In Persuasion Nation

Copyright © 2006 by George
Saunders

For Paula, again, and always

contents

I CAN
SPEAK!™

my
flamboyant grandson

jon

ii.

my
amendment

the
red bow

christmas

adams

iii.

93990

brad
carrigan, American

in
persuasion nation

iv.

bohemians

commcomm

Our
enemies will first assail the health of our commerce, throwing up
this objection and that to innovative methods and approaches designed
to expand our prosperity, and thus our freedom. Their oldfashioned
clinging to obsolete ideas only signals their extinction. In the end,
we must pity them: we are going forward with joy and hope; they are
being left behind, mired in fear.

—
Bernard
"Ed" Alton
,

Taskbook
for the New Nation,

Chapter
1. "New Man, New Growth-Community"

Mrs. Ruth Faniglia

210 Lester Way

Rochester, NY 14623

Dear Mrs. Faniglia,

We were very sorry to
receive your letter of 23 Feb., which accompanied the I CAN SPEAK!™
you returned, much to our disappointment. We here at KidLuv believe
that the I CAN SPEAK!™ is an innovative and essential
educational tool that, used with proper parental guidance, offers a
rare early-development opportunity for babies and toddlers alike. And
so I thought I would take some of my personal time (I am on lunch)
and try to address the questions you raised in your letter, which is
here in front of me on my (cluttered!) desk.

First, may I be so bold
as to suggest that some of your disappointment may stem from your
own, perhaps unreasonable, expectations? Because in your letter, what
you indicated, when I read it? Was that you think and/or thought that
somehow the product can read your baby's mind? Our product cannot
read your baby's mind, Mrs. Faniglia. No one can read a baby's mind.
At least not yet. Although we are probably working on it! What the I
CAN SPEAK!"' can do, however, is recognize
familiar aural
patterns
and respond to these patterns in a way that makes
baby seem older
. Say baby sees a peach. If you or Mr. Faniglia
(I hope I do not presume) were to loudly say something like: "What
a delicious peach!" the I CAN SPEAK!™ hearing this,
through that hole, that little slotted hole near the neck, might
respond by saying something like: "I LIKE PEACH." Or: "I
WANT PEACH." Or, if you had chosen the

ICS2000 (which you did
not, you chose the ICS1900, which is fine, perfectly good for most
babies) the I CAN SPEAK! TM might even respond by saying something
like: "FRUIT, ISN'T THAT ONE OF THE MAJOR FOOD GROUPS?"

Which would be pretty
good for a six-month-old, don't you think, which my Warranty Response
Card shows is the age of your son Derek, Derek Faniglia?

But here I must
reiterate: That would not in reality be Derek speaking. Derek would
not in reality know that a peach is fruit, or that fruit is a major
food group. The I CAN SPEAK!™ knows it, however, and, from its
position on Derek's face, gives the illusion that Derek knows it, by
giving the illusion that Derek is speaking out of its twin moving
SimuLips™ But that is it. That is all we claim.

Furthermore, in your
letter, Mrs. Faniglia, you state that the I CAN SPEAK!™ "mask"
(your terminology) takes on a "stressed-out look when talking
that is not what a real baby's talking face appears like but is more
like some nervous middleaged woman." Well, maybe that is so, but
with all due respect (and I say this with affection), you try it! You
try making a latex face look and talk and move like the real face of
an actual live baby! Inside are
over 5,000 separate circuits
and
390 moving parts
. And as far as looking like a middle-aged woman,
we beg to differ. We do not feel that a middle-aged stressed-out
woman has (1) no hair on head and (2) chubby cheeks and (3) fine
downy facial hair. The ICS1900 unit is definitely the face of a baby,
Mrs. Faniglia, we took over 2,500 photos of different babies and,
using a computer, combined them to make this face on your unit, and
on everybody else's unit, the face we call Male Composite 37 or,
affectionately, "Little Roger." But what you possibly seem
to be unhappy about is the fact that Little Roger's face is not
Derek's face? To be frank, Mrs. Faniglia, many of you, our customers,
have found it disconcerting that their baby looks different with the
I CAN SPEAK!™ on, than with the I CAN SPEAK!™ off. Which
we find so surprising. Did you not, we often wonder, look at the
cover of the box? The ICS1900 is very plainly shown, situated on a
sort of rack, looking facewise like Little Roger, albeit Little Roger
is a bit crumpled and has a forehead furrow of sorts.

Which is why we came up
with the ICS2100. With the ICS2100, your baby
looks just like your
baby
. And because we do not want anyone to be unhappy with us, we
would like to make you the gift of a complimentary ICS2100 upgrade!
We would like to come to your house on Lester Way and make a
personalized plaster cast of Derek's real, actual face! And soon, via
FedEx, here will come Derek's face in a box, and when you slip that
ICS2 100 over Derek's head and Velcro the Velcro, he will look nearly
exactly like himself, plus we have another free surprise, which is
that, while at your house, we will tape his actual voice and use it
to make our phrases, the phrases Derek will subsequently say. So not
only will he look like himself, he will
sound like himself
, as
he crawls around your home, appearing to speak!

Plus we will throw in
several personalizing options.

Say you call Derek
"Lovemeister." (I am using this example from my own
personal home, as my wife Ann and I call our son Billy "Lovemeister,"
because he is so sweet.) With the ICS2100, you might choose to have
Derek say—or appear to say—upon crawling into
a room, "HERE COMES THE LOVEMEISTER!" Or "STOP TALKING
DIRTY, THE LOVEMEISTER HAS ARRIVED!" How we do this is, laser
beams coming out of the earlobes, which sense the doorframe! From its
position on the head of Derek, the I CAN SPEAK!™ knows it has
just entered a room! And also you will have over one hundred
Discretionary Phrases to more highly personalize Derek. You might
choose to have Derek say, on his birthday, for example, "MOMMY
AND DADDY, REMEMBER THAT TIME YOU CONCEIVED ME IN ARUBA?"
(Although probably you did not in fact conceive Derek in Aruba. That
we do not know. Our research is not that extensive.) Or say your dog
comes up and gives Derek a lick? You might make Derek say (if your
dog's name is Queenie, which our dog's name is Queenie): "QUEENIE,
GIVE IT A REST!" Which, you know what?
Makes you love him
more.
Because suddenly he is articulate. Suddenly he is not just
sitting there going glub glub glub while examining a piece of his own
feces on his own thumb, which is something we recently found our
Billy doing. Sometimes we have felt that our childless friends think
badly of us for having a kid who just goes glub glub glub in the
corner while looking at his feces on his thumb. But now when
childless friends are over, what we have found, Ann and I, is that
there is something great about having your kid say something witty
and self-possessed years before he or she would actually in reality
be able to say something witty or selfpossessed. The bottom line is,
it's just
fun
, when you and your childless friends are playing
cards, and your baby suddenly blurts out (in his
very own probable
future voice
): "IT IS VERY POSSIBLE THAT WE STILL DON'T
FULLY UNDERSTAND THE IMPORT OF ALL OF EINSTEIN'S FINDINGS!"

Here I must admit that
we have several times seen a sort of softening in the eyes of our
resolute childless friends, as if they too would suddenly like to
have a baby.

And as far as what you
said, about Derek sort of flinching whenever that voice issues forth
from him? When that speaker near his mouth sort of buzzes his lips?
May I say this is not unusual? What I suggest? Try putting the ICS on
Derek for a short time at first, maybe ten minutes a day, then
gradually building up his Wearing Time. That is what we did. And it
worked super. Now Billy wears his even while sleeping. In fact, if we
forget to put it back on after his bath, he pitches a fit. Sort of
begs for it! He starts to say, you know, "Mak! Mak!" (Which
we think is his word for mask.) And when we put the mask on and
Velcro the Velcro, he says—or it says rather, the

ICS2100 says—"GUTEN
MORGEN, PAPA!" because we have installed the German Learning
module. Or, for example, if his pants are not yet on, he'll say: "HOW
ABOUT SLAPPING ON MY ROMPERS SO I CAN GET ON WITH MY DAY!" (I
wrote that one, having done a little stand-up in my younger days.)

My point is, with the
ICS2100, Billy is much, much cleverer than he ever was with the ICS
1900. He has recently learned, for example, that if he dribbles a
little milk out his mouth, down his chin, his SimuLips™ will
issue a moo sound. Which he really seems to get a kick out of! I'll
be in the living room doing a little evening paperwork and from the
kitchen I'll hear, you know, "MOO! MOO! MOO!" And I'll rush
in, and there'll be this sort of lake of milk on the floor. And
there'll be Billy, dribbling milk down his chin, until I yank the cup
away, at which time he bellows: "DON'T FENCE ME IN!" (Ann's
contribution—she was raised in Wyoming.)

Mrs. Faniglia, I, for
one, do not believe that any baby wants to sit around all day going
glub glub glub. My feeling is that a baby, sitting in its diaper,
looking around at the world, thinks to itself, albeit in some crude
nonverbal way: What the heck is wrong with me, why am I the only one
saying glub glub glub while all these other folks are talking in
whole complete sentences? And hence, possibly, lifelong psychological
damage may result. Now, am I saying that your Derek runs the risk of
feeling bad about himself as a grown-up because as a baby he felt he
didn't know how to talk very good? It is not for me to say, Mrs.
Faniglia, I am only in Sales. But I will say I am certainly not
taking any chances with our Billy. My belief is that when Billy hears
a competent, intelligent voice issuing from the area near his mouth,
that makes him feel excellent about himself. And it makes me feel
excellent about him. Not that I didn't feel excellent about him
before. But now we can actually have a sort of conversation! And
also—and most importantly—when that voice issues from his
SimuLips™, he learns something invaluable, namely that, when he
finally does begin speaking, he should
plan on speaking via using
his mouth
.

Now, Mrs. Faniglia, you
may be thinking: Hold on a sec, of course this guy loves his I CAN
SPEAK!™ he probably got his for free. But no, Mrs. Faniglia, I
got mine for two grand, just like you. We get no discounts, so much
in demand is the I CAN SPEAK!™, and in addition, our management
strongly encourages us—in fact you might say they even sort of
require
us—to purchase and use the I CAN SPEAK!™ at
home, on our own kids. (Or even, in one case, the case of a Product
Service Representative who has no kids, on his elderly senile mom!
And although, yes, she looks sort of funny with that Little Roger
face on her frail stooped frame, the family has really enjoyed
hearing all the witty things she has to say, so much like her old
self!) Not that I wouldn't use it otherwise. Believe me, I would.
Since we upgraded to the ICS2100, things have been great, Billy says
such wonderful things, while looking almost identical to himself, and
is not nearly so, you know, boring as when we just had the ICS1900,
which (frankly) says some rather predictable things, which I expect
is partly why you were unhappy with it, Mrs. Faniglia, you seem like
a very intelligent woman. When people come over now, sometimes we
just gather around Billy and wait for his next howler, and just last
weekend my supervisor, Mr. Ted Ames, stopped by (a super guy, he has
really given me support, please let him know if you've found this
letter at all helpful) and boy did we all crack up laughing, and did
Mr. Ames ever start scribbling approving notes in his little green
notebook, when Billy began rubbing his face very rapidly across the
carpet, in order to make his ICS2100 shout: "FRICTION IS A
COMMON AND USEFUL SOURCE OF HEAT!"

Mrs. Faniglia, it is
nearing the end of my lunch, and I must wrap this up, but I hope I
have been of service. On a personal note, I did not have the greatest
of pasts when I came here, having been in a few scrapes and even
rehab situations, but now, wow, the commissions roll in, and I have
made a nice life for me and Ann and Billy. Not that the possible loss
of my commission is the reason for my concern. Please do not think
so. While it is true that, if you decline my upgrade offer and
persist in your desire to return your ICS1900, my commission must be
refunded, by me, to Mr. Ames, that is no big deal, I have certainly
refunded commissions to Mr. Ames before, especially lately. I don't
quite know what I'm doing wrong. But that is not your concern, Mrs.
Faniglia. Your concern is Derek. My real reason for writing this
letter, on my lunch break, is that, hard as we all work at KidLuv to
provide innovative and essential development tools for families like
yours, Mrs. Faniglia, it is always sort of a heartbreak when our
products are misapprehended. Please do accept our offer of a free
ICS2 100 upgrade. We at KidLuv really love what kids are, Mrs.
Faniglia, which is why we want them to become something better as
soon as possible. Baby's early years are so precious, and must not be
wasted, as we are finding out, as our Billy grows and grows, learning
new skills every day.