Pastoralia George Saunders

Pastoralia is short story writer George Saunders’s second full-length short story collection, published in 2000. The collection received highly positive reviews from book critics and was ranked the fifth-greatest book of the 2000s by literary magazine The Millions.[1] The book consists of stories that appeared (sometimes in different forms) in The New Yorker; most of the stories were O. Henry Prize Stories. The collection was a New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

Chris Lehmann of Salon praised the book's relevance, calling Saunders a "master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction."[2] Lynne Tillman of The New York Times argued the stories "cover larger, more exciting territory" than Saunders' previous works, "with an abundance of ideas, meanings and psychological nuance."[3] Pastoralia is also well-known for its writing style, which has been described as deadpan, realist, and/or postmodern.[4][5] Iranian-American novelist and essayist Porochista Khakpour cited the "seamless coexistence of high and low" in the book's prose.[6] A writer for Nylon argued the book's deadpan delivery and "satiric vision of contemporary America [secures Saunders'] place" as a successor to 20th century literary realists such as Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut.[7]

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly ranked the book #63 on its list of the top 100 works of literature since 1983.[8] The following year, Emily VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club ranked it one of the ten best short story collections of the 2000s.[9]

1. ^ Best of the Millennium, Pros vs. Readers
2. ^ "It's a theme-park life". Salon. April 26, 2000. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
3. ^ Tillman, Lynne. "Future Shock: a story collection discovers the future in the present". The New York Times. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
4. ^ Rando, David P. (2012). "George Saunders and the Postmodern Working Class". Contemporary Literature. 53 (3): 437–460. doi:10.1353/cli.2012.0024. S2CID 163027910.
5. ^ "Pastoralia — George Saunders". November 22, 2011.
6. ^ Khakpour, Porochista (September 24, 2009). "Best of the Millennium #5: Pastoralia by George Saunders". The Millions. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
7. ^ "THE BRIEF AND FRIGHTENING REIGN OF PHIL by GEORGE SAUNDERS". www.reignofphil.com. Archived from the original on March 14, 2007.
8. ^ "The New Classics: Books". Entertainment Weekly. June 18, 2007. Retrieved November 4, 2014.
9. ^ VanDerWerff, Emily (November 25, 2009). "The 10 best short-story collections of the '00s". The A.V. Club. Retrieved November 4, 2014.