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Title: Pastoralia: Stories by George Saunders ISBN: 1-57322-872-9 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 12 June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.22 (41 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One Of The Best Books I've Read This Year
Comment: I finished this book last night and have to say this is one the best books I've read this year. The stories are all about lower-middle-class people with real problems, so real in fact that much of the book is very, very sad, but also very beautiful. Because ultimately what the author is trying to say about these people and these situations is Hey, wake up, look around you, see what's happening, and realize that the world around us has to change. The stories are funny, and true, and many of them are not only excellent stories beautifully written, but are obviously metaphorical and applicable to our real lives, no matter how absurd they may seem on the surface.
I would highly recommend this book. If it gives you any indication, Saunders is on equal footing with other current gifted writers such as David Foster Wallace, Thom Jones, and T.C. Boyle.
Rating: 2
Summary: Quirky, often funny, well written... and oddly unengaging...
Comment: I really wanted to like this book. A close friend who shares a lot of my taste in writing (Borges, TC Boyle, ZZ Packer, Lester Bangs, etc.) recommended it as great contemporary short fiction, and since I trust his taste I'll chalk it up to a difference in opinion, but I just couldn't get into "Pastoralia."
I read the book back-to-front, mainly because the last short story, "The Falls," was also the shortest, and I thought a quick read would give me a sense of what Saunders is all about. As it turns out, this was one of my favorite stories in this collection. Saunders effortlessly moves between two very distinct worldviews and creates in Morse a convincing narrator who's paralyzed by his own indecisiveness and self-doubt. The ending left me a little flat, but as a raw writing exercise it was really excellent and left me optimistic about the rest of the book.
On the whole, though, I was really let down. My two biggest criticisms are: 1) Saunders uses the same rambling, stream-of-consciousness style throughout every story. He has a distinct voice and at first I enjoyed getting inside his (neurotic, typically pathetic) character's heads, but after awhile I found the long, run-on sentences and terse writing style (there's almost a complete abscence of anything but the most basic description) to be very tedius. His narrators are all so similar in their overanalysis and cynical worldview that after awhile I couldn't truly distinguish one character for another. I've got to agree with whoever said that Saunders is better at creating caricatures than characters. 2) Saunders stories really lack any emotional heft to them. I've read that his stories are very dark and bleak (agreed) but also that there's a real pathos to his writing, and I fail to see it. His characters are ALL paralyzed by the same trite meaningless of the modern world, and reading about their various neurosis and quirks without any greater understanding of what makes them tick or any attempt to transcend their pathetic existance was about as engaging to me as reading the nutritional information of a McDonald's happy meal. I don't know people like this, I'm glad that I don't, and after 2 or 3 rounds of essentially the same character I found that I cared less and less what happened to them.
I give it two stars because from a completely stylistic point of view, there's some redeeming merit here. Saunders obviously writes well and his best stories, like "The Falls," are a blueprint for subtly moving between points of view. "Winky" was another highlight for me for the same reason. But without any real core theme other than "modern life is trite, meaningless and stupid" (not much of an original thought) this just reads to me like very well-written hyper-realism by somebody who doesn't have much to say.
I've seen Saunders compared to TC Boyle, but for my money Boyle is the much better writer; he creates characters who are flawed and trapped in their own mileau, but characters who are also believable and close enough to reality that their challenges ring true and made me care about the outcome. Saunders reminds me an awful lot more of Frederick Barthelme, another skilled writer who manages to document modern life without ever really making the reader care about it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Bizarre, Grotesque, Absurd, and all too real!!!
Comment: Comparisons with other writer's do not do justice to Mr. Saunders! His zany, laugh out loud, heart rending tales, are simply in a class of their own! And his stream of conscious narrations are about perfect! Take the bike riding boy in one tale. This youngster daydreams in a sci-fi world wishing for weird things to happen to his neighbors. How many other boys, and girls, have done the same, but who else can write about it like Mr. Saunders! Or the narrator of "The Falls", obsessed with his grown up neighbors, and wondering how to greet his odd "friend". Then Mr. Saunders reverses course, and into the mind of the frustrated artist antagonist, all the while sending a sly warning about two girls boating towrds the falls! There's the daydreaming barber with no toes, who lives with his mother, wondering about making the first move towards a beautiful, but awkwardly overbuilt, fellow student at a course for driver's caught speeding, not to mention the all too real instructor. Who would not want to be a student in this unique author's creative writing class?! The title tale also has its strange moments, as does the entire collection of a real original in contemporary writing!!
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Title: Civilwarland in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella by George Saunders ISBN: 1573225797 Publisher: Riverhead Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Age of Wire and String: Stories (American Literature (Dalkey Archive)) by Ben Marcus ISBN: 1564781968 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders, Lane Smith ISBN: 0375503838 Publisher: Villard Books Pub. Date: 15 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Nietzsche's Horse by Christopher Kennedy ISBN: 0970780222 Publisher: Mitki/Mitki Pr Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Super Flat Times: Stories by Matthew Derby ISBN: 0316738573 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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