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Venus Drive
From the peep palaces of Times Square to the cubicles of corporate America, Sam Lipsyte's stories wander a dark, comic road full of need and regret. His damaged, searching narrators deliver their reports of addiction, lust, loneliness, grief, and the doomed dream of rock 'n' roll with a sly lyricism and eerie spareness that somehow redeem them. Listen to this chorus of gallows humor and goodwill sometimes gone bad and hear wild voices rise out of the din of city living: Gary is a failed punk icon turned petty drug dealer and amateur self- actualization guru; the Chersky girl makes a strange midnight discovery roller-skating through a Depression-era morgue. Pot-dazed Trotskyists, summer-camp sadists, and babysitters with an eye toward erotic humiliation also make themselves known in the lost, shattered landscapes of Lipsyte's fictions. "When you have an old soul like I do," deadpans one hero, "everything gets old really quick. Nothing is new. An avocado, a glass of beer, everything tastes like it's been sitting out on a table too long." These stories, loosely linked in character and setting, recall the stark realism of Denis Johnson and the wild humor of Barry Hannah. In these poignant, sharp-witted tales, Sam Lipsyte proves himself one of today's most visceral and fearless short-story writers.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Sam Lipsyte
32 books591 followersSam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collection Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five book of its year by the Village Voice Supplement) and the novels The Subject of Steve and Home Land, winner of the Believer Book Award. Lipsyte teaches at Columbia Universitys School of The Arts and is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Manhattan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
November 9, 2010
This is another shorts collection where any single story in it could convince me that the guy is a genius, but I found the whole of it to be a bit less than the sum of its parts. Sort of how I felt about that Joy Williams collection, and that last George Saunders collection I read. Geniuses all, but maybe I shouldn't read their stories all in one sitting like that.
I adored certain stories where Lipsyte has all his skills in tight control around a driving purpose -- the first story, Old Soul, is like that for me, and so is Admiral of the Swiss Navy. There are some other stories, though, where I feel he's Doing His Writer Voice just a little bit too hard, in a way that either buries the reality or tries to obscure the fact that there's not actually a story there at all. And he leans on a couple tropes: druggie behavior, poignantly dying relatives, the banality of offices ... the bourgeois problems of characters who lack real problems. There are a lot of moments I'd call "too MFA-ey."
But shit, the writing is gorgeous! It's full of cutting phrases and lovely lines. I'm very glad Nick lent me this. I live for this kind of stuff.
I guess the thing I'm trying to begrudge Sam Lipsyte in this otherwise four-star review of his book is that some short story collections don't work right. Every story in them can be perfect but when I read them serially I sometimes end up more focused on the writer than the story. I start to notice their tricks, their obsessions, their tropes, the things they repeat. I snap into Student Of The Craft Of Writing mode, which is a buzzkill but very important to me lately for work reasons.
So what is the thing that hurts this? Is it the recycling? The image of a drugged girl twitching in a chair was striking the first time, but then reused two stories later it only served to crash my suspension of disbelief. Is it the doomed-ness? These characters never get better, never overcome, never right wrongs or apologize -- they just chuckle and watch themselves descend. Some people are like that, but I hope not everybody. Though I hate to call out for happy endings and character arcs, there's something cumulatively numbing when I read too many stories about broken people in one afternoon.
But all that aside, the long and short of it is: this is Sam Lipsyte's first story collection, and it's better than mine. Its eloquent degeneracy has brought comparisons to Denis Johnson -- by which people usually mean Jesus' Son rather than anything else Johnson ever wrote. But Johnson tells his stories with an autobiographical wistfulness and a recovered junkie's embarrassment. Lipsyte's narrators are jaded veteran fuckups who recount their failures bravely, in the moment and without apology. It reminds me of some entertaining crackheads I've known.
Obviously, this book is not for the kittens and unicorns crowd, but it's the kind of thing I love. I recommend it in small doses. Now I'm going to go read his first novel, and then maybe his second one.
I adored certain stories where Lipsyte has all his skills in tight control around a driving purpose -- the first story, Old Soul, is like that for me, and so is Admiral of the Swiss Navy. There are some other stories, though, where I feel he's Doing His Writer Voice just a little bit too hard, in a way that either buries the reality or tries to obscure the fact that there's not actually a story there at all. And he leans on a couple tropes: druggie behavior, poignantly dying relatives, the banality of offices ... the bourgeois problems of characters who lack real problems. There are a lot of moments I'd call "too MFA-ey."
But shit, the writing is gorgeous! It's full of cutting phrases and lovely lines. I'm very glad Nick lent me this. I live for this kind of stuff.
I guess the thing I'm trying to begrudge Sam Lipsyte in this otherwise four-star review of his book is that some short story collections don't work right. Every story in them can be perfect but when I read them serially I sometimes end up more focused on the writer than the story. I start to notice their tricks, their obsessions, their tropes, the things they repeat. I snap into Student Of The Craft Of Writing mode, which is a buzzkill but very important to me lately for work reasons.
So what is the thing that hurts this? Is it the recycling? The image of a drugged girl twitching in a chair was striking the first time, but then reused two stories later it only served to crash my suspension of disbelief. Is it the doomed-ness? These characters never get better, never overcome, never right wrongs or apologize -- they just chuckle and watch themselves descend. Some people are like that, but I hope not everybody. Though I hate to call out for happy endings and character arcs, there's something cumulatively numbing when I read too many stories about broken people in one afternoon.
But all that aside, the long and short of it is: this is Sam Lipsyte's first story collection, and it's better than mine. Its eloquent degeneracy has brought comparisons to Denis Johnson -- by which people usually mean Jesus' Son rather than anything else Johnson ever wrote. But Johnson tells his stories with an autobiographical wistfulness and a recovered junkie's embarrassment. Lipsyte's narrators are jaded veteran fuckups who recount their failures bravely, in the moment and without apology. It reminds me of some entertaining crackheads I've known.
Obviously, this book is not for the kittens and unicorns crowd, but it's the kind of thing I love. I recommend it in small doses. Now I'm going to go read his first novel, and then maybe his second one.
November 18, 2008
Here's a mini-review of each of the stories collected in Venus Drive.
Old Soul
Lipsyte's poignant 30-something dream fog account of perversion, replete with the clipped sentences and hard imagery of Burrhoughs, is brought to the loser set, a sort of Bret Easton Ellis for working class New Jersey.
Cremains
The narrator's pain and decay are projected out onto the old ladies of his tenement. There's desperation here, in the matter-of-factness of the 'morphine drawer' and the surrealism and wish fulfillment of shooting his mother's ashes up into his veins.
The Morgue Rollers
A demented family circus out of Woody Allen, this story fails to capture the perspective of a little girl, but casts a great group of wartime Jewish stereotypes from a Korean girl's point of view - the drunk dad, dreamy uncle and crazy gramother.
I'm Slavering
A high point in this collection, this cocaine nightmare, where a whole childhood is blinked away and chipped off with the tip of a thumb, disappears into claustrophobia on the tip of the member of the man from upstate, you know where.
Admiral of the Swiss Navy
This coming of age camp story, where boys' cruelty shows real and violent with the little nicks out of Van Wort's flesh, like scars from parasites, shows hints of the humor Lipsyte would hone with Home Land, especially in the phrase 'struck by faggot lightning.'
Ergo, Ice Pick
A paranoid, naive ADD revolutionist hangs on the cottails of a pseudo-intellectual and morning BJs, all fogged over by the sacred mist of ignorance and lust, which leads back to daddy's plush house.
Beautiful Game
Finally, a story from Gary's point of view. He's a slack straight from Bukowski, Burroughs, or Welsh, hopped up on cok and O'Doul's and fading indie cred, a fan of soccer because it's European. Gary missed the train, years ago.
The Drury Girl
The boy's father is made impotent by balls cancer. The boy is made impotent because the girl is aggressive and scary. The bucket and galoshes are the artifacts of disease and death. Wes Anderson choreographed the naked dance of the stamp covered boy narrator.
Probe to the Negative
A demented Office Space with shades of Chuck Palahniuk, this story reeks of Gary, though he never appears. The narrator is dead to his job and the Larrys, the Fink Frank, Carla with the hairy thighs, they all reject him. Then he goes to Gary's apartment, finds an ex-girlfriend there, is rejected without his drugs and pulls a move only Lewis 'Teabag' Miner could love.
The Wrong Arm
A sort of Stanley Elkin Fantasia, this idyllic trip for a freak, who seems all the more freakish in the great American boredom of meaningless trips driving and arguing. What's bigger in an American life than driving and arguing?
My Life, For Promotional Use Only
A fading noise rock frontman confronts peaking too fast and realizing far too young that all is for naught. He's a tired, self-important slob - very relatable.
Torquemada
The narrator, an adolescent Philip Roth, jonesing to screw the Jewish girl, stuck hating all the trashy idiots of his town that don't understand the complexity of his love, is the only one who cares about anything. He wonders why no one thinks about the Inquisition.
Less Tar
This brief cancer memoir with gaudy washed-out late 70s colors, and broad strokes of suburban yearning, comes from a naturalized Bezmozgis, wrapped in the vision of a prick in an office, on his way out of the smoke room, desparately sad about his dead mother.
Old Soul
Lipsyte's poignant 30-something dream fog account of perversion, replete with the clipped sentences and hard imagery of Burrhoughs, is brought to the loser set, a sort of Bret Easton Ellis for working class New Jersey.
Cremains
The narrator's pain and decay are projected out onto the old ladies of his tenement. There's desperation here, in the matter-of-factness of the 'morphine drawer' and the surrealism and wish fulfillment of shooting his mother's ashes up into his veins.
The Morgue Rollers
A demented family circus out of Woody Allen, this story fails to capture the perspective of a little girl, but casts a great group of wartime Jewish stereotypes from a Korean girl's point of view - the drunk dad, dreamy uncle and crazy gramother.
I'm Slavering
A high point in this collection, this cocaine nightmare, where a whole childhood is blinked away and chipped off with the tip of a thumb, disappears into claustrophobia on the tip of the member of the man from upstate, you know where.
Admiral of the Swiss Navy
This coming of age camp story, where boys' cruelty shows real and violent with the little nicks out of Van Wort's flesh, like scars from parasites, shows hints of the humor Lipsyte would hone with Home Land, especially in the phrase 'struck by faggot lightning.'
Ergo, Ice Pick
A paranoid, naive ADD revolutionist hangs on the cottails of a pseudo-intellectual and morning BJs, all fogged over by the sacred mist of ignorance and lust, which leads back to daddy's plush house.
Beautiful Game
Finally, a story from Gary's point of view. He's a slack straight from Bukowski, Burroughs, or Welsh, hopped up on cok and O'Doul's and fading indie cred, a fan of soccer because it's European. Gary missed the train, years ago.
The Drury Girl
The boy's father is made impotent by balls cancer. The boy is made impotent because the girl is aggressive and scary. The bucket and galoshes are the artifacts of disease and death. Wes Anderson choreographed the naked dance of the stamp covered boy narrator.
Probe to the Negative
A demented Office Space with shades of Chuck Palahniuk, this story reeks of Gary, though he never appears. The narrator is dead to his job and the Larrys, the Fink Frank, Carla with the hairy thighs, they all reject him. Then he goes to Gary's apartment, finds an ex-girlfriend there, is rejected without his drugs and pulls a move only Lewis 'Teabag' Miner could love.
The Wrong Arm
A sort of Stanley Elkin Fantasia, this idyllic trip for a freak, who seems all the more freakish in the great American boredom of meaningless trips driving and arguing. What's bigger in an American life than driving and arguing?
My Life, For Promotional Use Only
A fading noise rock frontman confronts peaking too fast and realizing far too young that all is for naught. He's a tired, self-important slob - very relatable.
Torquemada
The narrator, an adolescent Philip Roth, jonesing to screw the Jewish girl, stuck hating all the trashy idiots of his town that don't understand the complexity of his love, is the only one who cares about anything. He wonders why no one thinks about the Inquisition.
Less Tar
This brief cancer memoir with gaudy washed-out late 70s colors, and broad strokes of suburban yearning, comes from a naturalized Bezmozgis, wrapped in the vision of a prick in an office, on his way out of the smoke room, desparately sad about his dead mother.
April 24, 2023
Stories like knife wounds, sharp, fast, bloody, leaving you gasping.
November 1, 2021
Effortlessly sovereign in the smart-angry-funny-sad kingdom of imposters. Probably the exemplar of the farcical generation who heard Beckett's tragic tocsin "I can't go on I'll go on" as a punchline.
July 6, 2011
I was assigned to read this book for one of my Writing classes this past Spring. But the class was so fast-paced (or at least, that's what I thought at the time) that I didn't get a chance to read the entire collection. I wanted to take my time reading each of these gripping tales, and I didn't think that I could give them the attention that they deserved while in the class. I was one of the only people in the class that didn't sell their books back to the book store at the end of the year. I was determined to give this book a chance.
Returning to this collection again over the summer, I'm just as enthralled with Sam Lipsyte as I was during the school year. All of the tales here are conveyed with hilarious simplicity, a sort of dark humor that, I find, is refreshing within the contemporary fiction genre. I especially like how he talks about the new generation (namely, mine), and the allusions that he uses to show his feelings towards Generation X had me laughing every time. I would hope that I, as a writer, would one day be able to integrate humor so seamlessly into my stories at one point, but the more and more I read Lipsyte, the more and more I am convinced that he is the only person who could do it as expertly as he does.
To cut this short, FANTASTIC READ. Really. Just a great collection of stories, that I feel any fan of new and contemporary fiction would deeply enjoy!
Returning to this collection again over the summer, I'm just as enthralled with Sam Lipsyte as I was during the school year. All of the tales here are conveyed with hilarious simplicity, a sort of dark humor that, I find, is refreshing within the contemporary fiction genre. I especially like how he talks about the new generation (namely, mine), and the allusions that he uses to show his feelings towards Generation X had me laughing every time. I would hope that I, as a writer, would one day be able to integrate humor so seamlessly into my stories at one point, but the more and more I read Lipsyte, the more and more I am convinced that he is the only person who could do it as expertly as he does.
To cut this short, FANTASTIC READ. Really. Just a great collection of stories, that I feel any fan of new and contemporary fiction would deeply enjoy!
May 31, 2011
Everyone knows by now that I'm a Sam Lipsyte superfan. I think I prefer his novels to his stories, but that might just be a general preference for me, rather than a Lipsyte-specific setting. I do like it when he digs a little bit deeper into his characters. The short story, though, really gives his prose a chance to shine, and that's what most people are reading Lipsyte for.
Favorites from this collection: "The Morgue Rollers," "Ergo, Icepick," "My Life, For Promotional Use Only," and "Less Tar." "Less Tar" actually made me laugh quite a bit. Curiously, both of the last two stories in the collection -- "My Life..." and "Less Tar" -- take place at start-ups. I think he captures the atmosphere well (though a little bleaker than my personal experience).
Have you read Sam Lipsyte yet? What are you waiting for?
Favorites from this collection: "The Morgue Rollers," "Ergo, Icepick," "My Life, For Promotional Use Only," and "Less Tar." "Less Tar" actually made me laugh quite a bit. Curiously, both of the last two stories in the collection -- "My Life..." and "Less Tar" -- take place at start-ups. I think he captures the atmosphere well (though a little bleaker than my personal experience).
Have you read Sam Lipsyte yet? What are you waiting for?
September 27, 2025
(corrected to read better - July 2024).
Dazzling, a brilliant collection of short stories that described a moment, or maybe the zeitgeist of a moment, of a new era. This collection comes garlanded with a dazzling selection of praise including some from James Purdy which, in 2000, was as close to the passing of a torch down the generations as you could ask for. Will Sam Lipsyte last, mature and create works of brilliance like James Purdy? Who knows, in the end it doesn't matter. He created in this collection characters, situations and moments of tender despair as well as shocking circumstances that will live on in your memory and heart, at least they have in mine.
I last read this collection again during the COVID lock-down and it won't be the last time.
Dazzling, a brilliant collection of short stories that described a moment, or maybe the zeitgeist of a moment, of a new era. This collection comes garlanded with a dazzling selection of praise including some from James Purdy which, in 2000, was as close to the passing of a torch down the generations as you could ask for. Will Sam Lipsyte last, mature and create works of brilliance like James Purdy? Who knows, in the end it doesn't matter. He created in this collection characters, situations and moments of tender despair as well as shocking circumstances that will live on in your memory and heart, at least they have in mine.
I last read this collection again during the COVID lock-down and it won't be the last time.
December 24, 2007
As I type this, my had hurts. It's being beaten by a battle axe of a headache, so my words have to be short. Venus Drive is a fantastic, yet depraved world. Many of the stories I found myself reading twice...I couldn't get enough of the world Sam creates. And you can't go wrong with a tale of white power pizza.
March 29, 2011
Minimalist (under the mentorship of Gordon Lisch at the time) set of stories by Lipsyte. The collection is Angry, viciously funny, painfully sad and constantly surprising in concept and language. A fine sign for future brilliance, Lipsyte may work better at novel length, but don’t skip this if you’re a fan of Lipsyte or minimalist stories that mix pain and humor.
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October 14, 2019I read this book.
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April 14, 2009Read the STOP SMILING interview with Sam Lipsyte:
Face to Face: Sam Lipsyte
by Alex Abramovich
(This interview appeared in the STOP SMILING Photography Issue)
Alex Abramovich: Let’s talk about Martin Amis. The Moronic Inferno and Money seem like Amis’ first and last words on America. Is Amis being unfair to America? Is America unfair to us?
Sam Lipsyte: I can’t say I’ve really thought about your question before. I don’t really experience the majority of my days as a negotiation between these two entities: Amis and America. I love Money, though. The book, I mean. The currency is good, too. As to the second part of your question, America is unfair to most people in the world, including most Americans. It’s also an extreme time to judge. We happen to have a crazy and criminal government in place. I don’t think America has to be what it is right now. But it will be some version of unfair as long as its power is rooted in corporations. There’s no way around that.
Read the complete STOP SMILING interview...
Face to Face: Sam Lipsyte
by Alex Abramovich
(This interview appeared in the STOP SMILING Photography Issue)
Alex Abramovich: Let’s talk about Martin Amis. The Moronic Inferno and Money seem like Amis’ first and last words on America. Is Amis being unfair to America? Is America unfair to us?
Sam Lipsyte: I can’t say I’ve really thought about your question before. I don’t really experience the majority of my days as a negotiation between these two entities: Amis and America. I love Money, though. The book, I mean. The currency is good, too. As to the second part of your question, America is unfair to most people in the world, including most Americans. It’s also an extreme time to judge. We happen to have a crazy and criminal government in place. I don’t think America has to be what it is right now. But it will be some version of unfair as long as its power is rooted in corporations. There’s no way around that.
Read the complete STOP SMILING interview...
October 21, 2019
Sam Lipsyte takes you to some kind of gritty underbelly where people have been roughed up just enough to be anything but mainstream in their thinking, behaviors and longings. The lingering image for me is of a kid tatted up by his babysitter, who daily comes across the lawn in her robe and is covered with ink from a notary stamp from her father's desk. The boy dances naked and vaudevillian in front of his parents while the babysitter in some kind of innocent, confessional expression becomes liberated entirely. The boy’s lost in it momentarily, "It was dreamlike only in that I felt seized with secret logic. Time moved in the real, my body bucked in it," before saying, "Look! These are my people! Are you looking? Are you looking?" Moments later his mom says, "We know that wasn't you... Was that you?" And the boy says, "Who?" The stories anchor around a broken male psyche, one that is sensitized and adrift, which would neither be here nor there if Lipsyte's language wasn't so potent and revelatory.
"When your mother is dead, maybe every woman over a certain age reminds you of her. You'll find it in an eyebrow, the varicose nova on a stubby calf, beckoning you to bury your head on her breast and weep."
"It was early summer and my birthday was, as my mother had noted, on the horizon. I pictured it a pack mule in the distance, heaped with trinkets, absolution, cheer."
"When your mother is dead, maybe every woman over a certain age reminds you of her. You'll find it in an eyebrow, the varicose nova on a stubby calf, beckoning you to bury your head on her breast and weep."
"It was early summer and my birthday was, as my mother had noted, on the horizon. I pictured it a pack mule in the distance, heaped with trinkets, absolution, cheer."
July 16, 2014
Probably my favorite collection of shorts from a single author I have read in the last few years. Every story is quick paced and every line keeps you on the page. You can finish this in an afternoon and still feel like you've ingested something substantial. Lipstye's prose is economical, no-stick slick, and each narrator rings as a distinct voice different from the other stories. By far the most enjoyable read for me was "My Life, for Promotional Use Only." The subject matter is dark or "street" enough that fans of Burroughs, Palahniuk, and those sorts will be pleased with their time and money spent with Lipstye. This was my first exposure to his work and I'm going to order two more of his books the moment after I post this.
October 30, 2019
“I’m Slavering” all the way through “Probe to the Negative” is about the best punch for punch line up of six short stories you could find in a collection. It doesn’t hurt that “Admiral of the Swiss Navy” waits in the middle of it all like the current running through your charger cable, ready to jolt you to life or death.
For all the cover’s hyperbolic language this collection IS fully capable of delivering a serious gut punch and “Admiral” is without a doubt one of the best shorts I’ve read in years.
5 stars
For all the cover’s hyperbolic language this collection IS fully capable of delivering a serious gut punch and “Admiral” is without a doubt one of the best shorts I’ve read in years.
5 stars
August 3, 2007
At first glance this book might have you thinking that Lipsyte is just another of hundreds of lightweight Denis Johnson pretenders-to-status. Untrue. Let the story roll on and you'll see that Lipsyte is digging unbroken earth. These stories affected me. In particular "Admiral of the Swiss Navy". No small job.
November 29, 2010
Holy fuck this is depressing.
The first half of the book feels like drowning in a bog, but the second half starts to pick up a little bit and there are random bursts of sickened laughter that could probably only come from a place of madness and absurdity within you.
That's okay though, I think, since life is pretty absurd too.
The first half of the book feels like drowning in a bog, but the second half starts to pick up a little bit and there are random bursts of sickened laughter that could probably only come from a place of madness and absurdity within you.
That's okay though, I think, since life is pretty absurd too.
October 21, 2008
Well, Sam Lipsyte is a sick fuck, but he manages to bring you on board with him. I usually don't like the world he's in, but I still can't stop reading. He has a sense of humor about his sickness- he realizes he's sick (or the narrator does, or the world of the book does- something).
February 28, 2007
favorite short story book of alltime.
August 17, 2007
I love Lipsyte!! He has a great short story in J&L Quarterly #1 you should read too. Homeland and that other book were pretty cool too. This is his best I think thus far.
January 15, 2008
Venus Drive is the hippest collection of stories I've read in many years. Funny and biting.
May 27, 2008
Twisted, awesome.
December 19, 2008
Sam Lipsyte's book of short stories are sharp.
March 26, 2009
my thoughts on it, reading it in flight:
http://5cense.com/SS_Log.htm
http://5cense.com/SS_Log.htm
January 14, 2019
As a whole this is not my favorite from the author, but I think the last few stories in the book are the best stories in the book.
March 19, 2024
Black humor short stories. Some good ones in here: lazy slackers posing as Trotskyites, a guy hiding out in his dead mom’s apartment with her morphine and washed indie rock star posing as person who helps “disadvantaged children” but still lives with his mom.
May 31, 2021
Really great collection of stories. Especially if you're a fan of Denis Johnson or Chuck Palahniuk, other writers of that ilk.
June 13, 2013
Just what I like to read: dark, twisted realities spun around characters that remind me of people in my small, ho-dunk town. Everyone has a secret. But in this short story collection, we see what happens when your little secrets become a bigger part of your daily life. Sam Lipsyte's characters have gotten to the point where they no longer question why they do what they do. They just exist in this world. And we get to see snippets of what they've become...
Each story is great in its own right, and I'll let you decide which one is your personal favorite. But if I have to list some of my favorites:
-"Old Soul": It's the first story and right out of the gate Lipsyte brings the shock value. The nonchalance with which he writes the 'oh my god, that's not really what he meant...yes it is...that is horrible but I can't turn away' scene, makes it a great trigger for the rest of this collection.
-"Admiral of the Swiss Navy": The 'fat kid at camp' story could have gotten very stereotypical. But I was pleasantly surprised.
-"Beautiful Game": When you live alone, it's easy to tell everyone you love that life's great. Make up any story you want. It doesn't matter too much because they'll be happy to believe you're doing well...and why ruin that little bubble for them?
-"The Drury Girl": Personally, I find the 'girl-next-door' stereotype cheesy and over used. I was given that nickname all through school and I was never that typical all-American, sweet, charismatic heartbreaker who seemed to have no idea she was being pigeon-holed as such. So when Lipsyte decides to take the g.n.d. character, and give her more power than they normally are given, it leads to an interesting conclusion.
Each story is great in its own right, and I'll let you decide which one is your personal favorite. But if I have to list some of my favorites:
-"Old Soul": It's the first story and right out of the gate Lipsyte brings the shock value. The nonchalance with which he writes the 'oh my god, that's not really what he meant...yes it is...that is horrible but I can't turn away' scene, makes it a great trigger for the rest of this collection.
-"Admiral of the Swiss Navy": The 'fat kid at camp' story could have gotten very stereotypical. But I was pleasantly surprised.
-"Beautiful Game": When you live alone, it's easy to tell everyone you love that life's great. Make up any story you want. It doesn't matter too much because they'll be happy to believe you're doing well...and why ruin that little bubble for them?
-"The Drury Girl": Personally, I find the 'girl-next-door' stereotype cheesy and over used. I was given that nickname all through school and I was never that typical all-American, sweet, charismatic heartbreaker who seemed to have no idea she was being pigeon-holed as such. So when Lipsyte decides to take the g.n.d. character, and give her more power than they normally are given, it leads to an interesting conclusion.
August 14, 2013
I came to Sam Lipsyte after hearing him on a live WTF podcast with comedian Marc Maron. The two are friends so the conversation was loose and funny, nostalgic and slightly dark. I said to myself, if Sam Lipsyte's writing is anything like who he is in conversation, I'm really going to enjoy this.
I picked up Venus Drive as an introduction and was not disappointed. The stories are dark but funny. I wouldn't be the one to say laugh out loud because I have a tendency to focus too much on the negative but even I can see where the laughs are.
The stories are of a time and place that are very foreign to me and can roughly be categorized in two categories: the malcontent/addict twenty something in what I can only assume is 90's New York (when it's not obvious), and the suburban kid going through something significant, soft focus with a sharp edge you know? (though that's not always obvious). I really like these stories. Even the familiar ones (which I never present as a bad thing) have a tone and voice to them which make you lean in close because if you don't, you will miss something. There are at least two or three stories in this collection I will have to go back to because I blinked. It's story telling with absolutely no waste. It's Raymond Carver territory, in a different era.
I picked up Venus Drive as an introduction and was not disappointed. The stories are dark but funny. I wouldn't be the one to say laugh out loud because I have a tendency to focus too much on the negative but even I can see where the laughs are.
The stories are of a time and place that are very foreign to me and can roughly be categorized in two categories: the malcontent/addict twenty something in what I can only assume is 90's New York (when it's not obvious), and the suburban kid going through something significant, soft focus with a sharp edge you know? (though that's not always obvious). I really like these stories. Even the familiar ones (which I never present as a bad thing) have a tone and voice to them which make you lean in close because if you don't, you will miss something. There are at least two or three stories in this collection I will have to go back to because I blinked. It's story telling with absolutely no waste. It's Raymond Carver territory, in a different era.
January 23, 2017
One of the promotional quotes on the back cover of Lipsyte's collection of short stories strikes a chord with me. James Hannaham from The Village Voice notes, "It's fascinating to read a writer who can bring you so efficiently to such uncomfortable places."
Efficiency is an idea I can latch onto when thinking about Venus Drive. Each of Lipsyte's stories clock in at a lean sub-20 pages, yet the descriptions within paint characters and settings that make you feel as if you've been living with them for the space of a novel. It's almost as if Lipsyte has a button he can push and you're instantly up to speed with where and when he wants you to be. It's an incredible gift and a privilege to read and sense happening in real time.
My only criticism is that all that familiarity gives the collection a weighty feel when taken as a whole. Maybe it's a trick of the medium. In his novels, Lipsyte can put up one stoically flawed, doomed, yet strangely admirable protagonist for exploration. In this collection there are 13, one for each story. And since each character feels fully formed upon arrival, when read in rapid succession there is a higher density of despair per page than in his longer works. Or maybe I was just looking for a little more levity throughout. Regardless, there is some absolutely beautiful writing in here, and a great deal of insight as well.
Efficiency is an idea I can latch onto when thinking about Venus Drive. Each of Lipsyte's stories clock in at a lean sub-20 pages, yet the descriptions within paint characters and settings that make you feel as if you've been living with them for the space of a novel. It's almost as if Lipsyte has a button he can push and you're instantly up to speed with where and when he wants you to be. It's an incredible gift and a privilege to read and sense happening in real time.
My only criticism is that all that familiarity gives the collection a weighty feel when taken as a whole. Maybe it's a trick of the medium. In his novels, Lipsyte can put up one stoically flawed, doomed, yet strangely admirable protagonist for exploration. In this collection there are 13, one for each story. And since each character feels fully formed upon arrival, when read in rapid succession there is a higher density of despair per page than in his longer works. Or maybe I was just looking for a little more levity throughout. Regardless, there is some absolutely beautiful writing in here, and a great deal of insight as well.
February 22, 2014
Often shocking in subject matter, and super-tightly written - Gordon Lish edited this - Venus Drive calls to mind Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son and a little less, that other Lish pupil, Raymond Carver. Where the stories succeed is in the level of detachment the narrators maintain from the depraved events of their lives, but in a lot of cases, I wasn't quite swept up in the story - shocked, yes, but not invested, not breathlessly waiting for the outcome.
For me, winners in the set include "Admiral of the Swiss Navy," a recollection of summer camp bullying; "Probe to the Negative," a convincing evocation of the despair of working in a call centre, and "Torquemada," a romp in which the delinquent narrator pretends to be Jewish in order to have dinner with a girlfriend's family and which ends with a recognition of the narrator's powerlessness to change his luck.
The rest of the collection competently depicted drug addicts, abusers, small-time crooks and other marginal voices, and was carried off in a confident, brusque writing style, but I didn't quite see the purported brilliance. Good work, with small flashes of great, but sometimes lacking some of the depth required for the stories to have truly meaningful conclusions.
For me, winners in the set include "Admiral of the Swiss Navy," a recollection of summer camp bullying; "Probe to the Negative," a convincing evocation of the despair of working in a call centre, and "Torquemada," a romp in which the delinquent narrator pretends to be Jewish in order to have dinner with a girlfriend's family and which ends with a recognition of the narrator's powerlessness to change his luck.
The rest of the collection competently depicted drug addicts, abusers, small-time crooks and other marginal voices, and was carried off in a confident, brusque writing style, but I didn't quite see the purported brilliance. Good work, with small flashes of great, but sometimes lacking some of the depth required for the stories to have truly meaningful conclusions.
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