Library Journal
"A brutally hilarious literary explosion in which a world of pop-culture cliches gets a freewheeling linguistic drubbing."
New Statesman
"BLUE PASTORAL is bedazzling. Its language--and what else is literature but language--dips and dances. Read it."
Booklist
"The wordplay is dazzling."
Kirkus
"Sections are brilliant and wicked and they show how much of a stern dazzler Sorrentino can be."
New York Times Book Review
"A wild and crazy book, lavishly inventive, full of surprises, sometimes exasperating, often exhilerating."
Book Description
"I see him now! Somewhere out there in that gloaming that we call the Past that Time forgot--his ratty beard and frizzy hair, his hearty grease sandwiches, his rusted bicycle clips. An unlikely hero, your good faces seem to say. . . ." And so we meet our hero Serge ("Blue") Gavotte, a modern-day Candide who quits his job, mounts a piano atop a broken-down pushcart and sets off with wife and child on a visionary quest across contemporary America in search of the "Perfect Musical Phrase." From the dismal plains of the Midwest to the technicolor sunsets of the Southwest, Blue refuses to let financial troubles, lecherous professors or the burdensome weight of his piano prevent him from reaching his final goal. A work of art masquerading as artifice, BLUE PASTORAL is a madhouse production whose hilarious cast of styles and forms includes everything from Rabelaisian lists to Swiftian satires to parodies of such pastoral modes as the eclogue, the idyll, and the elegy.
About the Author
A recipient of numerous grants and awards including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two NEA Fellowships and a Lannan Literary Award, Gilbert Sorrentino is the author of thirteen novels as well as books of poetry and criticism.
Blue Pastoral ANNOTATION
The hero is a 20th century Candide possessed of a vision, who quits his job, mounts a piano atop his tumbledown cart, and sets off across America to discover the perfect musical phrase.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
I see him now! Somewhere out there in that gloaming that we call the Past that Time forgot-his ratty beard and frizzy hair, his hearty grease sandwiches, his rusted bicycle clips. An unlikely hero, your good faces seem to say . . .
And so we meet our hero Serge ("Blue") Gavotte, a modern-day Candide who quits his job, mounts a piano atop a broken-down pushcart and sets off with wife and child on a visionary quest across contemporary America in search of the "Perfect Musical Phrase." From the dismal plains of the Midwest to the technicolor sunsets of the Southwest, Blue refuses to let financial troubles, lecherous professors or the burdensome weight of his piano prevent him from reaching his final goal.
A work of art masquerading as artifice, Blue Pastoral is a madhouse production whose hilarious cast of styles and forms includes everything from Rabelaisian lists to Swiftian satires to parodies of such pastoral modes as the eclogue, the idyll, and the elegy.
Art & Photography
Book Info
