Publisher's Synopsis
There is a good deal of Art (but little Relief from Laughter) in Gilbert Sorrentino's majestic symphonie pastorale. In it he trains his sites on that most artifical of literary forms, the pastoral novel, to construct a book that is not so much written as composed- an elaborate artifice built up of thousands of disparate elements. The hero's quest for the perfect musical chord takes him across the melting pot that is America before he finally ends up and cracks up, on the hills of San Francisco.
