What do you think?
Rate this book
Bastards
Not yet published
Expected 29 Sep 26The conclusion to Nate Lippens' Wisconsin a book of losses, memories, and survival.
A full-on breakdown, wouldn’t that be fabulously dramatic? Instead, I ended up in green gripper socks, sweatpants, and a T-shirt, a look like a California cult member or a suburban schlub (same thing) on a seventy-two-hour hold—a crack-up fortnight—until I started acting like myself. Well, not myself, because how would they know who that is? A facsimile of normal. I mimed coherence, the continuity of a person moving from room to room. I performed my sadness convincingly, pimped memories of Rudy, flensed my crazy down to thimbles of death, an understandable loss.
You win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.
Recently sprung from a stint on a psychiatric ward, the narrator of Bastards works hard to perform at being a person while questioning the concept of identity and what it means to be an aging working-class gay man when the word queer has become so elastic and gentrified it’s used to conservative ends. Struggling to survive, pay rent, and navigate a hostile world, he takes solace in art and his friends and measures what makes a life.
Borrowing from the tropes of fragmented lyric essays, New Narrative, autofiction, and transgressive literature, Lippens is a bricoleur who creates a confected new form in his short novels. Queer pessimism in the age of affirmation. A search for something honest. An old queen’s cackle.
A full-on breakdown, wouldn’t that be fabulously dramatic? Instead, I ended up in green gripper socks, sweatpants, and a T-shirt, a look like a California cult member or a suburban schlub (same thing) on a seventy-two-hour hold—a crack-up fortnight—until I started acting like myself. Well, not myself, because how would they know who that is? A facsimile of normal. I mimed coherence, the continuity of a person moving from room to room. I performed my sadness convincingly, pimped memories of Rudy, flensed my crazy down to thimbles of death, an understandable loss.
You win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.
Recently sprung from a stint on a psychiatric ward, the narrator of Bastards works hard to perform at being a person while questioning the concept of identity and what it means to be an aging working-class gay man when the word queer has become so elastic and gentrified it’s used to conservative ends. Struggling to survive, pay rent, and navigate a hostile world, he takes solace in art and his friends and measures what makes a life.
Borrowing from the tropes of fragmented lyric essays, New Narrative, autofiction, and transgressive literature, Lippens is a bricoleur who creates a confected new form in his short novels. Queer pessimism in the age of affirmation. A search for something honest. An old queen’s cackle.
- GenresLGBT
160 pages, Paperback
Expected publication September 29, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
“Buying books makes work bearable. I’ll let those who’ve had enough to eat and warm winter clothes argue about the immortality of consumerism, if objects bring joy, or what helps future generations. I care not at all.”
Instead of castigating the disillusioned, Lippens shines clarity on the oft-noticed but rarely-uttered crevices of despair. Here is a writer who understands that where there is divination lies prevarication; there is no salvation without perversion. I’m consistently in awe of his work and grateful for the path that led me to such a kindred writer. Now, back to bed.
Instead of castigating the disillusioned, Lippens shines clarity on the oft-noticed but rarely-uttered crevices of despair. Here is a writer who understands that where there is divination lies prevarication; there is no salvation without perversion. I’m consistently in awe of his work and grateful for the path that led me to such a kindred writer. Now, back to bed.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review