Product Description

'Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny - telling just the kind of stories we need to get us through these times' Thomas Pynchon In PASTORALIA elements of contemporary life are twisted, merged and amplified into a slightly skewed version of modern America. A couple live and work in a caveman theme-park, where speaking is an instantly punishable offence. A born loser attends a self-help seminar where he is encouraged to rid himself of all the people who are 'crapping in your oatmeal'. And a male exotic dancer and his family are terrorised by their decomposing aunt who visits them with a solemn message from beyond the grave. With an uncanny combination of deadpan naturalism and uproarious humour, George Saunders creates a world that is both indelibly original and yet hauntingly familiar

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73334 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In both his acclaimed debut, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, and his second collection, Pastoralia, George Saunders imagines a near future where capitalism has run amok. Consumption and the service economy rule the earth. The Haves are grotesque beings, mutilated by their crass desires and impossible wealth. The Have Nots are no less crippled, both emotionally and physically, by their inferior status. It's a kind of Westworld scenario, but instead of robots, the serving wenches, bellboys, and extras are real people, all of them mercilessly indentured by the free market.

Sounds like bleak stuff, doesn't it? Yet Saunders handles his characters with grace and humour In the title story, for example, a couple occupies a squalid corner of a human zoo, where they act out a parody of caveman times, communicating in grunts and hand motions speaking is instantly punishable by the Orwellian management) and conducting their lives during 15-minute smoke breaks. In "Winky", a born loser (really, all of Saunders's characters are born losers) visits a self-help seminar, where he's encouraged to rid himself of all those people who are "crapping in your oatmeal". Exhilarated at the prospect of dumping his simple, crazy-haired, religion-besotted sister, he returns home to the bleak discovery that he needs her as much as she needs him. The protagonist of "Sea Oak" works as a stripper in an aviation-themed restaurant and lives next to a crack house with his unemployed sisters, their babies, and a sweet old maid of an aunt. The aunt dies, and then returns from the grave--not so sweet, now, and still decomposing--with strange powers and a sobering message:

"You ever been in the grave? It sucks so bad! You regret all the things you never did. You little bitches are going to have a very bad time in the grave unless you get on the stick, believe me!"

The characters and situations in the rest of Pastoralia are equally wretched. But Saunders rescues them from utter despair with a loving belief in the triumph of the human spirit: yes, things can always get worse, but worse is better than the cold dirt of the grave. And in the small space between wretchedness and death there is plenty of room for laughter, and even love. --Tod Nelson

Review
'Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny - telling just the kind of stories we need to get us through these times' Thomas Pynchon

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Like a literary take on American Beauty

Customer Reviews

Really rather wonderful.
George Saunders. Y'know, CivilWarLand In Bad Decline George Saunders. And already you're thinking "Erk, Thomas Phynchon, Gaddis, Wallace, hip American writers I haven't read.". Don't. Think surreal, slightly futuristic Raymond Carver. Which could be a disaster, but really, really, isn't. The novella, "Pastoralia", is a gem, a bizarre pondering of the American Dream of working hard, staying loyal, staying regular. In a caveman exhibit. You can open it at a random page and get a couple of lines like: "This morning in Big Slot there is no goat. Also no note." and you won't understand at all, but boy will you ever be curious. The shorter stories are even better, especially "The Barber's Unhappiness", a perfect suburban melodrama, starring a man with no toes. The weirdness could grate, but it does, it simply enchants. Hip American Writers just got a lot warmer.

Oh my, the guy can write.
George Saunders writes much much better short stories than me. He writes much better short stories than everybody i know. Even Carver, if he were alive, would be looking over his shoulder, kind of nervous, rubbing his own ear. I don't know who this Saunders fellow thinks he is, writing these freaking good stories and then acting all insouciant about it, like it's no big deal. He speaks of a new moral tone in funny writing and cites Foster Wallace, Dave E and the rest as influences, but his voice is all his own - no-one else could have written the novella/longish short story that is Pastoralia, or fit so much heart into the surreal. Plus! He eschews footnotes. And we like a man who eschews those.

What the other guy said
Pastoralia is George Saunders's second collection of stories and, like CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, it deals with a parallel or future world, a service sector gone mad and has much black-hearted satire for our own days. I read it in one day (albeit a day confined to planes and trains) and it was an absolute pleasure from start to finish. Early Vonnegut is brought to mind with Saunders's packing-'em-in brevity (see the first page of "Sea Oak" or "Winky"). My favourite though was "The Barber's Unhappiness," which seems representative with its hopeless, loveless protagonist and its cool distance and occasional absurdity. Here he is having snatched a glimpse down the dress of a woman he's trying to work out whether he should be dropping his standards to pursue:

"Well she definitely had something going on in the chest category. So facially she was the prettiest in the room, plus she had decent boobs. Attractive breasts. The thing was, would she want him? He was old. Oldish. When he stood up too fast his knee joints popped. Lately his gums had started to bleed. Plus he had no toes. Although why sell himself short? He owned his own small business. He had a bit of a gut, yes, and his hair was somewhat thin, but then again his shoulders and chest were broad, so that the overall effect, even with the gut, was of power, which girls liked, and at least his head was properly sized for his body, which was more than she could say, although then again he still lived with his mother."

Ultimately though the fun Saunders has with his characters never descends into Waughish cruelty, and - by and large - gives them hope at the end of the trek through their story, if not success. Pastoralia is an essential collection of modern short stories.