OCTOBER 2006

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A Review of Saunders's The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (2005)
By Jason Jordan, Sept 28, 2006
One can’t help but be envious of George Saunders’s achievements. Besides penning two well-received short story collections titled CivilWarLand in Bad Decline (Random House, 1996) and Pastoralia (Riverhead, 2000), and regularly publishing pieces in Esquire, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, and The New Yorker, he’s won several major awards. And perhaps that’s why it’s surprising that his fiction becomes stranger with each new release – evidenced by last year’s novel, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (Riverhead, 2005), which is his least accessible yet best effort to date.

Naturally, since the content is so quirky and outlandish, it proves difficult to draw a comparison to one specific writer/book because there are many elements at work. However, take George Orwell’s Animal Farm – substitute Phil for ruthless swine Napoleon – and add the surrealist and occasional interstellar slants of Murakami and Vonnegut to arrive somewhere close to TBaFRoP. Centering on the rise of Phil and the injustices that result from such an inhumane rule, Saunders begins his 130-page novel with, “It’s one thing to be a small country, but the country of Inner Horner was so small only one Inner Hornerite at a time could fit inside, and the other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turns to live in their own country while standing very timidly in the surrounding country of Outer Horner.” Not your typical story, huh?

What The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil does in the theme department, though, is spark awareness about tolerance, compromise, and genocide through a sci-fi, halfway dystopian lens. Admittedly “out there,” this is definitely Saunders’s least streamlined work, but nevertheless hooks the reader with his usual characterization prowess and edge-of-your-seat suspense in regards to Phil’s heinous climb to the top and the events that transpire consequently. It’s a disheartening story – primarily – but is not devoid of a relatively happy ending coated with both satire and wit. Somehow, I think the Hornerites will not be free from turmoil for long.

Providing respite from straight text are the pictures of Ben Gibson, which illustrate certain characters, settings, and images from the story itself. Though I wish they were in color, they are a nice addition to a read that would be even shorter otherwise. The overall packaging is equally stunning, and because the story and writing stand up to any and all reasonable complaints, Saunders’s The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil easily topples the author’s previous installments. Newcomers probably shouldn’t start with this one, however.

Jason Jordan is many things. He is staff reviewer for this magazine. He was the host of the Bean Street Reading Series. He was an editor of The IUS Review. He has been a featured writer at the Tuesday Night Reading Series in Evansville, Indiana. His writing appears in The Edward Society and The2ndHand. He teaches college writing to college students. His book is called Powering the Devil's Circus. He is a writer.

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