Wednesday, August 30, 2023

The Braindead Megaphone, by George Saunders

This collection of nonfiction essays by George Saunders is one of the best things I’ve read lately. Saunders takes an off-kilter, tongue in cheek, satirical attitude towards such subjects as the border crisis, a boy in Nepal who has fasted and meditated for seven months, the invention of Dubai, the failure of the media, and so on. He refuses to be serious about anything, yet he is always, or almost always, deadly serious. His essays on Huck Finn, Donald Barthelme, and Kurt Vonnegut were excellent. I’ve read his novel and several story collections, but this book particularly impressed me.

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