Blue Pastoral by Gilbert Sorrentino Paperback Book 9781564782519

quotI see him now Somewhere out there in that gloaming that we call the Past that Time forgothis ratty beard and frizzy hair his hearty grease sandwiches his rusted bicycle clips An unlikely hero your good faces seem to sayquotAnd so we meet our hero Serge quotBluequot Gavotte a modernday Candide who quits his job mounts a piano atop a brokendown pushcart and sets off with wife and child on a visionary quest across contemporary America in search of the quotPerfect Musical Phrasequot 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 goalA work of art masquerading as artifice quotBlue Pastoralquot 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