Hangover Time

USUALLY A LOGICAL, CAREFULLY ANALYTICAL approach will allow you to understand even the most obscure book, Themes can be grappled, symbolisms found and allusions unravelled. And basically if you really set your mind to it, you will at least be able to focus in on the novel's "meaning." But this rule of thumb does not apply to Gilbert Sorrentini's latest work, Blue Pastoral--thinking is of no use. And only in the grip of a spasm of frustration, as you are preparing to heave this book across the room, will you possibly get an inkling of what has been going on or why the actions took place.

The plot is by far the easiest part of the book to follow: a man, dubbed Blue but really named Serge Gavotte (which is but the first of a myriad of musical jokes) begins a journey across America in search of the perfect musical phrase. Accompanied by his balding wife and their child Zimmerman, Blue and his family participate in a ribald series of escapades as they make their way westward towards California--for where else could the perfect phrase be found? Each place they travel through and everyone they meet cleverly parodies the familiar stock and trade characters from modern literature or American culture. There is the requisite crass army officer in mirrored glasses, the lecherous academic whose greatest interest is his research assistant, and Mexican gauchos who find truth in their chile and peyote under the stark desert sky. Excerpts from the family's reading materials are interspersed among the Gavottes many encounters making Blue Pastoral a mocking survey of contemporary writing as well. The selections include a poor translation of Les Mauvaises Herbes, pamphlets on staying in shape through winter gardening, a prototypical grant proposal, a senator's speech and some unforgettable graffiti read from a service station's bathroom wall.

Sorrentino's ability to write fiction as if it were music permits all these disjointed adventures to fit together. Not only does he weave melodies together by continuously introducing new themes and variations and literally orchestrating an amazing crescendo for the book's finale, but he also fashions the words like musical phrases which makes them easier to understand. A mild example might be the exchange between Blue and congressman Hal Gulbit, recently accused of sexual impropriety with sheep;

BLUE: A-say! A say, powerdong and efficacious Leader! Oh, as the common lilac brents in hanged aslaver, enfundus of the wapping sun, so do I gronch and toad beneath the glasp of your so blastred wanked eye, a loosome maggot nannyberry, poosant Dux, my muskled Congressman! I base, I base, and cronk the knee in volitude.

GLUBIT: Zounds! Ofeely burk this jesting lamster who doth quilp and quark my Chesterfield? Ha! I do not reck his garf nor het his nausee ambro, swink a bristly sarsaparilla, and blue as dido cucumber. Lunk to it, blanked ordinary.

Sorrentino, an avid and adept punster, hits his stride when it comes to creating lists. While in "Nawlins," the birthplace of jazz, two "frenchies" recite for Blue some of the great names of Jazz such as Jimbo Verlaine's Rainmakers, Fats Gide with the Baton Rouge Boys, Valery Conga, Booker Cesaire, Cheech Mauriac with the Femmes Fatales and Peanuts Prevert. Or take the roll call of an academic cocktail party where:

What cascades of academic glitter! What fine madness of the intelligentsia! What milling and wheedling! The wonderful persons circulated and chatted, drank and staggered, consumed "dip" (whatever that may be), and the like festive routine. Sing, Muse, of this catalogue of shits!

There came Brenda Fatigue, Regius Professor of Office Fashion, Ed Flue, Associate Professor of Logging: Burnside Marconi, Instructor in Televiewing: Syrup Concoct Poet-in-Residence: Benjamin Manila, Chairman of the Stationary Department: G. Root Garbage, Counselor in Veneral Diseases;...Heinz Pogrom, Horst Wessel Professor of German Philology: Gladys Bung, Dietary Tactician; Fifi Galleon, instructor in French Jobs; Catherine Thigh, Director of Sexual Services, Nicholas Syph, Bureaucracy Professor Emeritus...

among others, are to be found.

If you are willing to be totally irrational for a few hours some day, Blue Pastoral can be a great deal of fun. But don't be surprised if you need a cool drink after hurling the book across the room.