Life is a theme park

Surely, at some time or other, George Saunders must have visited Colonial Williamsburg. The experience would have been like Melville spying his first whale, Mark Twain setting foot on his first riverboat, Judith Krantz getting approved for her first credit card. In his alarmingly brilliant collection of stories, "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," Saunders set several tales in the near future, concentrating on desperate, badly mistreated employees of raggedy, patched-together theme parks such as "CivilWarLand." The protagonist/narrator is usually an earnest young man trying hard to do his job, stay in character - and stay employed: Saunders implies that however bad things may be inside the park, conditions are far, far worse "out there."

It is initially disconcerting, then, to find that the title story, and by far the longest story, of Saunders` new collection, "Pastoralia," is set in the near future, and concerns desperate, badly mistreated employees of a raggedy, patched-together theme park. We`ve been there, and we`ve read that.

Except we haven`t: Saunders` earlier stories turn out to have been warm-ups, stretching exercises, practice rounds. "Pastoralia" is his best yet - breathtaking, brutally hilarious satire, a savage skewering not only of the American workplace, but of the American character itself.

This time, the role of the put-upon narrator is that of caveman. He and his co-worker, Janet, put in their days in a prefab cave on the far, seldom-visited outskirts of a dying theme park. Weeks go by without so much as a single visitor making it out to their primitive dwelling, and Janet, not an easygoing type to begin with, is getting testy: She addresses the narrator in English, smokes in the cave, even puts on her glasses and does crossword puzzles. The narrator, who can communicate with his nearly-starving family only by a fax secreted in an adjoining room, overlooks these transgressions and continues to give Janet high marks on the Daily Partner Performance Evaluation Form. Even though no one is looking - no one is ever looking - he spends his days "pretending to catch and eat small bugs" and miming the drawing of pictographs.

Missives from management, which believes itself to be enlightened, will be all the more risible to anyone familiar with certain trends in internal corporate communication. Here, in part, is a memo to the staff:

"Regarding the rumors you have lately been hearing. Please be advised that they are false. They are so false that we considered not even bothering to deny them. Because denying them would imply that we have actually heard them. Which we haven`t. We don`t waste our time on such nonsense. And yet we know that if we don`t deny the rumors we haven`t heard, you will assume they are true. And they are so false! ... Not only the rumors you`ve heard, but also those you haven`t heard, and even those that haven`t yet been spread, are false ...

"But not to worry. Those of you who have no need to be worried should not in the least be worried. As for those who should be worried, it`s a little late to start worrying now, you should have started months ago, when it could have done you some good, because at this point, what`s decided is decided, or would have been decided, if those false rumors we are denying, the rumors about the firings which would be starting this week if they were slated to begin, were true, which we have just told you, they aren`t."

When I was about 16, a friend came to me with a proposition. A Union 76 station was offering $25 to distribute fliers; all we had to do was spend a couple of hours walking around and putting them under cars` windshield wipers. We`d each clear about $6 an hour, an unheard-of rate at that time.

After two hours, though, we`d hardly gotten through a quarter of the box of fliers. Exhausted, defeated, we returned to the gas station and handed the box back to the manager, prepared to accept whatever he gave us. He rang open the cash register, reached in and forked over the whole $25, explaining that the fliers were a corporate promotion, and it was all the same to him whether or not we actually did the work.

"If it`d been me," he said, "I`d `a just chucked `em."

We talked about it later, and decided we couldn`t have done that - we had to put in some work. It was only right, and besides, there was a Corporation lurking out there. This, but exactly, is the state of mind captured by Saunders in "Pastoralia": Even when no one is looking, we pretend to catch and eat small bugs.

The other stories in the collection vary from successful and strange to, well, I dunno. In "Winky," Saunders measures the half-life of the effects of self-improvement seminars, as a schlemiel tries to summon the moxie to 86 his religious-fanatic sister from his apartment. The story is just OK, but the gung-ho guru`s motivating speech suggests that Saunders on the stump could be dangerous.

"Sea Oak" takes a ghoulish turn when the selfless, put-upon aunt of three losers - a Chippendale`s-type dancer, his Jerry-Springer-audience cousin and sister - returns from the dead to engage in some of the fun she never had in life, only to be hampered by her decaying body. Stories such as "The End of FIRPO in the World," nearly surreal stream-of-consciousness from an outcast young boy, were pretty much perfected by Richard Yates in the 1950s and `60s (see his collection "Eleven Kinds of Loneliness"); Saunders` contribution, though affecting, seems a faint echo.

"The Barber`s Unhappiness" is also reminiscent of Yates: We are trapped in the slightly skewed mind of a hopelessly flawed, not particularly likable individual. Even as his unattractiveness repels us, his humanity tears at us; helplessly, we watch him construct a fanciful, self-aggrandizing plan to woo a young lady, a plan doomed, we know, to failure. Saunders` gift, like Yates`, is that he makes us care. And here, to care is to hurt. And to feel.

"Pastoralia," though, is a masterpiece of unsettling comedy. George Saunders should write about theme parks till the mammoths come home.

- Arthur Salm

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Arthur Salm