The Subject Steve : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Weird
Review: I was intrigued within the first 50 pages or so because of the direction it seemed to be heading. Then it got bland in the middle . It just seemed to be the same thing spit over and over to the reader. It did have its high moments in the middle. Then at the end of the book it got better, but it was hard to get through the 2nd third of the book, it probably goes deeper than i gave it. I really didn't get into it, so that may be why, also I am still a teenager but I did get most of the satire. My recommendation is that it's one of those books you have to read yourself to judge because you may take it a different way. It just wasn't for me.

Rating:
Summary: See for yourself...
Review: Some half-wit wrote: "Well, after reading the last sentance of this crummy but brightly colored book...." Well, to quote Boston's Mission of Burma, what could I say to that? Best to let the work speak for itself. To wit:

"Home, I threw away my watches my clocks, my clock-radios. I kept my Jews of Jazz Calendar up on the kitchen door. The knowledge of days was crucial, I decided, the marking of hours a mistake."

"I called up my daughter at the School for disaffected daughters."

and:

"I readied myself for the period in which I'd have to get ready. I waited for the time during which I'd have to get ready. I waited for the time during which I'd have to wait. I tied up loose ends, tidied up my accounts, put my papers in order, called old friends. I didn't really have any papers.
I did have friends.
I had Cudahy.
I called Cudahy.
'I'm coming to see you,' said Cudahy.
'Come soon,' I said.
I called my ex-wife, nothing if not a loose end, or at least a bit of untidiness, what with all we had left unaccounted for. .
'I knew you'd call,' said Maryse. 'I had a dream about you last week. You were walking through the pet food aisle at the supermarket and a kind of viscid bile was streaming down your chin.'
'It wasn't a dream,' I said. 'I'm dying.'
'I know, baby. I'm dying, too. But we've tried so many times already. We just have to learn to live with things the way they are. Things are not so bad. Truth be told, I'm not unfilled by William.'
'William's a very good fellow,' I said.
'He's not you,' said my ex-wife, 'but then again, you're not him.'
William had once been my hero. Then he whisked away my wife. Now he was a very good fellow, a f**cker, a thief. He deserved to die of whatever everybody had ever died of before, but with more agony, a heavier soiling of sheets.
'You may not hear from me again,' I said.
'That's probably a wise choice,' said Maryse.
'I don't think it's a choice,' I said. 'I really am dying.'
'Don't threaten me, said Maryse.'"

* * *

Well and so, I'd tell Mr. Sentance to go write like that, or, at least, to try and get his spelling down. It'd be a bit unfair, though-few of our best writers can write with such concentrated force, such compassion, and such humor.

Look: Each generation gets one or two, perhaps a few, writers this good--we should treasure them. Shower them with grants. Erect Town Square statues. Read them aloud to our lovers and lovers-to-be. Argue about them, heatedly. Sure. But not attack them, idiotically, anonymously, in the Rambles of Amazon Park.

Rating:
Summary: An Astoria Statement from Seattle
Review: Well, the other reviews here wrote there great synopses, but here's my two cents.

David Foster Wallace has this essay about the difficulty today's novelists have competing with mediated reality. Roth wrote this essay first, and Franzen's written it since (and has now written a novel following Wallace's advice) But despite W's literary catholicism, his fictions wallows in exactly the same stuff he abhors. And, of course, that's what makes it great, and it's what most fortysomething novelists spend a lot of time thinking about. I'd guess that Lipsyte's just get that this is stuff you learned in college--mediated reality is just a given.

This book is usually descibed as satire, and I guess that's true because it reminds me of Nathanial West--it manages to be scathing and poignant at the same time, and it's very human. It's also very--and I mean, veryfunny. It's like some sin not to be a realist today, but it's also not like the book is particularly difficult or anything (it's moving, but that's another story). I mean, it feels silly to recommend this book--you just want to thrust it into people's hands. On the other hand, this just might be a book that should have "this book is not for you" sticker slapped across the shrink wrap. You're always laughing at stuff that is real, which hurts. Which makes it so cool. Which also hurts.

I guess you all know this book is about a dying man whose condition is universal. Which is funny, because explains why something which reminds me of the best ever episode of the Simpsons has been reviewed as if it were an episode of ER. But it's not at all a morbid book. Steve-not-Steve (see? already it's confusing) really just has these poignant, hysterical adventures, told in these amazing sentences which read kind of like what street poetry would sound like if street poems were beautiful. Which is not to put down Franzen or street poetry or anything, but simply to say that if you have a good year you just might like this book. I did.