mostly II), Thatcher to a seventh-grade bully.

There are plenty of political analogies to draw out of Phil. My favorite is the way in which the characters are so willing to infer their personal qualities from their circumstances, circumstances which they had no role in creating. In Phil, (like, dare I say, society) this is what keeps the haves from helping the have-nots. If they deserved our help, the reasoning goes, they wouldn't even need it because they would already have what we have because they would deserve it like we do--therefore, they don't need, or deserve, our help and we shouldn't give it to them.

For all the laughs and wit, the underlying message is quite depressing. The story has a happy ending, of sorts--I hope you've already figured out for yourself that Phil's reign, though frightening, is brief. Unfortunately, Saunders' message reduces all of the world's troubles to a problem with human nature. Not to say that there aren't real and dangerous human tendencies, but this critique dead-ends because it ignores the more relevant critique of how a society's organization (even in small societies like Inner Horner and Outer Horner) constrains and enables these tendencies. Yes, as I said above, characters do infer things about themselves based on where they live, but even there the characters are locked into an automatic response. There is none of the complex drama of agency vs. environment.

What we often label human nature is more often the not-so-preordained product of the social order. The path to a better society lies not in waiting for a stroke of celestial luck, as Phil's characters must, but in people working together and figuring out how they're going to make their society work. That's a harder story to tell, of course, so maybe I shouldn't blame Saunders for sidestepping it.

All in all, though, this is an incredible book and I highly recommend it. For the graduate student or budding lawyer with hardly any time for outside reading, this is perfectly short and digestable in an afternoon.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars The Brief and Misleadingly Packaged Novella of Phil, October 11, 2005
If this is the 21st Century's Animal Farm, then Spongebob Squarepants is the 21st Century's 1984. It has several funny moments, but...at what price? Well, at $13, according to the publisher.

I love Saunders's short stories, and "Phil" would not be out of place in a forthcoming collection of his work. But as a standalone edition, it's overpriced; I could see paying the premium for a limited, collectible small press edition. But while this is a book, it is no more a novel than Nicholson Baker's Checkpoint: A Novel. (Baker's book is a bigger offender, in the sense that it actually has the gall to call itself "A Novel"...whereas Saunders's publishers tiptoe around and call this "a fable.")

Other readers recommend you sample this in the bookshop before buying it. I would warn that if you start sampling it, you will probably end up having read the whole thing before your feet begin to tire or the clerks start asking you to buy something. This is only partly a testament to Saunders's prose. For as a product, priced similarly to other fatter trade paperbacks, this is either a skimpy novella or a heavily padded short story.

Glancing at Saunders's essay about the origin of the piece, I see that it started in response to a challenge by Lane Smith. Now I really feel cheated! A collectible small press edition with color illustrations by Lane Smith would be worth a lot more than $13. And Saunders could still have included it in his next collection of short stories.

Full disclosure: I borrowed my copy from the library.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Didn't Care For It At All
The gap between the general level of appreciation of this book (judged by the average number of stars awarded by Amazon reviewers) and my own experience with it is greater than... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Poogy

1.0 out of 5 stars I Love George Saunders, But...
I am a BIG FAN of Saunders. He is one of my all-time favorite fiction writers and I have read his other two books countless times. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Katka

4.0 out of 5 stars So absurd, yet so real
A brief allegory on [insert religious/ethnic conflict]. Personally, I assumed this was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but some parts of the book lead me to question that... Read more
Published 12 months ago by G. D. Young

2.0 out of 5 stars I was thoroughly enjoying this until the end
Wow... this book made me angry at the end. While this is a simple book filled with simple characters, its directly applicable to modern life and current events. Read more
Published on July 9, 2007 by Plaid Ninja

5.0 out of 5 stars I've known a number of Phils
I was so entertained by this book that I've bought additional copies for friends. Saunders, in a small book, manages to capture the core frailties of our species in the bodies of... Read more
Published on June 13, 2007 by Robert M. Miller

4.0 out of 5 stars amusing, until you think about it. then, disturbing.
The humor in this story does a good job of showing the absurdity of the rest of the story. The characters are almost caricatures of the groups they represent: The media shout... Read more
Published on April 15, 2007 by Elizabeth

4.0 out of 5 stars very very enjoyable tale.
i love george saunders books. i'll buy anything with his name on it. this is a wonderfully enjoyable little sci-fi fairy tale; similar in message, but much better (more enjoyable)... Read more
Published on February 3, 2007 by fluffy, the human being.

1.0 out of 5 stars Missed the mark
I'm a big George Saunders fan, but this one doesn't have the magic. The idea is stretched very thin, and the writing is straight-forward, lacking the sparkle his other books... Read more
Published on December 14, 2006 by B. Vandervoo

4.0 out of 5 stars Truth might be scarier than this fiction
Think of Animal Farm combined with Yellow Submarine, with running banter from Veggie Tales. In this political fable, national populations number in the handful. Read more
Published on November 4, 2006 by Alan Rifkin

5.0 out of 5 stars The Brief & Frightening Reign of Phil
An extraordinarily powerful small book that satirizes the nativist protectionism now rampant in many parts of the world in such an amusing manner that even nativists could read... Read more
Published on November 3, 2006 by Christopher H. Jacobs

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