| | 
|
|
 |
|
Pastoralia
George Saunders. Riverhead Books: 2001 (paperback). ISBN: 1573228729. 208 pages.
Guide not available
|
| |
|
"This morning I go to the Big Slot and find it goatless. Instead of a goat there's a note: Hold on, hold on, it says. The goat's coming, for crissake. Don't get all snooty."
Welcome, readers, to the strange, unnerving, wonderful world of George Saunders, the American writer most likely to stage a successful coup against our national love for warm and fuzzy realism at all costs.
In this fascinating, concise short story collection (only six stories), Saunders shows exactly why The New Yorker named him as one of the Twenty Best American Fiction Writers Under Forty. In the title story, "Pastoralia," we meet the aforementioned goatless theme park worker who is attempting to create a living re-enactment of primitive man while struggling with a fax machine and an uninspired fellow actor. In another we follow the path of devotion to a self-help guru whose motivational tools feature the all-important task of figuring out who is "crapping in your oatmeal." As a writer of American fiction, George Saunders truly stands alone in his ability to celebrate the absurd tendencies of our celebrity-obsessed culture with a wink and a grin and a heart bizarrely free from posturing or cynicism.
|
| |
| |
contact us
