In Persuasion Nation
In Persuasion Nation
George Saunders
George Saunders has earned enthusiastic acclaim and a devoted cult-following with his first two story collections and the recent novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. With his new book, In Persuasion Nation, Saunders ups the ante in every way, and is poised to break out to a wide new audience.
The stories In Persuasion Nation are easily his best work yet. “The Red Bow,”about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and “Bohemians,” the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders’s writing.
Saunders’s work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest-and most consoling-cries in the wilderness of the millennium’s political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation’s sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation’s literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most.
George Saunders
In Persuasion Nation
For Paula, again, and always
I.
Our enemies will first assail the health of our commerce, throwing up this objection and that to innovative methods and approaches designed to expand our prosperity, and thus our freedom. Their oldfashioned clinging to obsolete ideas only signals their extinction. In the end, we must pity them: we are going forward with joy and hope; they are being left behind, mired in fear.
– Bernard “Ed” Alton ,
Taskbook for the New Nation,
Chapter 1. “New Man, New Growth-Community”
I CAN SPEAK!™
Mrs. Ruth Faniglia
210 Lester Way
Rochester, NY 14623
Dear Mrs. Faniglia,
We were very sorry to receive your letter of 23 Feb., which accompanied the I CAN SPEAK!™ you returned, much to our disappointment. We here at KidLuv believe that the I CAN SPEAK!™ is an innovative and essential educational tool that, used with proper parental guidance, offers a rare early-development opportunity for babies and toddlers alike. And so I thought I would take some of my personal time (I am on lunch) and try to address the questions you raised in your letter, which is here in front of me on my (cluttered!) desk.
First, may I be so bold as to suggest that some of your disappointment may stem from your own, perhaps unreasonable, expectations? Because in your letter, what you indicated, when I read it? Was that you think and/or thought that somehow the product can read your baby’s mind? Our product cannot read your baby’s mind, Mrs. Faniglia. No one can read a baby’s mind. At least not yet. Although we are probably working on it! What the I CAN SPEAK!”’ can do, however, is recognize familiar auralpatterns and respond to these patterns in a way that makes baby seem older. Say baby sees a peach. If you or Mr. Faniglia (I hope I do not presume) were to loudly say something like: “What a delicious peach!” the I CAN SPEAK!™ hearing this, through that hole, that little slotted hole near the neck, might respond by saying something like: “I LIKE PEACH.” Or: “I WANT PEACH.” Or, if you had chosen the
ICS2000 (which you did not, you chose the ICS1900, which is fine, perfectly good for most babies) the I CAN SPEAK! TM might even respond by saying something like: “FRUIT, ISN’T THAT ONE OF THE MAJOR FOOD GROUPS?”
Which would be pretty good for a six-month-old, don’t you think, which my Warranty Response Card shows is the age of your son Derek, Derek Faniglia?
But here I must reiterate: That would not in reality be Derek speaking. Derek would not in reality know that a peach is fruit, or that fruit is a major food group. The I CAN SPEAK!™ knows it, however, and, from its position on Derek’s face, gives the illusion that Derek knows it, by giving the illusion that Derek is speaking out of its twin moving SimuLips™ But that is it. That is all we claim.
Furthermore, in your letter, Mrs. Faniglia, you state that the I CAN SPEAK!™ “mask” (your terminology) takes on a “stressed-out look when talking that is not what a real baby’s talking face appears like but is more like some nervous middleaged woman.” Well, maybe that is so, but with all due respect (and I say this with affection), you try it! You try making a latex face look and talk and move like the real face of an actual live baby! Inside are over 5,000 separate circuits and 390 moving parts. And as far as looking like a middle-aged woman, we beg to differ. We do not feel that a middle-aged stressed-out woman has (1) no hair on head and (2) chubby cheeks and (3) fine downy facial hair. The ICS1900 unit is definitely the face of a baby, Mrs. Faniglia, we took over 2,500 photos of different babies and, using a computer, combined them to make this face on your unit, and on everybody else’s unit, the face we call Male Composite 37 or, affectionately, “Little Roger.” But what you possibly seem to be unhappy about is the fact that Little Roger’s face is not Derek’s face? To be frank, Mrs. Faniglia, many of you, our customers, have found it disconcerting that their baby looks different with the I CAN SPEAK!™ on, than with the I CAN SPEAK!™ off. Which we find so surprising. Did you not, we often wonder, look at the cover of the box? The ICS1900 is very plainly shown, situated on a sort of rack, looking facewise like Little Roger, albeit Little Roger is a bit crumpled and has a forehead furrow of sorts.
Which is why we came up with the ICS2100. With the ICS2100, your baby looks just like your baby. And because we do not want anyone to be unhappy with us, we would like to make you the gift of a complimentary ICS2100 upgrade! We would like to come to your house on Lester Way and make a personalized plaster cast of Derek’s real, actual face! And soon, via FedEx, here will come Derek’s face in a box, and when you slip that ICS2 100 over Derek’s head and Velcro the Velcro, he will look nearly exactly like himself, plus we have another free surprise, which is that, while at your house, we will tape his actual voice and use it to make our phrases, the phrases Derek will subsequently say. So not only will he look like himself, he will sound like himself, as he crawls around your home, appearing to speak!
Plus we will throw in several personalizing options.
Say you call Derek “Lovemeister.” (I am using this example from my own personal home, as my wife Ann and I call our son Billy “Lovemeister,” because he is so sweet.) With the ICS2100, you might choose to have Derek say-or appear to
say-upon crawling into a room, “HERE COMES THE LOVEMEISTER!” Or “STOP TALKING DIRTY, THE LOVEMEISTER HAS ARRIVED!” How we do this is, laser beams coming out of the earlobes, which sense the doorframe! From its position on the head of Derek, the I CAN SPEAK!™ knows it has just entered a room! And also you will have over one hundred Discretionary Phrases to more highly personalize Derek. You might choose to have Derek say, on his birthday, for example, “MOMMY AND DADDY, REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU CONCEIVED ME IN ARUBA?” (Although probably you did not in fact conceive Derek in Aruba. That we do not know. Our research is not that extensive.) Or say your dog comes up and gives Derek a lick? You might make Derek say (if your dog’s name is Queenie, which our dog’s name is Queenie): “QUEENIE, GIVE IT A REST!” Which, you know what? Makes you love him more. Because suddenly he is articulate. Suddenly he is not just sitting there going glub glub glub while examining a piece of his own feces on his own thumb, which is something we recently found our Billy doing. Sometimes we have felt that our childless friends think badly of us for having a kid w
ho just goes glub glub glub in the corner while looking at his feces on his thumb. But now when childless friends are over, what we have found, Ann and I, is that there is something great about having your kid say something witty and self-possessed years before he or she would actually in reality be able to say something witty or selfpossessed. The bottom line is, it’s just fun, when you and your childless friends are playing cards, and your baby suddenly blurts out (in his very own probable future voice): “IT IS VERY POSSIBLE THAT WE STILL DON’T FULLY UNDERSTAND THE IMPORT OF ALL OF EINSTEIN’S FINDINGS!”
Here I must admit that we have several times seen a sort of softening in the eyes of our resolute childless friends, as if they too would suddenly like to have a baby.
And as far as what you said, about Derek sort of flinching whenever that voice issues forth from him? When that speaker near his mouth sort of buzzes his lips? May I say this is not unusual? What I suggest? Try putting the ICS on Derek for a short time at first, maybe ten minutes a day, then gradually building up his Wearing Time. That is what we did. And it worked super. Now Billy wears his even while sleeping. In fact, if we forget to put it back on after his bath, he pitches a fit. Sort of begs for it! He starts to say, you know, “Mak! Mak!” (Which we think is his word for mask.) And when we put the mask on and Velcro the Velcro, he says-or it says rather, the
ICS2100 says-“GUTEN MORGEN, PAPA!” because we have installed the German Learning module. Or, for example, if his pants are not yet on, he’ll say: “HOW ABOUT SLAPPING ON MY ROMPERS SO I CAN GET ON WITH MY DAY!” (I wrote that one, having done a little stand-up in my younger days.)
My point is, with the ICS2100, Billy is much, much cleverer than he ever was with the ICS 1900. He has recently learned, for example, that if he dribbles a little milk out his mouth, down his chin, his SimuLips™ will issue a moo sound. Which he really seems to get a kick out of! I’ll be in the living room doing a little evening paperwork and from the kitchen I’ll hear, you know, “MOO! MOO! MOO!” And I’ll rush in, and there’ll be this sort of lake of milk on the floor. And there’ll be Billy, dribbling milk down his chin, until I yank the cup away, at which time he bellows: “DON’T FENCE ME IN!” (Ann’s contribution-she was raised in Wyoming.)
Mrs. Faniglia, I, for one, do not believe that any baby wants to sit around all day going glub glub glub. My feeling is that a baby, sitting in its diaper, looking around at the world, thinks to itself, albeit in some crude nonverbal way: What the heck is wrong with me, why am I the only one saying glub glub glub while all these other folks are talking in whole complete sentences? And hence, possibly, lifelong psychological damage may result. Now, am I saying that your Derek runs the risk of feeling bad about himself as a grown-up because as a baby he felt he didn’t know how to talk very good? It is not for me to say, Mrs. Faniglia, I am only in Sales. But I will say I am certainly not taking any chances with our Billy. My belief is that when Billy hears a competent, intelligent voice issuing from the area near his mouth, that makes him feel excellent about himself. And it makes me feel excellent about him. Not that I didn’t feel excellent about him before. But now we can actually have a sort of conversation! And also-and most importantly-when that voice issues from his SimuLips™, he learns something invaluable, namely that, when he finally does begin speaking, he should plan on speaking via using his mouth.
Now, Mrs. Faniglia, you may be thinking: Hold on a sec, of course this guy loves his I CAN SPEAK!™ he probably got his for free. But no, Mrs. Faniglia, I got mine for two grand, just like you. We get no discounts, so much in demand is the I CAN SPEAK!™, and in addition, our management strongly encourages us-in fact you might say they even sort of require us-to purchase and use the I CAN SPEAK!™ at home, on our own kids. (Or even, in one case, the case of a Product Service Representative who has no kids, on his elderly senile mom! And although, yes, she looks sort of funny with that Little Roger face on her frail stooped frame, the family has really enjoyed hearing all the witty things she has to say, so much like her old self!) Not that I wouldn’t use it otherwise. Believe me, I would. Since we upgraded to the ICS2100, things have been great, Billy says such wonderful things, while looking almost identical to himself, and is not nearly so, you know, boring as when we just had the ICS1900, which (frankly) says some rather predictable things, which I expect is partly why you were unhappy with it, Mrs. Faniglia, you seem like a very intelligent woman. When people come over now, sometimes we just gather around Billy and wait for his next howler, and just last weekend my supervisor, Mr. Ted Ames, stopped by (a super guy, he has really given me support, please let him know if you’ve found this letter at all helpful) and boy did we all crack up laughing, and did Mr. Ames ever start scribbling approving notes in his little green notebook, when Billy began rubbing his face very rapidly across the carpet, in order to make his ICS2100 shout: “FRICTION IS A COMMON AND USEFUL SOURCE OF HEAT!”
Mrs. Faniglia, it is nearing the end of my lunch, and I must wrap this up, but I hope I have been of service. On a personal note, I did not have the greatest of pasts when I came here, having been in a few scrapes and even rehab situations, but now, wow, the commissions roll in, and I have made a nice life for me and Ann and Billy. Not that the possible loss of my commission is the reason for my concern. Please do not think so. While it is true that, if you decline my upgrade offer and persist in your desire to return your ICS1900, my commission must be refunded, by me, to Mr. Ames, that is no big deal, I have certainly refunded commissions to Mr. Ames before, especially lately. I don’t quite know what I’m doing wrong. But that is not your concern, Mrs. Faniglia. Your concern is Derek. My real reason for writing this letter, on my lunch break, is that, hard as we all work at KidLuv to provide innovative and essential development tools for families like yours, Mrs. Faniglia, it is always sort of a heartbreak when our products are misapprehended. Please do accept our offer of a free ICS2 100 upgrade. We at KidLuv really love what kids are, Mrs. Faniglia, which is why we want them to become something better as soon as possible. Baby’s early years are so precious, and must not be wasted, as we are finding out, as our Billy grows and grows, learning new skills every day.
Sincerely yours,
Rick Sminks
Product Service Representative
KidLuv Inc.
my flamboyant grandson
I had brought my grandson to New York to see a show. Because what is he always doing, up here in Oneonta? Singing and dancing, sometimes to my old show-tune records, but more often than not to his favorite CD, Babar Sings!, sometimes even making up his own steps, which I do not mind, or rather I try not to mind it. Although I admit that once, coming into his room and finding him wearing a pink boa while singing, in the voice of the Old Lady, “I Have Never Met a Man Like That Elephant,” I had to walk out and give it some deep thought and prayer, as was also the case when he lumbered into the parlor during a recent church couples dinner, singing “Big and Slow, Yet So Very Regal,” wearing a tablecloth spray-painted gray, so as to more closely resemble Babar.
Being a man who knows something about grandfatherly disapproval, having had a grandfather who constantly taunted me for having enlarged calves-to the extent that even today, when bathing, I find myself thinking unkind thoughts about Grandfather-what I prayed on both occasions was: Dear Lord, he is what he is, let me love him no matter what. If he is a gay child, God bless him; if he is a non-gay child who simply very much enjoys wearing his grandmother’s wig while singing “Edelweiss” to the dog, so be it, and in either case let me communicate my love and acceptance in everything I do.
Because where is a child to go for unconditional love, if not to his grandfather? He has had it tough, in my view, with his mother in Nevada and a father unknown, raised by his grandmother and me in an otherwise childless neighborhood, playing alone in a tiny yard that ends in a graveyard wall. The boys in his school are hard on him, as are the girls, as are the teachers, and recently we found his book bag in the Susquehanna, and recently also found, taped to the
back of his jacket, a derogatory note, and the writing on it was not all that childish-looking, and there were rumors that his bus driver had written it.
Then one day I had a revelation. If the lad likes to sing and dance, I thought, why not expose him to the finest singing and dancing there is? So I called 1-800-CULTURE, got our Promissory Voucher in the mail, and on Teddy’s birthday we took the train down to New York.
As we entered the magnificent lobby of the Eisner Theatre, I was in good spirits, saying to Teddy, “The size of this stage will make that little stage I built you behind the garage look pathetic.” When suddenly we were stopped by a stern young fellow (a Mr. Ernesti, I believe) who said, “We are sorry, sir, but you cannot be admitted on merely a Promissory Voucher, are you kidding us, you must take your Voucher and your Proof of Purchases from at least six of our Major Artistic Sponsors, such as AOL, such as Coke, and go at once to the Redemption Center, on Forty-fourth and Broadway, to get your real actual tickets, and please do not be late, as latecomers cannot be admitted, due to special effects which occur early, and which require total darkness in order to simulate the African jungle at night.”
Well, this was news to me, but I was not about to disappoint the boy.
We left the Eisner and started up Broadway, the Everly Readers in the sidewalk reading the Everly Strips in our shoes, the building-mounted mini-screens at eye level showing images reflective of the Personal Preferences we’d stated on our monthly Everly Preference Worksheets, the numerous Cybec Sudden Emergent Screens outthrusting or down-thrusting inches from our faces, and in addition I could very clearly hear the sound-only messages being beamed to me and me alone via various Kakio Aural Focussers, such as one that shouted out to me between Forty-second and Forty-third, “Mr. Petrillo, you chose Burger King eight times last fiscal year but only two times thus far this fiscal year, please do not forsake us now, there is a store one block north!” in the voice of Broadway star Elaine Weston, while at Forty-third a light-pole-mounted Focusser shouted, “Golly, Leonard, remember your childhood on the farm in Oneonta? Why not reclaim those roots with a Starbucks Country Roast?” in a celebrity rural voice I could not identify, possibly Buck Owens, and then, best of all, in the doorway of PLC Electronics, a life-size Gene Kelly hologram suddenly appeared, tap-dancing, saying, “Leonard, my data indicates you’re a bit of an old-timer like myself! Gosh, in our day life was simpler, wasn’t it, Leonard? Why not come in and let Frankie Z. explain the latest gizmos!” And he looked so real I called out to Teddy, “Teddy, look there, Gene Kelly, do you remember I mentioned him to you as one of the all-time greats?” But Teddy of course did not see Gene Kelly, Gene Kelly not being one of his Preferences, but instead saw his hero Babar, swinging a small monkey on his trunk while saying that his data indicated that Teddy did not yet own a Nintendo.