by Sam Lipsyte
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by Sam Lipsyte
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Amazon.co.uk Review
The Subject Steve, Sam Lipsyte's remarkable debut novel, is an ebullient, bawdy and idiosyncratic assault on American consumer culture. Like fellow mercurial satirists Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace, Lipsyte is an impressive stylist. His argot is the psychobabble of corporate jargon, advertising slogans and soundbites. Wordplay, rather than characterisation is Lipsyte's métier and his language positively fizzes with invention. The characters here don't so much converse as exchange obtuse epigrammatic non-sequiturs and indulge in linguistic quips. This should, of course, be utterly infuriating but it isn't. The dialogue, like the rest of this savage, absurdist take on contemporary life (and more precisely our horror of death), is startlingly acute and unrelentingly funny.
The eponymous Steve (who claims his name is not Steve) is a mild-mannered 37-year old ad man who pens slogans celebrating the "ongoing orgasm of the information lifestyle". Unfortunately he's dying but "he's dying of something nobody has ever died of before: he's actually going to die of boredom". The scientists (who may not be scientists although they do wear white coats) "calculate that there can be no calculations" about how long he has left to live. Faced with this eventuality he embarks on a particularly wayward sexual, narcotic and religious odyssey. Lipsyte fills Steve's journey with so many oddball doctors, multimedia weirdoes, dysfunctional gurus and bizarre sexual encounters it's actually rather difficult to imagine anyone dying of boredom. Exhaustion, perhaps.
Steve hires prostitutes, catches up with old friends, foes, his ex-wife, disaffected daughter and seeks a cure at Henrich of Newark's "Center for Nondenominational Recovery and Redemption". Henrich, a former government interrogator who now maintains discipline by forcing mothers to fellate their own sons, has an interesting line in cheese spreads, "decisive violence" and bestiality fables. His devotees include Bobby Trubate, a clapped-out actor with messianic delusions; Renee, a legless lesbian who takes a surprising interest in Steve's sexual organ and Parish, a psychopathic chief who puts kiwi fruits in the stew. They're odd but as everyone else keeps telling him he's "a goner" what choice does Steve have? Ludicrous and occasionally even a little bit sick, Lipsyte's surreal, intelligent black comedy proves that death really can be a laughing matter. --Travis Elborough
Review
'Sam Lipsyte is a wickedly gifted writer.' Robert Stone "Sam Lipsyte is a gifted stylist, precise, original, devious, and very funny. In a time when the language of most novels is dead on arrival, this book, about a dying man, is startlingly alive." -- Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Virgin Suicides "I laughed out loud -- and I never laugh out loud. You'll want to rest up before reading this one. And after. Thank you, Sam." -- Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club 'Sam Lipsyte can get blood out of a stone... I gripped this book so hard my knuckles turned white.' Edmund White 'Lipsyte is certainly not without talent' Norman Mailer
Steve is dying, of a mystery disease that no-one can diagnose. At first, he refuses to succumb to self-pity. After all, he reasons, 'there were fresh griefs upon us the troops of our republic were poised on the border of a lawless fiefdom in Delaware. The Secretary of Agriculture had been exposed as a fervent collector of barnyard porn. Worse, he had a yen for the young ones, the piglets, the foals. Bestiality was one thing, but for Gods sake, these were babies!' Still, faced with his own impending demise, Steve decides to go out in a blaze of glory, and blows his savings on a couple of high-class hookers and some top-grade cocaine. Then he has to tell his estranged (and highly-strung) daughter that he can no longer afford her college fees. That done, he checks into a clinic-cum-religious cult run by the mysterious Heinrich, who just might be able to save him. Sam Lipsytes debut novel starts like Lewis Carroll, William Burroughs and Hunter Thompson rolled into one, and carries on in much the same vein. There is no explanation for Steves condition, how he finds himself at the mercy of two men in white coats who insist they are not doctors, or how, for that matter, he comes to be in the clutches of the deranged Heinrich and his cronies (among whom he finds love of sorts with the paraplegic nymphomaniac Renee). It doesnt really matter. Lipsyte has concocted one of the funniest, most engaging novels of recent times, a world familiar enough to feel real, while full of abrupt, dream-like shifts in time, place and logic, executed with confidence and panache in a rich, pacey, playful prose. A rare, laugh-out-loud treat. (Kirkus UK)
Steve is dying, of a mystery disease that no-one can diagnose. At first, he refuses to succumb to self-pity. After all, he reasons, 'there were fresh griefs upon us the troops of our republic were poised on the border of a lawless fiefdom in Delaware. The Secretary of Agriculture had been exposed as a fervent collector of barnyard porn. Worse, he had a yen for the young ones, the piglets, the foals. Bestiality was one thing, but for Gods sake, these were babies!' Still, faced with his own impending demise, Steve decides to go out in a blaze of glory, and blows his savings on a couple of high-class hookers and some top-grade cocaine. Then he has to tell his estranged (and highly-strung) daughter that he can no longer afford her college fees. That done, he checks into a clinic-cum-religious cult run by the mysterious Heinrich, who just might be able to save him. Sam Lipsytes debut novel starts like Lewis Carroll, William Burroughs and Hunter Thompson rolled into one, and carries on in much the same vein. There is no explanation for Steves condition, how he finds himself at the mercy of two men in white coats who insist they are not doctors, or how, for that matter, he comes to be in the clutches of the deranged Heinrich and his cronies (among whom he finds love of sorts with the paraplegic nymphomaniac Renee). It doesnt really matter. Lipsyte has concocted one of the funniest, most engaging novels of recent times, a world familiar enough to feel real, while full of abrupt, dream-like shifts in time, place and logic, executed with confidence and panache in a rich, pacey, playful prose. A rare, laugh-out-loud treat. (Kirkus UK)
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