Blue Pastoral (American Literature) - Softcover

Sorrentino, Gilbert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564782514 ISBN 13: 9781564782519

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

Synopsis

"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 this title

About the Author:

In addition to his books of poetry and criticism, Gilbert Sorrentino is the author of fourteen novels, including Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things, The Sky Changes, and Mulligan Stew. He has received numerous grants and awards throughout his career, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, two Guggenheim Fellowships, two NEA Fellowships and a Lannan Literary Award.

Review:

"A wild and crazy book, lavishly inventive, full of surprises, sometimes exasperating, often exhilerating." -- New York Times Book Review

"Blue Pastoral is bedazzling. Its language--and what else is literature but language--dips and dances. Read it." -- New Statesman

"Sections are brilliant and wicked and they show how much of a stern dazzler Sorrentino can be." -- Kirkus

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1564782514
• ISBN 13: 9781564782519
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 315