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Review title: modern life is rubbish
Product review: In my experience, people with really provincial taste in literature like Saunders because they think he's "edgy." He's funny, I guess, and if you only read the New Yorker and Best American Short Stories, his plots are unusual, even original. Even better, he sniffs at suburban consumer culture, painting it in the most garish colors imaginable. What's an overeducated, culturally aspirational hipster not to love?Many other reviewers here call Saunders "compassionate," which seems really very wrong to me. The characters are so broadly drawn that it's hard not to think he's offering them up to us as figures of ridicule or even scorn. He never forces his readers out of their comfort zones, to actually feel something for or maybe -- gasp! -- identify with his grotesques.Compassion is hard, and these stories take the easy ways out. Saunders can find it if he wants, but until then I suggest his readers look for it too. Elsewhere.
