George Saunders – When the brain hits the floor

It is possible to write a successful satire on nationalism, colonialism and every kind of state authoritarianism in barely more than 100 book pages. Or let’s say better: A satire on everything that has to do with politics and state order or world disorder, be it capital rule, populism, abuse of power, professionalized lies, propaganda, corruption, exploitation, war, torture or other types of dysfunctionality 20th century. The American literature professor and writer George Saunders proves that such a multifunctional satire can exist with his short novel “The Short and Terrible Reign of Phil”. In it there is a smug senile president who has very limited knowledge of anything; a political careerist (“Phil”) who is as egomaniacal and unscrupulous as he is brutal and who only utters populist phrases; a small exploited country and a large exploiting one; shamelessly ruling manipulated and humiliated dominated manipulated.

So you could say that this short novel is almost the same as it is in reality. But everything is told in a way that makes it easier to understand: “The land called Inner Horner was so small that only one Inner Hornerite could fit in it at a time. The other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turn to live in their own land, and in the meantime stood very shyly in the surrounding land called Outer Hornerites.”

The state of Innen-Horner is located as a kind of tiny island state in the middle of the national territory of the generously sized state of Außen-Horner. This is undoubtedly a pretty complicated initial situation. But that’s not enough. It gets even more complicated. Strictly speaking, the Inner Hornerites who are waiting for their stay in their country are not in Outer Horner, but in a “short-term stay zone” installed on the national territory of Outer Horner, the only purpose of which, as their name suggests, is to do so to serve as a waiting area for the indoor Hornerites. One suspects that something like this is bound to lead to conflict sooner or later. And it’s actually happening faster than expected.

Because “without warning,” the national territory of Innen-Horner suddenly shrinks from one day to the next, so much so that “Elmer, the current resident of Innen-Horner, was no longer in Innen-Horner for three quarters of the time,” but in Outer Horner, which of course prompts the responsible outer Horner border officer to raise an alarm. Because what is brewing here, or is basically already in full swing, is: an invasion. An invasion carried out by three quarters of the body mass of a cheeky inner Hornerite who suddenly finds his own state no longer sufficient. And anyone who is unable to respond appropriately to an invasion will soon no longer have a state.

Which begins the career and success story of the demagogue Phil, a loud-mouthed Outer Hornerite who until then was “generally viewed as a somewhat bitter failure,” but now has ambitions to become the dictator of Outer Horner. His proposal, which was quickly accepted, to demand a daily residence tax from the inner Hornerites who boldly ventured into the outer Hornerites, marked the beginning of his rapid political rise.

Saunders designed his story about demagogy and the emergence of a totalitarian state, which was originally published in 2005 but has only recently been available in German translation, as a mixture of parable, grim fairy tale and satirical grotesque: the two states (“Interior- Horner”/”Outer Horner”) are fictional and seem familiar in a certain way when you read them; the Hornerites involved are frighteningly human-like and at the same time they are assembled from “tuna cans” and “thermal ventilators” or look “like a giant belt buckle,” the populist political careerist Phil may have striking similarities to the former and future US President Donald Trump and yet is still clearly a literary figure. Albeit one that is strikingly reminiscent of one or two real politicians: “The bolt that held his brain in position on its huge sliding tray sometimes fell out, then his brain quickly slid down the tray and hit the floor.” There It’s reassuring to know that Phil is surrounded by a handful of eager minions who, when this mishap happens, will put his brain back in the right place.

When asked what he was thinking about when he wrote this story, George Saunders recently replied to the Amnesty Journal, the members’ magazine of the organization Amnesty International: “I looked at some of the disasters of the 20th century and thought about what they had in common and what is the structural and psychological essence of the emergence of authoritarian power. It is the ego that expands and seizes power in the desire for permanence and immortality. And power corrupts. I tried to describe this with the rise of Phil, who was once a normal citizen like everyone else and then became a monster.«

Like Jonathan Franzen, Bret Easton Ellis and David Foster Wallace, Saunders also belongs to the generation of US writers born around 1960 who succeed in combining postmodern narrative strategies, social criticism and bitter comedy. In many of his stories – which often have a touch of the tragicomic and crazy, but clearly deal with contemporary issues – he uses the science fiction genre to formulate his social criticism or his criticism of an ever-escalating capitalism: in the mostly close future, in which his dystopian stories are set, the USA has developed into a sometimes more, sometimes less obvious police state; every corner of the earth and every area of ​​interpersonal communication is completely commercialized; the damaged life is omnipresent.

The writer Junot Díaz once praised his colleague Saunders, who was ten years his senior, with the words: “There is no one who has a closer eye for the absurd and dehumanizing living conditions of our current culture of capital.” In fact, the pre- or post-apocalyptic scenarios are in the dark , grotesque stories and short stories by George Saunders are often just the result of thinking our present further into the near future. Its ghettos and gated communities, its regressed, stunted and functionalized people – all of this, if you look closely for a moment, is just a little bit removed from the present.

George Saunders: The Short and Terrible Reign of Phil. English v. Frank Heibert. Illustr. v. Benjamin Gibson. Luchterhand, 144 p., hardcover, €20.

The populist political careerist Phil has striking similarities to the former and future US President Donald Trump.

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