bid for blab: sam lipsyte "home land"

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It won the coveted "First Annual Believer Mag Book Award" also mentioned as a notable fiction book of the year in the New Yorker I think. Came out last year in UK, earlier this year in paperback here in the States. An excerpt ran in the first issue of n+1 magazine.

I'm thinking I may read it after I finish the current book I'm on.

Publisher Comments:

What if somebody finally wrote to his high school alumni bulletin and told...the truth! Here is an update from hell, and the most brilliant work to date, by the novelist whom Jeffrey Eugenides calls "original, devious, and very funny" and of whose first novel Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "I laughed out loud — and I never laugh out loud."

The Eastern Valley High School Alumni newsletter, Catamount Notes, is bursting with tales of success: former students include a bankable politician and a famous baseball star, not to mention a major-label recording artist. Then there is the appalling, yet utterly lovable, Lewis Miner, class of '89 — a.k.a Teabag — who did not pan out. This is his confession in all its bitter, lovelorn glory.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 16 March 2005 22:45 (twenty years ago)

I wish I could get into the Reader archives so I could post my review of it here! It was a gas, a quick read, not the work of empire-shattering genius they claim it is of course, but it certainly won't take much of your time, and what time it takes will not be wasted. I had lots of fun with it.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Thursday, 17 March 2005 01:50 (twenty years ago)

i enjoyed it - didn't think it was a "great" book, but fun. as if Ignatius J. Reilly or Mickey Sabbath were writing letters to their high school class. sometimes crass, don't think i could recommend it to just anyone. but definitely enjoyable if you're into self-mockery and black humor.

― carolyn, Thursday, 17 March 2005 14:59 (twenty years ago)

It sounds like my cup of bile. I picked it up last night. Let's hear it for "paperback originals".

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 17 March 2005 15:47 (twenty years ago)

three months pass...

Well, I did finally read this. Finished it a few weeks ago. I thought that it was pretty funny, though perhaps a bit inconsequential. I think it lacked some psychological depth. The narrator makes everything into a joke, and while the jokes are often funny, they aren't particularly revealing.

― o. nate (onate), Monday, 20 June 2005 17:20 (twenty years ago)

four years pass...

Never got around to Homeland but just finished The Ask, which I loved. As usual with darkly comic novels the hype - "Hilarious!" "I laughed out loud!" - tends to play up the gags (which are indeed great) and play down the bleakness. I certainly didn't finish it with a smile on my face. There's some beautiful, lyrical writing here which is much more successful than the more exaggerated comedy - there are two characters who don't convince at all and are just conduits for zings.

In a nutshell: Gen X smartass hits midlife crisis, wanks, cries, cracks wise, cries some more.

― Haunted Clocks For Sale (Dorianlynskey), Friday, 4 June 2010 17:13 (fifteen years ago)

three weeks pass...

I read "The Subject Steve" by this guy and didn't like it. Is his other stuff less wacky?

― Salted gnocchimole (admrl), Wednesday, 30 June 2010 17:58 (fifteen years ago)

its more so

― Lamp, Saturday, 3 July 2010 15:51 (fifteen years ago)

ugh

― Salted gnocchimole (admrl), Sunday, 4 July 2010 19:28 (fifteen years ago)

Nah, less so. Couldn't get past the first few pages of Subject Steve, was torn between admiration and annoyance during Home Land, but loved The Ask. He's learning to write characters who matter rather than frames on which to hang jokes. His problem is that he's such a good prose stylist that he can get carried away with writing comedy on the level of the sentence but in The Ask he's much better at deriving comedy from character and plot.

― Haunted Clocks For Sale (Dorianlynskey), Sunday, 4 July 2010 20:13 (fifteen years ago)

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