Pastoralia by George Saunders

Ooga booga.

I might be completely out to lunch here, but George Saunders really seems to be picking up where Donald Barthelme left off. Like his predecessor, he embraces that postmodern absurdity and sardonic humor, while still doing something unmistakably his own. To call Pastoralia bizarre would be the understatement of the year. It is such a unique reading experience and I haven't encountered anything quite like it before. Then again, the same can be said for almost every other short-story that I have read by this author. The man operates on his own wavelength.

Saunders’ short stories tend to wander into novella territory and Pastoralia is no different. But even with the extra length, it never drags. In fact, quite the opposite. It's a whirlwind of narrative force and the story is completely absorbing from start to finish. Whereas Barthelme often tosses narrative convention right out the window, Saunders keeps a recognizable story shape (ex: complex characters with emotional depth and a plot you can trace) but it's more like a zigzag patters as opposed to a straight line. Additionally, everything is filtered through this wonderfully skewed lens. Instead of laying all the groundwork upfront, the story begins in medias res, which is completely disorienting. Yet, like a widening circle, the world slowly reveals itself as the initial strangeness becomes more familiar and not so far removed from our own reality. 

The premise itself is pure Saunders: sharp social satire wrapped in exaggerated absurdity. Beneath the weirdness, he’s poking fun at the bureaucratic machinery of capitalism such as what it means to be a “good worker,” how far one is willing to bend (or break) themselves to appease an uncaring, corporate structure, and the consequences of maintaining the status quo. You see, our unnamed narrator and his coworker Janet are cavepeople impersonators in a kind of historical theme park where guests can come watch them live like Neanderthals. 

Weird, right?

To keep things as historically accurate as possible, they spend their days making fires, flint-skinning goats (provided daily through the Big Slot), pretending to eat bugs and generally grunting the hours away. Of course, this being George Saunders, the job is also bleakly hilarious. The prison metaphor of being a worker literally trapped in a dead-end job is explicitly illustrated with the narrator and his cavewoman partner living in this the cave. It is both their workplace and home where everything is monitored by the higher-ups running this zany operation. The historical anachronisms are also played up for laughs with the company mostly communicating with staff via fax machine and memos. The whole setup feels like a parody of corporate office life taken to a ridiculous extreme. 

I won’t spoil any plot developments, because half the fun is discovering just how bizarre and oddly heartfelt this story becomes. But stylistically, the Barthelme echoes are delightfully there: the disjointed narrative, the sudden tonal shifts, the non-sequiturs, the comedic beats that appear out of nowhere, the playful language, the pastiche of everyday corporate nonsense. Still, Saunders’ approach feels less avant-garde and more...how do I put it...generously weird? He stretches language, toggling between meaning and non-meaning, sincerity and parody, but always keeps the emotional core intact through an empathetic narrator.

The humor is what really sells it though: the sharp dialogue, character interactions that border on slapstick (or a Samuel Beckett play) and irony that runs through everything. Pastoralia ends up feeling like a mini-epic, a mishmash of workplace politics, bureaucracy run amok, performance art and human longing that surprisingly comes together beautifully by the end. It’s hilarious, inventive, kind of heartbreaking and one of the most memorable reading experiences I've had in a very long time. In other words, prime Saunders.

(Ratings are arbitrary but I can see this story being 5 stars with another re-read)