A must-read story from George Saunders in current New Yorker

A must-read story in current New Yorker, Elliot Spencer, by George Saunders. Saunders to me has been among the very best American writers of short fiction since he debuted in the 1990s; I think he made a mis-step w/ his one novel, Lincoln at the Bardo, which seemed to me forced and self-conscious (a chorus of voice surrounding the death of Lincoln's young son); historical fiction was not his metier - though of course this novel won the Booker award, a case of the right-guy, wrong-book phenomenon. This new unusual story from Saunders brings him back to his best writing self - a depiction of a world in which human beings are appropriated in some monstrous way for dark purposes, a re-imagining of human consciousness, a distinct narration from the point of view of a severely disturbed or deluded protagonist. In this story, the eponymous narrator is, as we gradually learn, an adult whose mind and body have been taken over by some sort of set of programmers, who wipe clean his consciousness and memory, re-educate him in the English language, and use him and others as robotic instigators stirring up trouble and violence at political or other demonstrations. This story may remind some readers of Saunders's Semplica Girls story, in which the uber-wealthy purchase women from the 3rd world to use as living lawn ornaments (my post on this story has received more hits than any of the other 3,500 posts on this blog). Saunders's cultural critiques are always like this: strangely disorienting, avoiding ideology and received ideas, told in a language that reflects a damaged and occluded consciousness - at first odd and unsettling and difficult to discern, gradually becoming more clarified and at the same time more unsettling. This story is uniquely his - no other writer has a style or world view that's even close to his - and provides us with what we look for from literary fiction: Make it new, and give us access to the consciousness of another.