The Subject Steve: A Novel - Hardcover

Lipsyte, Sam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767908856 ISBN 13: 9780767908856

Publisher: Broadway Books, 2001

Synopsis

Told by his physicians that he is dying of a terminal illness that they call Goldfarb-Blackstone Preparatory Extinction Syndrome, Steve--a divorced husband, absent father, and advertising executive--will do anything to avoid his death sentence and heads for the Center for Nondenominational Recovery and Redemption in the hopes of a cure. A first novel.

About this title

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

US praise for The Subject Steve:
‘A book about mortality is a risky prospect, but Lipsyte is very funny, and his stylistic high-wire act—a rowdy prose that is by turns shocking and lyrical—is equal to his daring premise.’ The New Yorker

‘Satire with a capital “S”, a DeLillo-like excavation of our consuming consumer culture, and the ultimate fear – the fear of death – that lurks beneath it... Lipsyte is the literary progeny of DeLillo, but also the younger brother of George Saunders or Chuck Palahniuk. Like these writers, Lipsyte displays an ambitious vision, a willingness to craft fiction that fearlessly provokes and probes. Lipsyte revels in language and wordplay, writing Beckett-influenced absurdist dialogue that regularly elicits laughs... Dark, lancing humour, first-rate satire and writing that dares to be bold and edgy.’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘A fusillade of language, a rapid-fire rant of slippery trickery that doesn’t let up until the last line. The end of one’s world pales in comparison to such wordplay.’ Entertainment Weekly

‘Brutally satirical ... In a world more like that of this novel, every card-carrying member of Oprah’s book-club empire would be forced at gunpoint to read The Subject Steve straight through... Even more than in his drug-addled, linguistically wired collection of short stories, Venus Drive, Lipsyte’s headlong narrative methods produce stunning payoffs: disorienting dialogue, hilarious black humour, brilliantly riffed arias and parables spun out of thin air. But Lipsyte is more than a hip stylist of the bleak, and many passages beg to be quoted in full.’ Village Voice

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0767908856
• ISBN 13: 9780767908856
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 243