no happy ending?
I'm still trying to find more time for reading, and I'm also leveraging Sarah's background in literature to find more fiction that doesn't involve dragons or spaceships. On her recommendation, I read George Saunders's "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," a brilliantly twisted story in a collection of the same name. The story follows a somewhat downtrodden man who works at a run-down theme park, populated by crazy coworkers, deranged ghosts, and the occasional street gang. Saunders manages to convey the sheer banality of his protagonist's existence despite an outlandish setting and warped plot. Uh yeah, it's just really good. The other stories in the collection continue the motif of employees trapped within bizarre commercial enterprises, which all seem to be crumbling escapist havens from a crumbling real world. I can't decide whether the book is funny and whimsical or really depressing.