Saunders is a brilliant, humane essayist. In Texas, he goes on patrol with the Minutemen, vigilantes intent on stopping illegal immigration. For George Saunders has a Very Sweet Soul indeed. Maybe there are a finite number of idling modes. Ali Yarrow from an aforementioned Elaine class gave this five stars three days before I added it to my 'to read' shelf.
What compelled me to add it? 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. Now imagine, metaphorically speaking, that the Megaphone Guy is the media and we, the audience of the media, are the party guests. We all know that somebody who likes to talk; likes to hear his or her own voice. I am finishing my Master thesis and this takes up most of my time. With his first collection of essays, George Saunders manages to totally screw up my mental model by pairing these personal-political essays with old-fashioned, honest-to-God satire. Saunders goes at journalistic topics with a unique voice: half-idiot the kind of idiot most of us bear inside ourselves and never admit to and half-pure insight.
Basically, teaching them that this news matters. He invites the reader to imagine themselves at a party where someone is speaking into a megaphone. Mi fermo qui, in questi mesi di campagna elettorale senza fine, in queste giornate dove Uomini col Megafono urlano soluzioni semplicistiche a temi complessi, scrivono hastag buttati lì senza concedersi, a loro e a noi, il tempo della riflessione. He enters in one state of mind and exits in another. They met with politicians and their case out which the suffragettes thought… 524 Words 2 Pages would constantly change the subject in my mind even though I would be writing; the voices would be so confused by me switching topics that they would not even notice my writing. It is all so that their voice is heard over another and people start to pay attention to them. At the end of my life, I know I won't be wishing I'd held more back, been less effusive, more often stood on ceremony, forgiven less, spent more days oblivious to the secret wishes and fears of the people around me.
I think as a result, I was able to pick up on his dry humor, which is often through clever wording and syntax. My Comp professor wants us all to ask questions and look at the same story from multiple outlets before taking it for the actual truth. How refreshing they are, school is almost out, they seem to be moist. Ultimately, an excess of cleverness marred 'In Persuasion Nation' for me, and the same is true of this collection. And it knows that no matter how well prepared it is -- no matter how ruthlessly it has held its projections up to intelligent scrutiny -- the place it is headed for is going to very different from the place it imagined. And that's a clever and admirable thing to do, because it means he sneaks in sideways to the points he wants to make, not beating us over the head but forcing us to really stop and think about what he's truly trying to say, to examine why we get so upset when this fundamental humanity is missing from the stories we're reading. Storytelling is a language-rich enterprise, but Megaphone Guy does not have time to generate powerful language.
While creating intimacy,we never think about scandalmonger people. Basically, it just read like a lot of lazy psuedo-journalism. Still so funny, is my point. Trying to get the most interesting news is what the New York Spectator is trying to do in order to top Gossip Girl. A few are awful, especially the ones that are supposed to be about some idea or issue but are really just all about how clever the author is. 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. Some minds idle in a kind of dreading crouch, waiting to be offended.
What's doubly frustrating is that I dove into this one with high hopes. The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. What are they really saying, though? Saunders, the imaginative artist, has failed to imagine other reasons for the catastrophe in Iraq besides the failure to imagine. Most of the time the answer is absolutely nothing. On returning to her home in Brighton, she decided to cycle to Oxfordthe next day to see her best friend. Personally, when I read the stories of these guys, I picture everyone as something like a tiny cartoon character.
The guy with the megaphone is dominant and controlling over the party, situation, and the minds of everyone. I did agree with it pretty much totally, but it still managed to teach me about looking beyond the kneejerk reaction Minutemen are jerky jerks to see the situation in a different light. Saunders admits to having been an Ayn Rand Republican as a young man and an engineering grad who came to reading very late in life. I'd be giving this book 3 stars if not for an essay on forming sentences. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Great to get more insight into Saunders' style and his teaching method. We all know it is wrong to do it, so how do we stop? In another journey to a 'far away land', Saunders writes Buddha Boy.
Smart, sharp, compassionate and sly, George Saunders is not to be missed. About The Braindead Megaphone From the 1 New York Times bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. I still l This book is like a summary of how I feel about George Saunders: sometimes hilarious, insightful, moving, surprising, and sometimes just gimmicky and self-indulgent and annoying. Saunders is obsessed with morality, especially globally, but he's also intensively self-aware and reflective, so he calls bullshit on himself before the reader when he's being self-righteous. As a fiction writer, Saunders was born to forgive. Saunders is a great essayist who makes a statement while still leaving the reader space to debate the issue. George Saunders makes many great points in his collection of essays about people, perspectives, the media, and even literature itself.