Ever since grad school, I’ve been a fan on the Economist.  In this age of blogs and RSS feeds, I’ve come to follow their Democracy in America blog (among others).  Yesterday, they posted about some ancillary tiff in the health care debate.  The interesting thing to me wasn’t the content of the post, but the link to a short story in a 2003 edition of The New Yorker.  The teaser they had was enough to make me want to read that story, which I did this morning on my bus ride into the office:

However, if you’re in the market for dramatic stories about babies under threat in a dystopian future, I suggest you scrub the Palin part of your brain and turn it over to George Saunders’ excellent short story “Jon”. It’s about a pair of teenaged paramours who have good reason to distrust the adults around them.

It’s a great story about a boy living in a product dominated existence, struggling with the upheaval in his life brought on by the impending birth of his child.  Can he give up the plush (but unsettling for the reader) life for his wife and child?

Plus furthermore (and I said this to Carolyn) what will it be like for us when all has been taken from us? Of what will we speak of? I do not want to only speak of my love in grunts! If I wish to compare my love to a love I have previous knowledge of, I do not want to stand there in the wind casting about for my metaphor! If I want to say like, Carolyn, remember that RE/MAX one where as the redhead kid falls asleep holding that Teddy bear rescued from the trash, the bear comes alive and winks, and the announcer goes, Home is the place where you find yourself suddenly no longer longing for home (LI 34451)—if I want to say to Carolyn, Carolyn, LI 34451, check it out, that is how I feel about you—well, then, I want to say it! I want to possess all the articulate I can, because otherwise there we will be, in non-designer clothes, no longer even on TrendSetters & TasteMakers gum cards with our photos on them, and I will turn to her and say, Honey, uh, honey, there is a certain feeling but I cannot name it and cannot cite a precedent-type feeling, but trust me, dearest, wow, do I ever feel it for you, right now. And what will that be like, that stupid standing there, just a man and a woman and the wind, and nobody knowing what nobody is meaning?

Just then the baby kicked my hand, which at that time was on Carolyn’s stomach.

And Carolyn was like, You are either with me or agin me.

Which was so funny, because she was proving my point! Because you are either with me or agin me is what the Lysol bottle at LI 12009 says to the scrubbing sponge as they approach the grease stain together, which is making at them a threatening fist while wearing a sort of Mexican bandolera!

When I pointed this out, she removed my hand from her belly.

I love you, I said.

Prove it, she said.

Anyway, I found it a moving story, and it triggered memories of another item I’d read years ago about a corporation-ruled world: “Jennifer Government” by Max Barry.  It’s a fun, entertaining read, with an interesting premise.  It doesn’t rank up there with my favorite books of all time, but it certainly had me turning the pages.  I leave it to Wikipedia to summarize the plot:

Hack, a low level employee at Nike, is contracted by one of his higher ups for an ambitious marketing campaign. The company is planning to release the new Nike Mercurys — which sell for thousands of dollars but cost pennies to manufacture — and in order to drum up interest in the items, Hack Nike and his partner John Nike plan to increase street cred in the worst way possible: by actually killing people who try to buy them. Hack, bound by his contract but unable to contemplate murder on his own, subcontracts to the Police, now a mercenary organization, beginning a chain of business transactions which could land Nike in hot water should word of the plot leak.

After several children are murdered at various Nike chains on opening day, agent Jennifer Government takes it upon herself to track down the perpetrators, even if she can’t get the funding for it. Along the way, readers are also introduced to Texas 20-something Billy NRA, an athletic man who gets in over his head, and Buy Mitsui, a formerly French stockbroker. Also involved is Hack’s unemployed girlfriend, Violet, who engineers a dangerous computer virus to sell to the highest bidder.

From: Jennifer Government (this version)