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Blue Pastoral
"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.
315 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
3 people are currently reading
114 people want to read
About the author
Gilbert Sorrentino
45 books134 followersGilbert Sorrentino was one of the founders (1956, together with Hubert Selby Jr.) and the editor (1956-1960) of the literary magazine Neon, the editor for Kulchur (1961-1963), and an editor at Grove Press (1965-1970). Selby's Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) and The Autobiography of Malcolm X are among his editorial projects. Later he took up positions at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, the University of Scranton and the New School for Social Research in New York and then was a professor of English at Stanford University (1982-1999). The novelists Jeffrey Eugenides and Nicole Krauss were among his students, and his son, Christopher Sorrentino, is the author of the novels Sound on Sound and Trance.
Mulligan Stew is considered Sorrentino's masterpiece.
Obituary from The Guardian
Interview 2006
Mulligan Stew is considered Sorrentino's masterpiece.
Obituary from The Guardian
Interview 2006
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 15, 2012
Health Warning!
The following review of Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral does not meet the standards delineated in Section 4, Sprocket 9.82 of Article 69 of the Nathan “N.R.” Public Evisceration & Associated Critical Dismantling-For-Jollies Corporation handbook. The opinions expressed in this review do not reflect the contents of Sorrentino’s not-at-all patchy, not-at-all frustrating homage to the Oxen of the Sun section of Ulysses, not-at-all unfunny, misfiring and tedious 1983 novel Blue Pastoral. Having performed scrupulous textual disembowelment with extremely sharp pencils, agents at the Nathan “N.R.” corporation have pointed out the foolishness of such words as the distinctly British ‘shambolic’ (which does not exist as a word except in all online dictionaries) and the comparison to John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor which is so misplaced (despite Sot-Weed falling into the pastoral-cum-picaresque camp) as to demonstrate signs of extreme mental decline at the MJ Nicholls 20-Second Knocked-Off Reviews-for-the-sake-of-them Organisation & Affiliated Dunces Inc. We hope the following paragraph does not offend the no readers who will potentially not read Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral and cause no non-existent upset. Thank you for caring.
Original Review:
This shambolic postmodern workout contains spoofs of forms you didn’t even know existed: eclogue, idyll, elegy, pastoral. The main text reads like a piss-take of Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, and abandons entirely anything that resembles an empathetic character or storyline. Another novel of fragments, then. Among the highlights are an hilarious mis-translated French drama, a sheep-abusing politician's address, the bad verse poems, and the exploding fervour of language. Do not read this if you can't handle schizo mulligan stews of the O’Brien or Joycean variety.
The following review of Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral does not meet the standards delineated in Section 4, Sprocket 9.82 of Article 69 of the Nathan “N.R.” Public Evisceration & Associated Critical Dismantling-For-Jollies Corporation handbook. The opinions expressed in this review do not reflect the contents of Sorrentino’s not-at-all patchy, not-at-all frustrating homage to the Oxen of the Sun section of Ulysses, not-at-all unfunny, misfiring and tedious 1983 novel Blue Pastoral. Having performed scrupulous textual disembowelment with extremely sharp pencils, agents at the Nathan “N.R.” corporation have pointed out the foolishness of such words as the distinctly British ‘shambolic’ (which does not exist as a word except in all online dictionaries) and the comparison to John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor which is so misplaced (despite Sot-Weed falling into the pastoral-cum-picaresque camp) as to demonstrate signs of extreme mental decline at the MJ Nicholls 20-Second Knocked-Off Reviews-for-the-sake-of-them Organisation & Affiliated Dunces Inc. We hope the following paragraph does not offend the no readers who will potentially not read Sorrentino’s 1983 novel Blue Pastoral and cause no non-existent upset. Thank you for caring.
Original Review:
This shambolic postmodern workout contains spoofs of forms you didn’t even know existed: eclogue, idyll, elegy, pastoral. The main text reads like a piss-take of Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, and abandons entirely anything that resembles an empathetic character or storyline. Another novel of fragments, then. Among the highlights are an hilarious mis-translated French drama, a sheep-abusing politician's address, the bad verse poems, and the exploding fervour of language. Do not read this if you can't handle schizo mulligan stews of the O’Brien or Joycean variety.
Read
May 20, 2017The Review1
Where we examine the already said
Firstly, pursue the link towards Yarb’s review. Like it. Or, in the parlance of goodreads, “Like the shit out of it,” whatever that means.
Where he gets it right
He uses words like “substanceless,” “graspingly,” “self-conscious,” “pomo japes,” (whatever, too, that means), “undergraduate,” “wank-a-thon,” “Flann O’Brien,” “Thomas Pynchon,” “unfortunate,” and, most curiously, “centerfolds.” Or is that, “‘centerfolds’, most curiously”?
Where he gets it wrong
Solely the singular star accompanies this delicious characterization. And he forgot “James Joyce,” who finds himself splattered across our text like our friend H.C. Earwiggermann, with even a tip of the hat to père Joyce by way of “shit and onions.”
Secondarily, we confront the MJ-ed confrontation with this confrontational text. You may direct yourselves MJ-ward.
Where he gets it right
He says this: “This shambolic [spellcheck says, “No Guesses Found,” so we’ll “sic.”] postmodern workout contains spoofs of forms you didn't even know existed: ecologue [“sic,” but. . . ], idyll, elegy, pastoral.” Which is wrong. We know that these forms exist; we just don’t know what they are, or the 59 other forms and styles which are apparently the object of Sorrentino’s masterful parody. (Strictly speaking there are not 63 styles parodied, merely 63 chapters, some number of which constitute the continuing text of, in MJ’s words, “an hilarious mis-translated French drama.”) MJ also astutely remarks that, “The main text reads like a piss-take” which is surely a low-brow manner of identifying the high-brow exercise known as satire. It is a piss-take; all over the place. Also, our reviewer under review says, “and abandons entirely anything that resembles an empathetic character or storyline,” which is absolutely wrong since there are a few characters here and there hiding somewhere behind that garlic-slice thin plot--our hero, his wife and little Zimmerman--which, should the reader find them lacking in the characteristic here characterized as “empathetic,” well, you know, that reader is simply an inhuman monster. “Another novel of fragments, then” and, I would emphasize, now. True, too, that Blue Pastoral involves an unempathetic “ sheep-abusing politician,” “bad verse poems” (“good” verse poems would have caused the satiric atmosphere to suffocate), and, with the typical verve of the well-turned MJ phrase, “the exploding fervour [Scots “sic”?] of language.” In closing, our good goodreads Friend advises us with wisdom which will roll down through the ages, thusly: “Do not read this if you can't handle schizo mulligan stews of the O'Brien or Joycean variety.” There’s that “O’Brien” again, and you’ll notice the correct inclusion of Mr Jimminy Joycean. The astute reader of this enlightening review (mine. This one.) will also catch the passing mention of Mr. Sorrentino’s wonderfully word-drunk novel, Mulligan Stew. Bravo! Well done, Mr. Nicholls.
Now for the painful part:
Where he gets it wrong
Yes. Not infallible. Mr. Nicholls stumbles and pratfalls with this quip: “The main text reads like a piss-take of Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor.” Two points of correction. 1) There is no “main text.” And, 2) similarities with The Sot-Weed Factor are at best marginal and may be ignored. We know that The Sot-Weed Factor is a packet of stuffed up shenanigans and upon which and among which stories climb upon stories and plots stash themselves inside plots with conspiracies aplenty enough to make the most Pynchonian of us as innocent as poor Laureate Cooke. Blue Pastoral, on the other hand, “abandons entirely anything that resembles [a] storyline.” Plot be damned! Up Blue!
[Dialogue between two old codgers relating their (both) unfortunate experiences reading Blue Pastoral is here completely elided in the interests of the reader’s interest being held through to the end of this most insightful review. Decision taken on the basis of a recent poll conducted and published in last week’s Wall Street Journal, Classified Advertisement Department.]
What is the What; Or, What It Is
What it is is a clothesline strung between New York City, where our hero, Blue, finds a pushcart upon which he can mount his piano once he’s received his task to find the perfect (musical) phrase (Our Hero, or rather, “Our Hero,” is an expermentil pianist, having yet to discover the black keys), and California where his epic quest comes to a close. Along this clothesline--or we could think of it as a drying line in a darkroom from which photographs are hung to dry, but I fear that the present generation of youngsters knows of neither “clotheslines” nor “darkrooms,” but that’s my problem--dangle 63 chapters of writing. Prose and poetry. Excellently rendered with absolutely no dependence upon some fabled and highly ideological “utility” or felt need to “move” the “plot” “forward,” although they end up doing that, too. The clothesline, perhaps of the plastic-coated wire variety, is the minimal temporal structuring device required to remind its “reader” that now he is at the beginning now she is in the middle and eventually shklee’ll be at the end. Close covers.
But Why Bother?
“Well,” because it’s good. Here’s what you do: Read Mulligan Stew, hithertoforeabove-mentioned. You’ll love it like grandmamma’s beef ragout. When you need a second helping, help yourbadself to Blue’s tale, told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Or, alternatingly, say, you’ve read the alsohithertoforeabove-mentioned Dr. Joyce, Phd’d, his word-drunk Ulysses and just simply adored his parodies of prose styles and perhaps don’t feel the gumption to take a lark into Finnegans Wake because, well, it’s not written in English but you’re not averse to non-sense and little-sense and wouldn’t it be great if Joyce’s masterstuck were written in English because then it would be oh-so-fun, then you are, Dearest Review Reader, the dearest reader for this little cock-and-bull story of Sorrentino’s invention. If you think Finnegans Wake is a waste of trees or some similar hippie non-sense, then by all means, do stay farfarfar away from Blue’s most anguished adventures.
Selah
The Part You Can Skip Because You’ve Already Added This Novel to Your goodreads to-read List Which is so Pleasingly Supplied Upon Membership-Paid-in-Full
The pedantic how-to-read-me passage of our novel:
Because this is a blue novel:
And because we are on goodreads, a milieu over-populated by “reviewers”:
Finally, in order to showcase its redeeming social value, its “moral” of the story, the lesson little children will learn when reading this most profound novel of social criticism:
“Would Rabelais be content to read such stuff?” -- Gilbert Sorrentino, 9 March 1978--22 December 1981.
____________
Design by David Bullen
Typeset in Mergenthaler Granjon
by Wilsted & Taylor
Printed by Maple-Vail
on acid-free paper
____________
From The Review of Contemporary Fiction:
"If James's influence on the modern novel was to pull the curtain of art's methods, so that the magician's act remains a secret, then Sorrentino lifts that curtain, only to reveal that the act is indeed magic."
3 This is not a parodic review. How to review parodically a parodic text?
7 Hatred of this poorly formatted, over-indulgent “‘Review’” predicts a love affair with what must be understood simply as the greatest single achievement of 1980’s level literary fictionalizingnesshood.
13 I learned how to do superduperscripts today. Tomorrow I undertake the study of subunderscripts. But, apparently, not in html.
Where we examine the already said
Firstly, pursue the link towards Yarb’s review. Like it. Or, in the parlance of goodreads, “Like the shit out of it,” whatever that means.
Where he gets it right
He uses words like “substanceless,” “graspingly,” “self-conscious,” “pomo japes,” (whatever, too, that means), “undergraduate,” “wank-a-thon,” “Flann O’Brien,” “Thomas Pynchon,” “unfortunate,” and, most curiously, “centerfolds.” Or is that, “‘centerfolds’, most curiously”?
Where he gets it wrong
Solely the singular star accompanies this delicious characterization. And he forgot “James Joyce,” who finds himself splattered across our text like our friend H.C. Earwiggermann, with even a tip of the hat to père Joyce by way of “shit and onions.”
Secondarily, we confront the MJ-ed confrontation with this confrontational text. You may direct yourselves MJ-ward.
Where he gets it right
He says this: “This shambolic [spellcheck says, “No Guesses Found,” so we’ll “sic.”] postmodern workout contains spoofs of forms you didn't even know existed: ecologue [“sic,” but. . . ], idyll, elegy, pastoral.” Which is wrong. We know that these forms exist; we just don’t know what they are, or the 59 other forms and styles which are apparently the object of Sorrentino’s masterful parody. (Strictly speaking there are not 63 styles parodied, merely 63 chapters, some number of which constitute the continuing text of, in MJ’s words, “an hilarious mis-translated French drama.”) MJ also astutely remarks that, “The main text reads like a piss-take” which is surely a low-brow manner of identifying the high-brow exercise known as satire. It is a piss-take; all over the place. Also, our reviewer under review says, “and abandons entirely anything that resembles an empathetic character or storyline,” which is absolutely wrong since there are a few characters here and there hiding somewhere behind that garlic-slice thin plot--our hero, his wife and little Zimmerman--which, should the reader find them lacking in the characteristic here characterized as “empathetic,” well, you know, that reader is simply an inhuman monster. “Another novel of fragments, then” and, I would emphasize, now. True, too, that Blue Pastoral involves an unempathetic “ sheep-abusing politician,” “bad verse poems” (“good” verse poems would have caused the satiric atmosphere to suffocate), and, with the typical verve of the well-turned MJ phrase, “the exploding fervour [Scots “sic”?] of language.” In closing, our good goodreads Friend advises us with wisdom which will roll down through the ages, thusly: “Do not read this if you can't handle schizo mulligan stews of the O'Brien or Joycean variety.” There’s that “O’Brien” again, and you’ll notice the correct inclusion of Mr Jimminy Joycean. The astute reader of this enlightening review (mine. This one.) will also catch the passing mention of Mr. Sorrentino’s wonderfully word-drunk novel, Mulligan Stew. Bravo! Well done, Mr. Nicholls.
Now for the painful part:
Where he gets it wrong
Yes. Not infallible. Mr. Nicholls stumbles and pratfalls with this quip: “The main text reads like a piss-take of Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor.” Two points of correction. 1) There is no “main text.” And, 2) similarities with The Sot-Weed Factor are at best marginal and may be ignored. We know that The Sot-Weed Factor is a packet of stuffed up shenanigans and upon which and among which stories climb upon stories and plots stash themselves inside plots with conspiracies aplenty enough to make the most Pynchonian of us as innocent as poor Laureate Cooke. Blue Pastoral, on the other hand, “abandons entirely anything that resembles [a] storyline.” Plot be damned! Up Blue!
[Dialogue between two old codgers relating their (both) unfortunate experiences reading Blue Pastoral is here completely elided in the interests of the reader’s interest being held through to the end of this most insightful review. Decision taken on the basis of a recent poll conducted and published in last week’s Wall Street Journal, Classified Advertisement Department.]
What is the What; Or, What It Is
What it is is a clothesline strung between New York City, where our hero, Blue, finds a pushcart upon which he can mount his piano once he’s received his task to find the perfect (musical) phrase (Our Hero, or rather, “Our Hero,” is an expermentil pianist, having yet to discover the black keys), and California where his epic quest comes to a close. Along this clothesline--or we could think of it as a drying line in a darkroom from which photographs are hung to dry, but I fear that the present generation of youngsters knows of neither “clotheslines” nor “darkrooms,” but that’s my problem--dangle 63 chapters of writing. Prose and poetry. Excellently rendered with absolutely no dependence upon some fabled and highly ideological “utility” or felt need to “move” the “plot” “forward,” although they end up doing that, too. The clothesline, perhaps of the plastic-coated wire variety, is the minimal temporal structuring device required to remind its “reader” that now he is at the beginning now she is in the middle and eventually shklee’ll be at the end. Close covers.
But Why Bother?
“Well,” because it’s good. Here’s what you do: Read Mulligan Stew, hithertoforeabove-mentioned. You’ll love it like grandmamma’s beef ragout. When you need a second helping, help yourbadself to Blue’s tale, told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Or, alternatingly, say, you’ve read the alsohithertoforeabove-mentioned Dr. Joyce, Phd’d, his word-drunk Ulysses and just simply adored his parodies of prose styles and perhaps don’t feel the gumption to take a lark into Finnegans Wake because, well, it’s not written in English but you’re not averse to non-sense and little-sense and wouldn’t it be great if Joyce’s masterstuck were written in English because then it would be oh-so-fun, then you are, Dearest Review Reader, the dearest reader for this little cock-and-bull story of Sorrentino’s invention. If you think Finnegans Wake is a waste of trees or some similar hippie non-sense, then by all means, do stay farfarfar away from Blue’s most anguished adventures.
Selah
The Part You Can Skip Because You’ve Already Added This Novel to Your goodreads to-read List Which is so Pleasingly Supplied Upon Membership-Paid-in-Full
The pedantic how-to-read-me passage of our novel:
Blue had many different reasons, philosophical and otherwise, for collecting and wearing his bicycle clips, and many different styles of clip, and many different modes of wearing his clips, very few of which had anything to do with the current fashion, the dernier cri, if you will. His clips came in identical pairs, and it was Blue’s penchant to wear them, always, as identical pairs, never splitting a set; it was also his penchant (some say it was his obsession) to wear one clip on either ankle, and to wear the pair in identical style on either ankle, never mixing pairs or modes of wearing same.Make of that what you will.
Because this is a blue novel:
Though worn with work and years, honked he [the cart repairer be he], I can still espy a busted axle caused by a hump tossed off in wild abandon. Sir, I say that his simp’ring lady here, your spouse, by utmost vigour screwed, and not too may [sic] days ago if that, did exert such pressure on this oldish vehicle with the violent socking of her excited arse ‘gainst same, that it did crack the axle here.
And because we are on goodreads, a milieu over-populated by “reviewers”:
. . . that faithful readers of this tale shall not get on a wonder anent their [Frau und Sohn] unexplainèd absence for a chapter or two or three and take it out upon the author of this History; like, he don’t know what he’s doing and cannot handle simple fictional techniques. For the woods are filled with critics, who, when they are not ripping off the gowns diaphanous of Dryads, busy their restless hands with the writing of “reviews.” Thus, let us leave them to their swelt’ring voyage.
Finally, in order to showcase its redeeming social value, its “moral” of the story, the lesson little children will learn when reading this most profound novel of social criticism:
All green as Kelly, shamrocks, seafrost, and the sea; as crème de menthe, lime fizz, sage, moss, and doublemint. Green as a goddess! And that luscious green of money, that stuff that politicians are not in it for, that isn’t everything, that is not all that important, that the poor don’t really deserve, that the rich work so hard to get, that bestows wisdom and moral superiority, that there are certain things people won’t do for, that people are not ashamed of taking, that it’s good to know the value of, that doesn’t grow on trees, that congressmen vote themselves regretfully, that has no conscience. Just look at that rich glow!
“Would Rabelais be content to read such stuff?” -- Gilbert Sorrentino, 9 March 1978--22 December 1981.
____________
Design by David Bullen
Typeset in Mergenthaler Granjon
by Wilsted & Taylor
Printed by Maple-Vail
on acid-free paper
____________
From The Review of Contemporary Fiction:
"If James's influence on the modern novel was to pull the curtain of art's methods, so that the magician's act remains a secret, then Sorrentino lifts that curtain, only to reveal that the act is indeed magic."
3 This is not a parodic review. How to review parodically a parodic text?
7 Hatred of this poorly formatted, over-indulgent “‘Review’” predicts a love affair with what must be understood simply as the greatest single achievement of 1980’s level literary fictionalizingnesshood.
13 I learned how to do superduperscripts today. Tomorrow I undertake the study of subunderscripts. But, apparently, not in html.
August 5, 2025
Your mileage will vary depending on how much you can tolerate Sorrentino at his most obnoxious. I love his work enough to appreciate this one for its inventiveness, but it definitely ain’t essential, and newcomers should stay far away. I’ve been reading Sorrentino’s novels chronologically, so the one-two punch of Crystal Vision followed directly by Blue Pastoral is clearly the weakest run of his career thus far. Hoping and expecting to enjoy the next few more than I did these two.
November 27, 2007
'I suspect that the "text" is being "deconstructed" beneath our very feets!' mutters Blue Pastoral's central character at one point late in Gilbert Sorrentino's novel, and you'd be foolish to argue with him. The book consists of a series of metafictional games, parodies of everything from bucolic poetry to travel brochures, excerpts from a ludicrously poor translation of an erotic French play, language that careens from Olde English to Brooklyn slang, more bad puns around flower names than you can count, and obsessive descriptions of restrictive women's undergarments. In other other words, it's a Sorrentino novel.
The story follows one Serge Gavotte, nicknamed "Blue", as he sets out on an epic cross-country quest in search of the perfect musical phrase. Dissatisfied with his average life, he decides that discovering this phrase is his destiny; never mind that he only recently learned that the black keys on the piano could actually be played, and weren't there just for spacing. He drags along his wife Helene, son Zimmerman, a ramshackle pushcart, and a piano, and journeys from his across through . Of course, it's probably better to described this as a "story", given the number of random digressions that ensue,though the journey does provide a framework to travesty much of American life, from hypocritical academics and perverse politicians.
It also provides an opportunity to indulge in a wide range of regional and ethnic caricature, sometimes in a questionable manner. It's more or less clear that the intent is satirical, with the casual use of every ethic slur under the sun being part of his point about America, and his depictions of certain stereotypes going far enough over the top to be rendered utterly ridiculous. But this works better in some places than others: an absurd speech on the true meaning of St. Patrick's Day reaches a delirious insanity, while a section spoofing black power rhetoric feels like, as the book itself later admits, "an unfortunate mistake."
It might be easy to describe a book like this as "indulgent," but the saving grace is that it's more than willing to admit it, and indicate indulgence in the sheer pleasure of literature is the point. Sorrentino's unafraid to admit when he himself loses interest in the story, indicating when he's inventing arbitrary reasons to get certain characters out of the way, or rushing through events to get to the ending. He also mocks his own language and referentiality, often humorously mangling quotations or following a somewhat obscure, obsolete phrase with an aside like "whatever that means."
Blue Pastoral is more inconsistent than some of Sorrentino's other books, and certainly not where I'd suggest a new reader start. After a while it becomes somewhat exhausting, especially since the novel lacks the emotional content of some of his other works; I tend to find him the most interesting when the tension between the formal experimentation and the observational realism manages to elevate both. But it is worth exploring for forgiving fans of postmodern fiction, or those who already appreciate Sorrentino's flair for literary parody.
The story follows one Serge Gavotte, nicknamed "Blue", as he sets out on an epic cross-country quest in search of the perfect musical phrase. Dissatisfied with his average life, he decides that discovering this phrase is his destiny; never mind that he only recently learned that the black keys on the piano could actually be played, and weren't there just for spacing. He drags along his wife Helene, son Zimmerman, a ramshackle pushcart, and a piano, and journeys from his across through . Of course, it's probably better to described this as a "story", given the number of random digressions that ensue,though the journey does provide a framework to travesty much of American life, from hypocritical academics and perverse politicians.
It also provides an opportunity to indulge in a wide range of regional and ethnic caricature, sometimes in a questionable manner. It's more or less clear that the intent is satirical, with the casual use of every ethic slur under the sun being part of his point about America, and his depictions of certain stereotypes going far enough over the top to be rendered utterly ridiculous. But this works better in some places than others: an absurd speech on the true meaning of St. Patrick's Day reaches a delirious insanity, while a section spoofing black power rhetoric feels like, as the book itself later admits, "an unfortunate mistake."
It might be easy to describe a book like this as "indulgent," but the saving grace is that it's more than willing to admit it, and indicate indulgence in the sheer pleasure of literature is the point. Sorrentino's unafraid to admit when he himself loses interest in the story, indicating when he's inventing arbitrary reasons to get certain characters out of the way, or rushing through events to get to the ending. He also mocks his own language and referentiality, often humorously mangling quotations or following a somewhat obscure, obsolete phrase with an aside like "whatever that means."
Blue Pastoral is more inconsistent than some of Sorrentino's other books, and certainly not where I'd suggest a new reader start. After a while it becomes somewhat exhausting, especially since the novel lacks the emotional content of some of his other works; I tend to find him the most interesting when the tension between the formal experimentation and the observational realism manages to elevate both. But it is worth exploring for forgiving fans of postmodern fiction, or those who already appreciate Sorrentino's flair for literary parody.
November 7, 2018
Gilbert Sorrentino's berserk and avidly antic BLUE PASTORAL could be said (if we want to be reductive about it) to tell of the picaresque adventures of Serge "Blue" Gavotte as he ventures out of New York with his wife Helene and son Zimmerman (who you would be correct to imagine named after a certain folk singer but incorrect if simultaneously assuming said folk singer to be one who resides happily outside of absurdist fiction) with a piano atop a pushcart, alighting across America in search of the perfect musical phrase, for purposes apparently relating nominally to oral hygiene. The stage is decorously set, many piecemeal encounters follow. A traipse. A jape. But don't get that, uh, cart ahead of you. The title. The colour blue. As does William H. Gass in his book-length essay ON BEING BLUE, Sorrentino takes from the colour its intimations of the lurid and lewd (and lubed?), not so much that particular flavour of savory despond and the musical genre named for it. Blue movies and blue humour over and above "got the blues from my head down to my shoes." Yes. BLUE PASTORAL is richly filthy, peppily profane. Anybody desiring merely to take a peek at it would be well advised, I think, to hop directly to the chapter entitled "Eros Briefly Grins upon Our Dusty Caravan," the entirety of which is as raucous and delightful a sex scene as there is anywhere to be found in the extant literature(s). But the substance of which BLUE PASTORAL primarily consists is the stuff of language high-jinx and language pyrotechnics. Much social commentary is to be found, often of a spirited satirical root, but by and large Sorrentino is at play in the fields of metonymy; it is steadfastly a book of words for book-heads with a bent for getting good and word-drunk. A lot is going on with every single sentence. It requires a lot of focus and a somewhat torpid reading pace. Yes. It's mostly about argot, vernaculars real, vernaculars seemingly imagined, hellacious malapropism, and the mischievous détournement of the Fat Old Western Canon. It is the kind of game that when played we have (or have habitually had) a tendency to call postmodern, for reasons sound and not so sound. And, really, indeed, play is of the essence. You can dig about in BLUE PASTORAL for salient impressions of American life or commentary on the human condition, sure, but what is primarily going on here is a lot like what happens when problem children get together and do the whole make-believe thing in a vacant lot. Language for the sake of language, play for the sake of play. If this sort of thing is not your cup of tea, you may not wish to stop here for a sup. Of the other American masters (many my very favourite masters) typically drubbed with that "postmodernist" designation, BLUE PASTORAL probably most invokes Donald Barthleme (though I also thought often of Pynchon and his gone-too-soon buddy Li'l Richie Fariña). What kind of stuff does this novel have on offer for Barthelme-philes? How about a five-page chapter (fairly small print, we're talking a lot of words here) entitled "To Expand upon the Subject" consisting almost entirely of the names of imagined musical groups, imagined musical numbers, and imagined live music venues in Nawlins, Looziana? You get the drift. I myself used to like to write under the influence of cannabis. My suspicion is that Sorrentino was a man also possessing this proclivity. Christ, I could almost smell the stuff. Pretty sure Barthelme did likewise. We know Barthelme more or less slow-self-murdered with the alcohol, and some of us also know very well what magic the cannabis can do for the alcoholic in the managing of nausea and vomiting, let alone how nicely it enables you to back up and look down bemused and objective on your own freakish brain-business. All a roundabout way of saying: cannabis smokers or fetishists of pothead humour will likely have more luck finding traction in these pages than will your average dull-witted meat-and-potatoes normie. BLUE PASTORAL came out in 1983, and as such almost feels like a paean to more heady times of a decade-or-more previous. The Gavottes drinking their peyote feel more than a little like holdovers, though it must be said that it is hardly difficult to imagine Reagan getting elected in the particular America whose malevolent circus of a landscape they congenially traverse. We would be doing Sorrentino a grave disservice if we were to group him solely with his contemporaries and posit something of a bubble. No, sir. Nuh unh. In the often dense and wily language armada that comes hurling at you in this novel, you will hear echoes aplenty of Homer, Chaucer, Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Laurence Sterne. There is actually a significant Francophile streak, and I would not wish to leave it at Rabelais. Maybe the twentieth-century writer BLUE PASTORAL most invoked for me was Raymond Queneau, whose namesake the novel curiously has jazzing away on the stages of Nawlins. The novel's central consecration of its Francophile streak can and must be found in the curious (invented and written by Sorrentino) play LA MUSIQUE ET LES MAUVAISES HERBES, whose hilarious botch-job of an English translation is periodically excepted to counterpoint the exploits of our main characters. LA MUSIQUE ET LES MAUVAISES HERBES, naturally, is terrifically naughty. Many readers of BLUE PASTORAL (as with many books of its ilk) will surely asks themselves why this thing they are reading exists. Is there more to it than a kind of virile comic virtuosity? Many will possibly concede that it is genius, but may wonder why this genius is doing what it is doing, and whether it is in fact actually really doing anything particularly measurable at all. Again, I think of children playing in vacant lots. I think of deranged alchemists, busy doing insane things with beakers, who haven't spoken to anybody in years. Really, it is a kind of madness and play and Quixotic single-mindedness. Some of us were born to live inside art and books and hallucinated savannahs. There are certain pleasures that are ultimately drop-out pleasures. These pleasures I exalt.
May 25, 2016
Carumba! Haven't had this much fun since (well actually there's been lots of books lately just as fun) dropping acid and hanging out all afternoon in the ape house at Lincoln Park Zoo (Chicago) hoping to from the horse's mouth or in this case the monkey's to make contact with that link to man's identity and determine what "they" think of us their extension. That shenanigan is somewhat tantamount to the ribald monkey biz going on in this rollicking rolling cart/piano tale where every sentence is laced with every conceivable literary hoax possible in the wordplay game. Granted the strain to keep apace of the high-flying linguistically stuffed stocking almost ran aground before the not-so-hidden narrator could sew up the bathos cum ending, yet it clung enough to hang together and satisfy a screwball mind such as mine must be. Read this with a bottle of your favorite hooch at hand!
July 7, 2017
I think the following two things about Sorrentino are both true: 1) he's a maddeningly self-indulgent writer; and 2) he does things with prose and the novel form that few others dare to try. These two things won't resolve themselves, which may be part of the point. I may not always LIKE him, but I sure as hell can't dismiss him--though, for what it's worth, I enjoyed Mulligan Stew more than this.
Read
November 6, 2024Woeful, substanceless, gaspingly self-conscious postmodern pissabout. An undergraduate wank with Flann O'Brien and Thomas Pynchon as the unfortunate centerfolds.
May 25, 2025
A Mad Romp by a Major Writer
This is a great, sprawling, Rabelaisian , self-indulgent joke of a book, a wild carnival ride, a drunken festival of language, from ivory tower to gutter, and written by a polyglot prodigy who makes Thomas Pynchon, T.C. Boyle and David Foster Wallace all seem like tin-eared dullards. If Sorrentino were English he would be more famous than Julian Barnes; if he were French, better known than Georges Perec. As it is, being American and subject to our culture, Sorrentino had trouble staying in print. But his work is well worth finding, in whatever form.
I have to wonder how many readers who unabashedly relished this novel were hard put to recommend it to friends. It is a case of English 101 Meets Mad Magazine. Yes, it is a send-up of various literary modes, but hardly stuffy or bookish. Its precursors include Swift and early Beckett and Lawrence Sterne and maybe Machado de Assis. And Twain? Terry Southern? Its profligate literary variety--any given chapter might be different in style from the last, and a single sentence may morph from Spenser to Lenny Bruce--merely masquerades as authorial self-indulgence; its seeming logorrhea is in the hands of a precisionist, a miniaturist. Yet it is self-indulgent, of a kind that many authors must dream of allowing themselves, but precious few could carry off. It is testament to Sorrentino's craft and wit and discipline that it is a frolic from beginning to end, bawdy, profane, with laugh-out-loud passages, and with some trenchant social and philosophic points along its nihilistic way.
Its humor ranges from one-liner literary puns ( "I also serve who only stand and prate." "He e'en bared my seat and greeked me afore blushing nature, so that She stood up and said to all the world, 'This is a can!'" ) to convoluted running gags, as with what is presented as a horrendously, hysterically translated French primer, which descends into a bedroom farce. Meta hijinks abound: at one point the characters curse the narrator; at another the narrator re-writes a passage, begging the reader's indulgence. A botanical compendium stretches from one end of the book to the other, listing supposedly local flora both real and fanciful. And as with other Sorrentino books I've read so far, there are manifold examples of decidedly heterosexual male preoccupations (one meaning of "Blue" in the title); I, admittedly, was happy enough to be complicit in the author's fantasies.
But preeminently this is a cascade, an avalanche of words: an onrushing collision of sounds and textures as much for their own sake as for their place in the (loose) narrative. This prose is more poetic than most poems (even granting that many chapters take the form of poems), and should be read slowly enough to savor the rich, prolix cornucopia that is Sorrentino's wildly unfettered vocabulary.
Understandably, this book is a singularity, even within Sorrentino's decidedly variegated literary output. No one could sustain a career in this self-created genre; it is a testament to the author's erudition and love of his craft that he could finish a sizeable book in this overstuffed, over-the-top format. If you love anomalous Modernist or Postmodernist efforts, but dislike the affected, stingy approach of many, this may be for you. But best read a page or two. Some of the references are already dated, but in the main the adventures of Helene and "Blue" Serge Gavotte are still timely, and the topography they travel comically recognizable.
[I wrote to Sorrentino before he died, and he responded, attempting to explain what I'd characterized as his seemingly perennial underestimation by the literary world. He answered that it might have been the formal variety of his output demonstrating the lack of a "consistent vision," according to the literati, or that he'd alienated most of the literary world with a stinging satire in another novel. Another Goodreads reviewer here called him a "niche writer." His books are not that easy to find, in any case, but almost all worth it, if you like ambitious stuff. Try Little Casino or Aberration of Starlight if you want a more "serious" introduction]
This is a great, sprawling, Rabelaisian , self-indulgent joke of a book, a wild carnival ride, a drunken festival of language, from ivory tower to gutter, and written by a polyglot prodigy who makes Thomas Pynchon, T.C. Boyle and David Foster Wallace all seem like tin-eared dullards. If Sorrentino were English he would be more famous than Julian Barnes; if he were French, better known than Georges Perec. As it is, being American and subject to our culture, Sorrentino had trouble staying in print. But his work is well worth finding, in whatever form.
I have to wonder how many readers who unabashedly relished this novel were hard put to recommend it to friends. It is a case of English 101 Meets Mad Magazine. Yes, it is a send-up of various literary modes, but hardly stuffy or bookish. Its precursors include Swift and early Beckett and Lawrence Sterne and maybe Machado de Assis. And Twain? Terry Southern? Its profligate literary variety--any given chapter might be different in style from the last, and a single sentence may morph from Spenser to Lenny Bruce--merely masquerades as authorial self-indulgence; its seeming logorrhea is in the hands of a precisionist, a miniaturist. Yet it is self-indulgent, of a kind that many authors must dream of allowing themselves, but precious few could carry off. It is testament to Sorrentino's craft and wit and discipline that it is a frolic from beginning to end, bawdy, profane, with laugh-out-loud passages, and with some trenchant social and philosophic points along its nihilistic way.
Its humor ranges from one-liner literary puns ( "I also serve who only stand and prate." "He e'en bared my seat and greeked me afore blushing nature, so that She stood up and said to all the world, 'This is a can!'" ) to convoluted running gags, as with what is presented as a horrendously, hysterically translated French primer, which descends into a bedroom farce. Meta hijinks abound: at one point the characters curse the narrator; at another the narrator re-writes a passage, begging the reader's indulgence. A botanical compendium stretches from one end of the book to the other, listing supposedly local flora both real and fanciful. And as with other Sorrentino books I've read so far, there are manifold examples of decidedly heterosexual male preoccupations (one meaning of "Blue" in the title); I, admittedly, was happy enough to be complicit in the author's fantasies.
But preeminently this is a cascade, an avalanche of words: an onrushing collision of sounds and textures as much for their own sake as for their place in the (loose) narrative. This prose is more poetic than most poems (even granting that many chapters take the form of poems), and should be read slowly enough to savor the rich, prolix cornucopia that is Sorrentino's wildly unfettered vocabulary.
Understandably, this book is a singularity, even within Sorrentino's decidedly variegated literary output. No one could sustain a career in this self-created genre; it is a testament to the author's erudition and love of his craft that he could finish a sizeable book in this overstuffed, over-the-top format. If you love anomalous Modernist or Postmodernist efforts, but dislike the affected, stingy approach of many, this may be for you. But best read a page or two. Some of the references are already dated, but in the main the adventures of Helene and "Blue" Serge Gavotte are still timely, and the topography they travel comically recognizable.
[I wrote to Sorrentino before he died, and he responded, attempting to explain what I'd characterized as his seemingly perennial underestimation by the literary world. He answered that it might have been the formal variety of his output demonstrating the lack of a "consistent vision," according to the literati, or that he'd alienated most of the literary world with a stinging satire in another novel. Another Goodreads reviewer here called him a "niche writer." His books are not that easy to find, in any case, but almost all worth it, if you like ambitious stuff. Try Little Casino or Aberration of Starlight if you want a more "serious" introduction]
June 2, 2015
On the surface Blue Pastoral by Gilbert Sorrentino is the odyssey of Serge “Blue” Gavotte who, along with his wife Helene and son Zimmerman, sets off on a journey across America in search of “The Perfect Musical Phrase.” On a multitude of other levels, however, Blue Pastoral is a literary feast, a never-ending buffet with course after course of tropes, allusions, parodies, metaphors, catalogues and puns: virtually every literary usage to be found in a figures of speech catalogue from “abusio” to “zeugma.” The novel is also a meta-fictional time machine travelogue through every literary period of genre, form and style: Old English, Elizabethan English, Gothic, Romantic, Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Modern and Post-Modern. There are copious catalogues of references to art, music, architecture, painting, botany, zoology, philosophy. See? It’s infectious. I had to stop myself from going too far with my own copious catalogues. One of my favorites is a “catalogue of shits.” It’s not what you might think. It’s actually a listing of improbable, intolerable people with unlikely and totally hilarious names. As you read through the short and often disjointed chapters, you will encounter the broken English of immigrants, political orations, eclogues, redneck radio, musical romps, elegies, idylls, graffiti, panegyrics, non sequiturs and creative misspellings. Sorrentino seems to have elevated digression to an art form. If Blue Pastoral was billed as a three-ring circus, it would feature such literary acrobats as Joyce, Carroll, Sterne, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Swift, Toole, Marquez and Patchen. Surely W.C. Fields would have to be the ring master.
February 15, 2014
Read aloud alone.
Academia and Its Discontents
If you use reason to claim irrefutability you withdraw from culture and society; if you’re blessed with insanity you’re irrefutable.
Due tribute to Nicholas DeSelby, Dermot Trellis and the Port Authority
Blue has at least two meanings.
James Joyce wishes to declare his name and his oeuvre off-limits to the unremitting invocations of book-jacket blurb hacks.
When in doubt, list.
Dear Harmony Korine,
I’ve got your next project.
Sorrentino is to puissance what Radcliffe is to:
a) demystification
b) melancholy
c) logorrhea
d) all of the above
“There are no atheists in the brambles.” (!)
AMs and PMs, to great effect
Formal and cognitive synchrony uplifts but exhausts.
Too much of a good thing
INTERMISSION…or something
Academia and Its Discontents
If you use reason to claim irrefutability you withdraw from culture and society; if you’re blessed with insanity you’re irrefutable.
Due tribute to Nicholas DeSelby, Dermot Trellis and the Port Authority
Blue has at least two meanings.
James Joyce wishes to declare his name and his oeuvre off-limits to the unremitting invocations of book-jacket blurb hacks.
When in doubt, list.
Dear Harmony Korine,
I’ve got your next project.
Sorrentino is to puissance what Radcliffe is to:
a) demystification
b) melancholy
c) logorrhea
d) all of the above
“There are no atheists in the brambles.” (!)
AMs and PMs, to great effect
Formal and cognitive synchrony uplifts but exhausts.
Too much of a good thing
INTERMISSION…or something
February 6, 2011
More like 3.5 stars... There were times I really loved this book, as well as times I really hated it. At its worst, the novel is overwrought and attempts to be too clever, but other parts can be quite funny and successfully experimental. BLUE PASTORAL contains 63 short chapters, each exploring different types of form and style, and this adds to the eclectic and oftentimes disjointedness of the book as a whole. But in the end, I really appreciate Sorrentino's mastery with wordplay and zany situations, making the novel like none other I've ever read. I'll be anxious to read other works by him, as this is my first contact with his work.
Read
February 21, 2008I didn't read this but wanted to add Red the Fiend. I give the one i read many, many stars but can't say anything about this title. although i think it may be a parody of another book he wrote.
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