New Releases by Sam LIPSYTE

An intense, mordantly funny collection of short fiction from Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land and The Ask. The Picador paperback edition includes an excerpt from The Ask. A man with an "old soul" finds himself at a Times Square peep show, looking for more than just a little action. A young man goes into some serious regression after finding his deceased mother's stash of morphine. A group of summer-camp sadists return to the scene of the crime. Lipsyte's brutally funny narratives tread morally ambiguous terrain, where desperate characters stumble over hope, or sometimes merely stumble. Written with ferocious wit and surprising empathy, Venus Drive is a potent collection of stories from "a wickedly gifted writer" (Robert Stone).

"A darkly comic mystery by the author of Hark and The Ask set in the vibrant music scene of early 1990s New York City"--

An “extremely funny...brilliantly alive” (The New York Times Book Review) social satire of the highest order from bestselling author Sam Lipsyte, centered around an unwitting mindfulness guru and the phenomenon he initiates. In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental catastrophe, and spiritual confusion, so many of us find ourselves anxious and distracted, searching desperately for peace, salvation, and—perhaps most immediately—just a little damn focus. Enter Hark Morner, a failed stand-up comic turned mindfulness guru whose revolutionary program is set to captivate the masses. But for Fraz and Tovah, a middle-aged couple slogging through a very rough patch, it may take more than the tenets of Hark’s “Mental Archery” to solve the riddles of love, lust, work, and parenthood on the eve of civilizational collapse. And given the sudden power of certain fringe players, including a renegade Ivy League ethicist, a gentle Swedish kidnapper, a social media tycoon with an empire on the skids, and a mysteriously influential (but undeniably slimy) catfish, it just might be too late. But what’s the point of a world, even a blasted-out post-apocalyptic world, if they don’t try with all their might to keep their marriage alive? In this “awfully funny...tartly effective sendup of 21st-century America” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis) Sam Lipsyte reaches new peaks of daring in a novel that revels in contemporary absurdity and the wild poetry of everyday language while exploring the emotional truths of his characters. “Recommended reading” (Vanity Fair), in which “every line feels as thrillingly charged as a live wire” (O, The Oprah Magazine), Hark is a smart, incisive look at men, women, and children seeking meaning and dignity in a chaotic, ridiculous, and often dangerous world.

This biannual literary journal is beautifully designed and produced by a British Book Design & Production Award-winning publisher, including work from the most innovative contemporary writers: Diane Williams, Gordon Lish, David Hayden, Eley Williams, Kimberly King Parsons & Sam Lipsyte.

Chantre de la littérature américaine à l’ironie virtuose, Sam Lipsyte [né en 1968] nous plonge dans la vie étriquée de Milo Burke, petite quarantaine, petite bedaine, marié et papa gâteau, dont les ambitions de peintre se sont dissoutes dans les compromissions ordinaires. Milo, qui vient de perdre son emploi de chasseur de mécènes au sein d’une université de seconde zone, doit se plier aux exigences d’un vieil ami fortuné s’il veut retrouver son travail et une vie à peu près normale. A travers ce roman satirique et mordant se dessine le portrait d’un raté comme sait si bien en fabriquer notre époque, de ceux qui doivent encaisser tous les échecs et enchaîner toutes les désillusions. Inédite en France, cette sarabande débridée tire à feu nourri sur les pouvoirs en place et la fin d’un idéal. Offrant une échappatoire à la complaisance et au spleen, Sam Lipsyte le montre avec éclat : il y a une vie même hors des chemins escarpés de la réussite. Ce livre pathétiquement drôle a de Céline la noirceur spectaculaire, de Thomas Bernhard, la haine ­méticuleuse, de Philip Roth, l’amertume sexuelle, et de Hunter S. Thompson, une bile au goût de miel.

Il nuovo libro di Sam Lipsyte è una«sublime baraonda» (così l'entusiastica recensione di Ben Fountain sul New York Times) «che si muove abilmente sul confine fra ilarità e pathos». In questi racconti caustici, irriverenti, esilaranti, l'autore descrive il lato più grottesco di una middle class piena di velleità intellettuali e di ambizioni di successo ma che inciampa costantemente nella propria mediocrità. Un buono a nulla con molta inventiva cerca di sbarcare il lunario spacciandosi per balia alle neomamme chic di Brooklyn; un ragazzino scatena il proprio sadismo nelle partite di Dungeons & Dragons; la figlia di un sopravvissuto all'Olocausto si innamora di un giovane coperto di tatuaggi neonazisti; un ex tossico che ha scalato le classifiche dei bestseller grazie al suo memoir a tinte forti scopre di avere perso il favore dei lettori. L'umorismo implacabile e sovversivo di Lipsyte, unito al suo stile pirotecnico, ne fanno a detta unanime dei critici una delle migliori voci della narrativa americana contemporanea.

Presents a collection of stories featuring such characters as a deranged male birth doula, an aerobics instructor trying to save her soul, and a doomsday hustler.

Milo Burke lavora come fundraiser per un'università mediocre popolata di figli di papà con velleità intellettuali: dovrebbe strappare donazioni alle ricche famiglie degli studenti o a generosi filantropi, ma le public relations non sono il suo forte. Milo – aspirante artista mai uscito dall'anonimato – è un intemperante, un contestatore, un frustrato, forse un genio incompreso, di certo un casinista: all'ennesimo passo falso viene licenziato in tronco. Il suo ménage familiare – ha una moglie comprensibilmente insoddisfatta e un figlio in età da asilo, se solo gli asili fossero alla portata delle loro tasche – ma di colpo l'università gli offre una seconda chance: si è fatto avanti un potenziale donatore che vuole sia proprio lui a seguire la sua pratica. Il misterioso benefattore, però, ha dei secondi fini, e l'occasione di riscatto si trasforma per Milo in una tragicomica sequenza di guai. Assalto feroce ed esilarante al mito del denaro e del successo, satira irresistibile sul mercato dei cervelli e della cultura, Chiedi e ti sarà tolto è stato osannato dai critici americani ed è pronto a diventare un libro di culto anche per i lettori italiani affamati di comicità brillante e corrosiva.

The dazzling debut novel from the author of The Ask and Home Land, Sam Lipsyte's The Subject Steve is by turns manic, ebullient, and exquisitely deadpan—and belongs in the company with the master American satirists. Meet Steve (not his real name), a Special Case, in truth, a Terminal Case, and the eponymous antihero of Lipsyte's first novel. Steve has been informed by two doctors that he is dying of a condition of unquestioned fatality, with no discernible physical cause. Eager for fame, and to brand the new plague, they dub it Goldfarb-Blackstone Preparatory Extinction Syndrome, or PREXIS for short. Turns out, though, Steve's just dying of boredom.

Een fondsenwerver krijgt van een oude studievriend het verzoek om tegen ruime betaling diens zoon, een verbitterde Irakveteraan zonder benen, over te halen weer contact met zijn vader te zoeken.

In this dark comic novel by the author of Home Land, a college development officer’s last chance to keep his job comes at a high cost. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Milo Burke—husband, father, development officer at a third-tier university—has just joined the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after off jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is relieved to get another chance from his former boss. All he has to do is reel in a potential donor who, mysteriously, has requested Milo’s involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo’s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the “give” won’t come cheap. Exploring such themes as work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, The Ask is a hilarious tour de force from a writer who has already shown that the deepest fictions are often the funniest.

Lewis Miner, antihéros caractérisé, est courtoisement sommé par le proviseur alcoolique d'Eastern Valley High, M. Fontana, d'écrire sa vie dans le journal des anciens élèves. Une vie qui ne ressemble à rien, tout comme celle de son meilleur ami Gary, génie méconnu qui fume de l'herbe et boit sans soif en cachette de son groupe de désintoxication. Lewis s'exécute pourtant. Il revient sur ses années post-bac dans des lettres au ton faussement amical, divulgue des secrets et égrène ses souvenirs... Aujourd'hui, il est homme à tout faire dans le restaurant ringard de son père, rédacteur de la lettre d'information bidon d'une grande firme de soda, il peine à payer le loyer de son appartement avec vue sur gare et végète dans une convalescence affective après le départ de la belle Gwendolyn. Un portrait servi par une écriture baroque déjantée et un humour noir corrosif.

Most artists would be sorry to hear that their work looked like a steaming plate of poop, but not Paul McCarthy. Because that's exactly what he's drawn. In a woodbound portfolio scribbled and annotated ("finger," "smeel my assh hul hole") in what looks like the handwriting of a teenage boy, everything that isn't scatological is phallic or violent. Photographs, including documentation of his sculptures, raise the production values and (sometimes) lower the NC-17 rating. And his commentaries on the work clarify his intentions: if Disney-esque model dwarves are "emissaries from multinational conglomerates come to colonize our dreams," McCarthy's mission must be, in part, recovering those dreams and restoring the taboo to our minds. Mission accomplished. McCarthy, born in Salt Lake City in 1945 and a longtime resident of Los Angeles, has had recent major solo shows at Stockholm's Moderna Museet, New York's New Museum and the Tate Modern in London.

"The hero of this comic novel, Lewis Miner, a.k.a. Teabag, was a high-school stoner, and now makes it his mission to write extremely candid letters to the alumni newsletter. His life, as he writes, 'did not pan out.' He works as a dishwasher in his father's cheesy catering business and spends his free time moping with his friend Gary, who sued his parents for molestation and then sued the shrink who conjured up these false memories. Teabag's letters detail his sexual fantasies (most of which involve the leg warmers of the school's jazz-dancing squad), his stalled ambition, and the misshapen pearls of wisdom he's garnered from his bottomed-out life. The story ends in an improbable shootout, but Lipsyte transfigures Teabag's self-loathing into a sensibility that is both hilarious and noble."--Publisher's description.

The most important new literary journal to emerge since Granta, Open City has published some of the best work by major writers and artists such as Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Jeff Koons, David Foster Wallace, Irvine Welsh, Terry Southern, Patrick McCabe, Sam Lipsyte, and David Berman. Edited by the writers Thomas Beller and Daniel Pinchbeck and originally published by the late Robert Bingham, writing from Open City has been included in many prestigious anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize. Known for launching the careers of today's best new writers, the editors are also committed to printing important unpublished work by writers from past eras, such as Richard Yates, Delmore Schwartz, Jim Thompson, Cyril Connolly, Edvard Munch, and Gregor von Rezzori. With its innovative and daring mix of the old and the new, Open City combines undiscovered writing by classic authors with a fascinating portrait of a literary generation in the making. Open City #12 includes "After the Wall", a special section on Berlin's new generation of fiction writers; a story by Lewis Cole on the end of radicalism; and debut fiction by Sam Brumbaugh and Heather Lorimer. This issue features a previously unpublished story by Ford Maddox Ford.