Sam Lipsyte has always been a funny, engrossing writer, but with this latest novel the author of Home Land, Venus Drive and The Subject Steve is staking his claim as the city's singular source for mordant laughter.
The Ask is the story of Milo Burke, a more-or-less employed development officer at a small university whose further solvency depends on his wooing of one major, mysterious donor. The book discusses, with varying levels of terror, "work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire." Sam will be here to discuss the book with his celebrated editor at FSG, Lorin Stein.
News of Note
Star Maker
Written by Dustin
Monday, 16 November 2009
By Olaf Stapledon (Wesleyan, $26.95)
New rule: you haven't read science fiction until you've read Stapledon. His prose is a little dated feeling, but his imagination, his passion for inventing strange worlds and strange peoples page after page, is unrivaled even now. Stapledon nearly exhausted the genre before it got started, and he deserves to be read long after it fades away.
New rule: you haven't read science fiction until you've read Stapledon. His prose is a little dated feeling, but his imagination, his passion for inventing strange worlds and strange peoples page after page, is unrivaled even now. Stapledon nearly exhausted the genre before it got started, and he deserves to be read long after it fades away.