24. Pastoralia, by George Saunders
This novel turned out to be something completely different than what I expected it to be. I was misled by the deer on the cover, and believed that it would be a story about finding oneself in nature, or something to that extent. What Pastoralia actually is, is a collection of short stories and a novella about incredibly average people leading dreary lives. In each story, a protagonist struggles with unhappiness, feelings of inadequacy, and/or loneliness, and while each character dreams of making their lives better, none of them ever actually succeed.
It took me a while to realize that I didn't really like this book. Shortly after beginning to read, I would begin to feel sad, and while at first I thought it was because school was starting and I was worrying about various things, I soon realized that it was the stories Pastoralia that was affecting my mood. While this wasn't surprising (I've always developed strong emotional connections with my books), it was slightly unexpected. Why was reading about people going about their daily, albeit unhappy, lives affecting me so much?
Ā It's because every story contains an element of sadness. George Saunders is very good at putting readers inside the characters' heads and describing the emotions that they are feeling. I found it easy to relate to each character, even if I had never experienced the things that they were dealing with. Saunders makes readers think what the characters are thinking, and feel what they are feeling, which is a gift that not all authors possess. By tapping into readersā brains to make them think what the characters think, Saunders is able to make the many of these unrealistic situations seem totally believable.
Thatās the other thing about this collection of stories: most of them are unrealistic. In the first story, āPastoraliaā, the protagonist lives in a man-made cave pretending to be a caveman as part of some sort of historical zoo. In another story, āSea Oakā, the main characterās dead aunt comes back to life and begins bossing him around before completely falling apart. While these stories do a great job of demonstrating the depths of Saunderās imagination, they are not necessarily about the most pleasant topics.
I suppose I understand why this book made it onto Buzzfeedās list. The stories in Pastoralia force you to realize that sometimes people get stuck in a place that they do not really want to be. Most of the time it is because these people are self-defeating, or maybe just unsure of what steps they need to take to get them out of their situation. There are even times when a characterās cause of unhappiness is a friend or relative whose happiness they choose to put before their own. Essentially, I think that what Pastoralia is all about is balance; how does one achieve their own goals while taking others into consideration as well. Sometimes this means that we must make sacrifices for others, and sometimes this means that we just need to go ahead and put ourselves first. If we donāt learn how to say ānoā now, we probably never will.
