George Saunders: Critical Essays

Front Matter....Pages i-xv
“A Job to Do”*: George Saunders on, and at, Work....Pages 1-22
Horning In: Language, Subordination and Freedom in the Short Fiction of George Saunders....Pages 23-39
Language Between Lyricism and Corporatism: George Saunders’s New Sincerity....Pages 41-58
“Hope that, in Future, All Is well”: American Exceptionalism and Hopes for Resistance in Two Stories by George Saunders....Pages 59-75
Hanging by a Thread in the Homeland: The Four Institutional Monologues of George Saunders....Pages 77-104
Biopolitical Dystopias, Bureaucratic Carnivores, Synthetic Primitives: “Pastoralia” as Human Zoo....Pages 105-120
Ghosts and Theme Parks: The Supernatural and the Artificial in George Saunders’s Short Stories....Pages 121-135
The Absent Presence of the Deus Absconditus in the Work of George Saunders....Pages 137-151
Narrative Empathy in George Saunders’s Short Fiction....Pages 153-171
Cruel Inventions: George Saunders’s Literary Darkenfloxx™....Pages 173-188
Dreaming and Realizing “The Semplica Girl Diaries”: A Post-Jungian Reading....Pages 189-204
Everyday Zombies: Ethics and the Contemporary in “Sea Oak” and “Brad Carrigan, American”....Pages 205-219
“Third-person Ventriloquism”: Microdialogues and Polyphony in George Saunders’s “Victory Lap”....Pages 221-235
“A Little at a Time. And Iteratively”: A Conversation with George Saunders....Pages 237-243
Back Matter....Pages 245-292