The Book-a-Week Project, Week 15

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
George Saunders

George Saunders is so brilliant you should be intimidated. But you must not be intimidated. His writing is consistently warm -- critical but not cynical. Reign of Phil is a short novella (although the longest thing I’ve read by Saunders) about war. It is funny and odd. The accompanying illustrations are terrible. They look like the graphics on hipster t-shirts.

Saunders received the MacArthur Fellowship grant last year (as did John Zorn). Let’s hope he uses the time it buys him to write a massive novel, or at least several hundred more short stories.

Are you ready? Okay, take your hand in mine as I take mine in yours. Now hope, little one. Hope with all your might, god damn you!