Pastoralia [Paperback]

George Saunders (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2001

Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders now surpasses his New York Times Notable Book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, with this bestselling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 humor. 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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Saunders's extraordinary talent is in top form in his second collection (after CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), in which his vision of a hellishly (and hopefully) exaggerated dystopia of late capitalist America is warmed and impassioned by his regular, irregular and flat-out wacky characters. Merging the spirit of James Thurber with the world of the Simpsons, Saunders's five stories and title novella feature protagonists who are losers yet also innocent dreamers: in "Winky," a single guy lives with his sister but hopes to improve his life with his new self-help cult's mantra, "Now is the time for me to win!" The tales pit bleak existences with details so contemporary they're futuristic, as in "Pastoralia," where the narrator is a "re-enactor" who lives in a cave as part of an exhibit in the Pastoralia theme park. Authenticity demands that he speak no English, pretend to draw pictographs on the wall and eat goat. His cave partner, Janet, is driving him crazy, because she uses English, smokes and hates goat; meanwhile, the clumsy, bullying management leans on the narrator to testify against her. In "Sea Oak," the narrator is a beleaguered male stripper who lives with his Aunt Bernie and two other relatives, both clueless, young single mothers whose dialogue consists of trashy talk-show vernacular. They eke out their lives in foggy complacency until the pathetically passive Bernie dies and comes back to life to boss around the household: "I never got nothing! My life was shit! I was never even up in a freaking plane." These characters may not have much, but they do possess the author's compassion, and so are enigmas of decency enshrouded in dark, TV-hobbled dumbness. Saunders, with a voice unlike any other writer's, makes these losers funny, plausible and absolutely winning. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade (June 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573228729
• ISBN-13: 978-1573228725
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

George Saunders's political novella The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil was published by Riverhead Trade Paperbacks in September 2005. He is also the author of Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, both New York Times Notable Books, and The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, a New York Times children's bestseller. In 2000, The New Yorker named him one of the "Best Writers Under 40." He writes regularly for The New Yorker and Harper's, as well as Esquire, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. He won a National Magazine Award for Fiction in 2004 and his work is included in Best American Short Stories 2005. He teaches at Syracuse University.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking for happiness in all the usual, wrong places, February 5, 2003

By 

Susan O'Neill (Andover, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pastoralia (Paperback)

The first story in this book, the title story, grabbed me immediately. I laughed aloud, delighted at the inventiveness of Saunders' depiction of the corporate culture, as seen through the eyes of a poor working stiff in the pre-historic-land exhibit of a theme park. And really, be it a cubicle or a cave, corporate jargon or grunts and gestures, the author reinforces a universal truth: we are a flawed species, and when pressed, we default to some very strange, very typical behavior. His characters are both bizarre and entirely recognizable: so many hapless, imperfect souls stuck in an even more imperfect world, trying to find happiness in spite of themselves--even, in one case, in spite of being dead. As Pogo was known to say, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Saunders' sense of humor elevates our mundane dance with discontent to a charming, hilarious, sad, familiar but refreshing jig.

Susan O'Neill
Author: Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

(Ballantine Books, 2001)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smart, witty, and compassionate, November 27, 2005

By 

Desirina Boskovich "cpunk junkie" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pastoralia (Paperback)

The stories that George Saunders tells manage to be simultaneously smart, funny, and kind. They're intelligent and satirical, but compassionate, too; a pretty rare find. This collection is full of stories that both entertain and sting. It's my favorite of Saunders' works so far.

Pastoralia contains five short stories and a novella. The novella, "Pastoralia," is the first story in the collection, a bit different than what you might expect. If you liked CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Saunders' first short story collection, you'll probably like the novella the best. Like many of those stories, it is set in a futuristic amusement park beset by hard times. In this story the main character has a difficult decision to make: please his boss by ratting out his not-very-dedicated coworker (who persists in speaking English and smoking inside their supposedly pre-historic cave), or stick by her side by continuing to fill out not-very-honest behavioral reports day by day.

The best story in the collection is "Sea Oak," which features two uneducated, potty-mouthed sisters, their brother who earns his living at boy-hottie club "Joysticks," and their put-upon Aunt Bernie. Aunt Bernie remains hardworking and optimistic to the end, which unfortunately for her comes quite early in the story. Then she comes back from the dead, with a vengeance, and also no longer quite in one piece. This story is weird, and sad, and hilarious.

Another great story is "The Barber's Unhappiness," a tale of a depressed barber, who lives with his guilt-tripping mom and fantasizes constantly about sexy women and imaginary happy endings. Highlights include his stint in driving school and a hilarious bit with an annoyingly non-confrontational driving instructor ("I'm talking what happens if you walk away from here a man or woman not changed in her thought patterns by the material I'm about to present you in terms of the visuals and graphics?"). In the end, not really much of anything happens, but it manages to do so in an incredibly funny and interesting way. I think what's really valuable about this story is the way it portrays the kind-of pathetic barber with humorous yet compassionate honesty.

I would especially recommend Pastoralia to anyone who likes the wittily remote style of David Foster Wallace, the futuristic short stories of Adam Johnson or Cory Doctorow, or the dry humor of Kurt Vonnegut. In summary, Pastoralia is freaking awesome.

24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compassionately cruel, May 19, 2000

By 

Colin Dobin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pastoralia (Hardcover)

George Saunders is weird and then some. The America in his short stories is light years away from the picture postcard vision of sun-drenched cornfields swaying in the wind.

In the short story that gives the book its title, Pastoralia is the sort of theme park that would give Disney executives a heart attack. Visitors see people as they lived in past epochs, such as the couple who play Neanderthal cave dwellers, daubing prehistoric paintings on walls, making unintelligible grunting noises and roasting goats. But, there are few visitors to the park and the "cavewoman" Janet is cracking up under the pressure of mounting debts and a drug-addicted son.

She downs a bottle of Jack Daniels bourbon and starts using the sort of expletives no Neanderthal man would know.

In the best and funniest story, Sea Oak, a down-at-heel, bickering family tries to make ends meet in a housing estate that gives new meaning to the term concrete jungle. They spend most of their time mindlessly watching television. The stations have run out of Worst Accidents or When Animals Attack videos and have to resort to The Worst That Could Happen, a half-hour of computer simulations of tragedies that have never happened but theoretically could. A child hit by a train is catapulted into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves. A man cuts off his hand chopping wood and while staggering screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher.

Sea Oak is a modern parable. The family's dead granny comes back from the grave to tell them to get their act together but, unlike the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, she just won't go away, but sits putrefying in her favourite armchair.

"In the morning she's still there, shaking and swearing.

" 'Take the blanket off!' she screams. 'It's time to get this show on the road.'

"I take the blanket off. The smell is not good. One ear is now in her lap. She keeps absentmindedly sticking it back on her head."

Sea Oak is like one long-running sick joke, where you know you shouldn't laugh, but can't help yourself.

Saunders sees humour in misfortune, loneliness and deformity, but it is a cruel humour laced with compassion and that makes his stories not just palatable, but at times moving and wickedly funny.

The misfits he describes are not outcasts to him. The sky may be a different colour on their planet, but the space they inhabit is as real to them as the lives so-called normal people lead.

Not all the stories are consistently good. I read The End of FIRPO In The World three times and still haven't the faintest idea what it's about. But at his best, the arrows that he fires at the alienating culture of urban America hit their mark.