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The Subject Steve
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.
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.
256 pages, Paperback
First published September 11, 2001
21 people are currently reading
507 people want to read
About the author
Sam Lipsyte
32 books590 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 73 reviews
March 8, 2011
A few weeks ago, a musician friend of mine was strolling through San Francisco with a recording device in his pocket, occasionally turning it on to capture street noise to splice into electronic music.
Down the street, a woman and man were arguing loudly, attracting a crowd. "Jackpot," the musician thought, and turned on the recorder.
Listening to the rise and fall of the couple's fiery voices, he thought about how he would sync them with a beat, speed them up, slow them down, make them something easy to dance to.
Then he heard someone say, "It's sad those two are fighting in front of their kids."
Startled, the musician glanced over and sure enough, two small children stood in the shadow of the screaming couple. The kids looked devastated, and suddenly my friend felt a complicated sense of remorse: in his eagerness to capture an audio track of the moment, he had failed to notice the human dynamic.
When my friend told me this story, I felt a glimmer of recognition: as a writer and photographer, I often catch myself looking at the world as something to be framed, to be recorded, to be interpreted, to be delivered to other people--and in my mania to record and remix, I sometimes lose touch with the underlying human aspects of my subjects.
This mania to transform human beings into subjects is the focus of Sam Lipsyte's first novel, 'Subject Steve', with the protagonist, Steve, at the center of a hurricane of eyes, cameras, recording devices, probes, and stethoscopes. This over-the-top comedy delightfully exaggerates the postmodern condition, a state of being forcibly interpreted while begging for interpretation. The book's hellish (and sometimes nauseating) scenes are made palatable by the author's love of language.
The more Steve becomes a subject of interpretation, the more he loses sovereign rule over his body and identity. First he encounters doctors who make him the subject of their analyses, convincing him that they understand his body, his fate, better than he, with Steve lead along by them, begging for answers. Next comes the group of defunct spiritualists, who pull Steve into their mountainside collective, trapping him in a place where he doesn't have the right to call himself "me" until it is by their terms. Then there is Steve's dysfunctional family, eager to videotape themselves saying nice things about him, eager to transform him into a character in their personal narratives, eager to turn even his attempted acts of rebellion into permissible symbols of their charity. And finally comes the group of media-makers who kidnap Steve, hijacking his body and transforming it into the centerpiece of an evangelical reality TV show. And amidst all of this is Steve, transforming himself into the subject of his own diary.
In our strange postmodern period, it is sometimes difficult to remember if there ever was a time we were more than mere subjects--when a human life actually meant something even if no one (neither God nor the Facebook audience) was watching. Whether it's through prayers or feed posts or personal diaries, we fashion our lives so they can best be observed, placing ourselves at the center of self-constructed panopticons--as if, by believing that others are watching the recordable moments of our lives, we can shrug off the weight of being with ourselves for the raw, incommunicable moments of human existence.
With human existence reduced as such, death becomes life's culminating moment, with the funeral as the reward for a life well-performed. There are three funerals in 'The Subject Steve', each less focused on the actual deceased individual than the last, with the final funeral performed with the person still alive, bound and gagged in an open grave.
...I like to believe that Steve found an escape from the hellish situation of perpetual subjectivity. But I guess we can never know what happened to Steve, because if he escaped being a subject, the book would have to end.
Down the street, a woman and man were arguing loudly, attracting a crowd. "Jackpot," the musician thought, and turned on the recorder.
Listening to the rise and fall of the couple's fiery voices, he thought about how he would sync them with a beat, speed them up, slow them down, make them something easy to dance to.
Then he heard someone say, "It's sad those two are fighting in front of their kids."
Startled, the musician glanced over and sure enough, two small children stood in the shadow of the screaming couple. The kids looked devastated, and suddenly my friend felt a complicated sense of remorse: in his eagerness to capture an audio track of the moment, he had failed to notice the human dynamic.
When my friend told me this story, I felt a glimmer of recognition: as a writer and photographer, I often catch myself looking at the world as something to be framed, to be recorded, to be interpreted, to be delivered to other people--and in my mania to record and remix, I sometimes lose touch with the underlying human aspects of my subjects.
This mania to transform human beings into subjects is the focus of Sam Lipsyte's first novel, 'Subject Steve', with the protagonist, Steve, at the center of a hurricane of eyes, cameras, recording devices, probes, and stethoscopes. This over-the-top comedy delightfully exaggerates the postmodern condition, a state of being forcibly interpreted while begging for interpretation. The book's hellish (and sometimes nauseating) scenes are made palatable by the author's love of language.
The more Steve becomes a subject of interpretation, the more he loses sovereign rule over his body and identity. First he encounters doctors who make him the subject of their analyses, convincing him that they understand his body, his fate, better than he, with Steve lead along by them, begging for answers. Next comes the group of defunct spiritualists, who pull Steve into their mountainside collective, trapping him in a place where he doesn't have the right to call himself "me" until it is by their terms. Then there is Steve's dysfunctional family, eager to videotape themselves saying nice things about him, eager to transform him into a character in their personal narratives, eager to turn even his attempted acts of rebellion into permissible symbols of their charity. And finally comes the group of media-makers who kidnap Steve, hijacking his body and transforming it into the centerpiece of an evangelical reality TV show. And amidst all of this is Steve, transforming himself into the subject of his own diary.
In our strange postmodern period, it is sometimes difficult to remember if there ever was a time we were more than mere subjects--when a human life actually meant something even if no one (neither God nor the Facebook audience) was watching. Whether it's through prayers or feed posts or personal diaries, we fashion our lives so they can best be observed, placing ourselves at the center of self-constructed panopticons--as if, by believing that others are watching the recordable moments of our lives, we can shrug off the weight of being with ourselves for the raw, incommunicable moments of human existence.
With human existence reduced as such, death becomes life's culminating moment, with the funeral as the reward for a life well-performed. There are three funerals in 'The Subject Steve', each less focused on the actual deceased individual than the last, with the final funeral performed with the person still alive, bound and gagged in an open grave.
...I like to believe that Steve found an escape from the hellish situation of perpetual subjectivity. But I guess we can never know what happened to Steve, because if he escaped being a subject, the book would have to end.
March 29, 2011
Lipsyte gets an accusation of writing great sentences and comic rants rather than novels. Never is this criticism more accurate than here for his first novel, which has an intriguing central concept that a more focused writer of existential musings would work the whole book around, but Lipsyte uses it as an opening salvo and then as an occasional echo that surfaces throughout all the noise. But, what noise! Medical industry, cults, dot com start ups, reality TV and a cast of nymphomaniacs, cokeheads, solipsists, and megalomaniacs make for a good cast for a satire, but Lipsyte slashes and burns rather than work up a good satirical steam. The Simpsons as rewritten by Beckett and Fellini is a good Hollywood sell of this material. (Which would never even approach Hollywood of course.)
November 19, 2010
New favorite author time! Sam Lipsyte is a master of poetry, brevity and snarky dialogue. And laughs a-bucket! I only wish I hadn't read this with strep throat because all that laughter hurt like razorblades. But actually that suits the book well, since it's about the comedy of terminal illness.
The narrative floats on a tone of Beckett-style high absurdity, the smugness of the narrator in constant conflict with his supposed onrushing death. The central question is, is he really dying or does he just think he is? And Lipsyte plays with that uncertainty, and several other uncertainties, brilliantly. He drags you into believing it this way, then that way, then back the other way. I thought there were maybe a few spots that his editors should have flagged as over-poetish without serving the story, but there were just as many transcendent paragraphs of astonishing effect. (I was going to withhold a star for it being kind of meanderish and without central focus, but then i decided that would be lame.)
The narrator is just about the same narrator as in half of the stories in Venus Drive. Smart-ass, shameless, enjoys cocaine and perversity, people hate him and he's okay with that. But unlike with the short stories, the entirety of living this way -- as reflected in his estranged family -- really seems to catch up with the guy. Some of the book is about loose ends and how they won't stay tied. Some of it is about the stupidity of the modern language and witchcraft of alternative healing and "grief management." Quite a bit of it is about insane Deliverance-style psuedoreligious back-woods cultists, who exist for Lipsyte to introduce us to lots of different people with lots of different problems and make them hurt each other in various entertaining ways. But even as that part of the book seems the least relevant, it's got all the best lines.
The narrative floats on a tone of Beckett-style high absurdity, the smugness of the narrator in constant conflict with his supposed onrushing death. The central question is, is he really dying or does he just think he is? And Lipsyte plays with that uncertainty, and several other uncertainties, brilliantly. He drags you into believing it this way, then that way, then back the other way. I thought there were maybe a few spots that his editors should have flagged as over-poetish without serving the story, but there were just as many transcendent paragraphs of astonishing effect. (I was going to withhold a star for it being kind of meanderish and without central focus, but then i decided that would be lame.)
The narrator is just about the same narrator as in half of the stories in Venus Drive. Smart-ass, shameless, enjoys cocaine and perversity, people hate him and he's okay with that. But unlike with the short stories, the entirety of living this way -- as reflected in his estranged family -- really seems to catch up with the guy. Some of the book is about loose ends and how they won't stay tied. Some of it is about the stupidity of the modern language and witchcraft of alternative healing and "grief management." Quite a bit of it is about insane Deliverance-style psuedoreligious back-woods cultists, who exist for Lipsyte to introduce us to lots of different people with lots of different problems and make them hurt each other in various entertaining ways. But even as that part of the book seems the least relevant, it's got all the best lines.
January 31, 2011
I read this because reviews of The Ask were so good, and I found it for a dollar. The NYTimes says it's a book "about morality." The San Fran Chronicle says it is "satire with a capital 'S'". Reviewers on goodreads mention Lipsyte's love of language.
Well, I guess that's all partially true of parts of the book. But not really. It's all kind of generic, in fact. The language is the same tired 'acidic prose' cooked up in writing workshops all over the world. You know the stuff. Intentional repetitions, sentences without verbs, concrete objects. There are some good sentences, but only one good paragraph (pp 187-8), and even that's really just a collection of good sentences. The satire is generally of the weakest kind. Only rarely does Sam point out the absurdity of what exists by presenting it in objective terms, and when he does, it's hilarious:
"The Subject Steve (TM) is a revolutionary media space that binds together the most innovative elements of gaming, spectacle, democracy, and commerce."
or
"You're a good man," I said. "I don't know about that," said Warren. "I feel more like a boy. Everybody my age does. it's like we're all trying to come to terms with a moment that won't quite reveal itself, and here we are, devoid of a context within which to situate ourselves--"
It's probably funnier in context, and I'm slightly worried that Warren is meant to be saying something true and deep, rather than being a vehicle for the mockery of people who take themselves to be saying something true and deep, i.e., all postmodern theorists.
More generally, though, Sam just exaggerates wildly some already idiotic features of our world, a la Pynchon, but it doesn't really work here. This tendency is particularly awful during the first 40 pages. The book gets a bit better after that, but it's very uneven. Other reviewers suggest that 'The Ask' and 'Homeland' are much better, and I'm encouraged enough by the things that get mocked here (new age 'religion'; capitalism in general; postmodernism; obsessive democracy), and the suspicion that in those novels at least he may actually write about morality, to think I'll read his later books.
Well, I guess that's all partially true of parts of the book. But not really. It's all kind of generic, in fact. The language is the same tired 'acidic prose' cooked up in writing workshops all over the world. You know the stuff. Intentional repetitions, sentences without verbs, concrete objects. There are some good sentences, but only one good paragraph (pp 187-8), and even that's really just a collection of good sentences. The satire is generally of the weakest kind. Only rarely does Sam point out the absurdity of what exists by presenting it in objective terms, and when he does, it's hilarious:
"The Subject Steve (TM) is a revolutionary media space that binds together the most innovative elements of gaming, spectacle, democracy, and commerce."
or
"You're a good man," I said. "I don't know about that," said Warren. "I feel more like a boy. Everybody my age does. it's like we're all trying to come to terms with a moment that won't quite reveal itself, and here we are, devoid of a context within which to situate ourselves--"
It's probably funnier in context, and I'm slightly worried that Warren is meant to be saying something true and deep, rather than being a vehicle for the mockery of people who take themselves to be saying something true and deep, i.e., all postmodern theorists.
More generally, though, Sam just exaggerates wildly some already idiotic features of our world, a la Pynchon, but it doesn't really work here. This tendency is particularly awful during the first 40 pages. The book gets a bit better after that, but it's very uneven. Other reviewers suggest that 'The Ask' and 'Homeland' are much better, and I'm encouraged enough by the things that get mocked here (new age 'religion'; capitalism in general; postmodernism; obsessive democracy), and the suspicion that in those novels at least he may actually write about morality, to think I'll read his later books.
May 24, 2012
At the start this was paled by the light of "Venus Drive." Then, as the jokes that seemed more obvious were repeated til they found their meaning twisted and darkened and the characters grew into people you could believe in and people you wish you couldn't and the 'fuckedness' of Steve was realized the reading of this novel turned into a fulfilling experience and Sam Lipsyte turned more thickly into one of my favorite authors. Kooky off the walls bananas, this book. I'm thinking I'm gonna give a quote to sum up the soul of a book, as I see it, from now on, so here it'll be, and godspeed, Steve: "The world was like God or some fucked-up dragon. You couldn't look at it all at once or you'd go nuts." Oh! Also, the hell with how great this line is?: "I searched the suns of night for a constellated me." And how.
December 31, 2007
I'm still laughing two or three years after reading this one. I'm laughing with the book, not against it. I laughed later when I reread it. I laughed again when I thought of reading it a third time but did not. I'm resisting but ultimately failing to resist a reference to that old "laughter is the best medicine" claptrap. I laugh, furthermore, whenever I imagine that I'm sick with some ill-defined disease. The only unfunny thing about the book is the cover which is a tad too austere for what's inside of it and seems to have been designed by the same severe soul that did Miranda July's latest.
July 5, 2012
Couldn't get past the first 30 pages or so. The writing is too affected for my taste, far too clever, bordering on pretentious. I loved Lipsyte's story "The Dungeon Master" and may go back and try him again, though I will definitely look for his more recent work in the hopes that he got the cuteness out of his system.
December 31, 2017
Over rated by an author I usually enjoy. The protagonist couldn’t die soon enough from his unknown, unnamed, rare disease for me.
February 2, 2018
Escolhi este livro pra ler por conta do ponto de partida: o paciente é diagnosticado com uma doença sem sintomas definidos e que inevitavelmente o levará a morte - mas sem uma data previsível. A doença a que qualquer um de nós está sujeito.
Só que depois dessa premissa a estória segue com um arremedo de personagens que parecem ter a mesma voz, num conjunto de ações e falas comédicas, mas na maior parte do tempo nonsense e não caiu muito no meu gosto.
Só que depois dessa premissa a estória segue com um arremedo de personagens que parecem ter a mesma voz, num conjunto de ações e falas comédicas, mas na maior parte do tempo nonsense e não caiu muito no meu gosto.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 16, 2010
Satire is the word of the day when it comes to Sam Lipsyte. Satire, sure. Fine. But a love of language is what I come away with when I read Lipsyte.
I'm always reluctant to take up review space with summarizing the plot because, ya know, you can just read the summary above. But anyway, the main character, whose name may or may not be Steve, is diagnosed with a "fantastically new" disease, which the reader comes to assume, or I came to assume, is just Death, like how we're all dying, in some sense of the word. I'm not going to claim that I "got" or "understood" everything that was going on in The Subject Steve. Both plotwise and idea-wise. But I like I said, Lipsyte is a language man, American, corporate language. And yes, the book is frequently funny. And oddly violent. But satire is often violent, right? Exaggerating the violence that is already present in the "real" world?
Let me just freestyle a little here, get some things out there: Meditations on ones mortality, understanding Death in an absurd world, accepting the passage of Time, capital T. What matters? Language matters. The Word matters. The rhythm of modern language, the playfulness, the abstractness. A common language. A common knowledge, a common understanding. Human connection through a common language, through common abstractions.
There is a common voice, as others have remarked, running through these pages. Each person seems to share the same mind. The same language. And though everyone seems to understand one another, real clarity feels like it's just off stage. Especially for "Steve". He both understands completely and understands nothing. Exaggerated satire? Well, of course, one of the main goals of satire is for us to recognize ourselves in the exaggeration. What is it? One who knows that he does not know, is a truly wise man? The more you learn, the less you know? And if you don't know, now you know? Et al.
Now, I'm trying to write concretely about a book that speaks in corporate, slogan-ed tongues (see Lipsyte quote below for more clarity). So you can imagine the difficulty. But it feels like Lipsyte is asking us to pay attention. Not just to life but to language. Well, he's asking us to do a lot of things. Or more like, "Hey, look at this. Think about it this way instead of this way."
And this: when his characters actually spoke in length, I found it compelling. Heinrich's zookeeper fable? I almost missed my bus stop. And Steve's childhood recollection of his father and his best friend's father getting into an erotic "fight" in the tool shed? Easily the high point (for me) in the novel and some of best writing I've read in a while.
"You see too much and you can't see anything at all." pg. 122
"I guess the problem is insincere speech. Life-crushing speech. At least from the language end. I’ve always liked writers who have an ear for all of the subtleties, the particulars of the given cant, the officialese, the business-casual lingo, the business intimate, the intimate casual, all the modes of modern (and unmodern) utterance. I love to read writers who can bend these particulars, spit them back, or knead the feeling back into them. That’s the response, from the perspective of fiction writing. What else? Corporations are part of our current predicament, but every age has a predicament. I’m sorry, I’m not feeling properly apocalyptic today. It’s all going to work out. McJihad is around the corner."
-excerpt from an interview with Sam Lipsyte
I'm always reluctant to take up review space with summarizing the plot because, ya know, you can just read the summary above. But anyway, the main character, whose name may or may not be Steve, is diagnosed with a "fantastically new" disease, which the reader comes to assume, or I came to assume, is just Death, like how we're all dying, in some sense of the word. I'm not going to claim that I "got" or "understood" everything that was going on in The Subject Steve. Both plotwise and idea-wise. But I like I said, Lipsyte is a language man, American, corporate language. And yes, the book is frequently funny. And oddly violent. But satire is often violent, right? Exaggerating the violence that is already present in the "real" world?
Let me just freestyle a little here, get some things out there: Meditations on ones mortality, understanding Death in an absurd world, accepting the passage of Time, capital T. What matters? Language matters. The Word matters. The rhythm of modern language, the playfulness, the abstractness. A common language. A common knowledge, a common understanding. Human connection through a common language, through common abstractions.
There is a common voice, as others have remarked, running through these pages. Each person seems to share the same mind. The same language. And though everyone seems to understand one another, real clarity feels like it's just off stage. Especially for "Steve". He both understands completely and understands nothing. Exaggerated satire? Well, of course, one of the main goals of satire is for us to recognize ourselves in the exaggeration. What is it? One who knows that he does not know, is a truly wise man? The more you learn, the less you know? And if you don't know, now you know? Et al.
Now, I'm trying to write concretely about a book that speaks in corporate, slogan-ed tongues (see Lipsyte quote below for more clarity). So you can imagine the difficulty. But it feels like Lipsyte is asking us to pay attention. Not just to life but to language. Well, he's asking us to do a lot of things. Or more like, "Hey, look at this. Think about it this way instead of this way."
And this: when his characters actually spoke in length, I found it compelling. Heinrich's zookeeper fable? I almost missed my bus stop. And Steve's childhood recollection of his father and his best friend's father getting into an erotic "fight" in the tool shed? Easily the high point (for me) in the novel and some of best writing I've read in a while.
"You see too much and you can't see anything at all." pg. 122
"I guess the problem is insincere speech. Life-crushing speech. At least from the language end. I’ve always liked writers who have an ear for all of the subtleties, the particulars of the given cant, the officialese, the business-casual lingo, the business intimate, the intimate casual, all the modes of modern (and unmodern) utterance. I love to read writers who can bend these particulars, spit them back, or knead the feeling back into them. That’s the response, from the perspective of fiction writing. What else? Corporations are part of our current predicament, but every age has a predicament. I’m sorry, I’m not feeling properly apocalyptic today. It’s all going to work out. McJihad is around the corner."
-excerpt from an interview with Sam Lipsyte
August 2, 2011
Reading this book is exactly like doing mushrooms.
Things start out crazy, but in a fun, innocent way. A little off! Goofy! Parable-y! "Wheee!" You say, "This is fun!" You don't quite grasp everything you encounter, but you don't mind too much, either, and every now and then the light shines a certain way, and you're like "oh my god, that is so TRUE and BEAUTIFUL, I need to REMEMBER that".
So you keep trucking along, peeling that orange and becoming convinced it's a living animal and you've deconstructed its spine, and there's a woman trapped in the walls? or something? you just touched her hand? and for good or ill -- things keep getting crazier. And suddenly you're like "how long have I been reading this book, anyway? How much is left? What are hours?" And suddenly normal sounds so refreshing and great, but you're kind of trapped in this almost-done state, and GOD DAMN IT ALL, shit just got incomprehensibly bizarre, and can't it just be over now, can't you just have your regular brain back?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TRUE and BEAUTIFUL:
"We'd married out of school, Maryse and I, maybe just to be rebellious, fallen into faction-hood the way rebels at rest will do. The worse things got, the more we cooed our devotion."
"We got a good movie on the bus. It was about airplanes falling out of the sky. Airplanes fell, boats sank, what could you do but get nervous? Buses swerved into ditches, mostly, or they tumbled from mountaintops in mountainous countries and only the chickens lived. But the chickens, they'd get buried in an avalanche. The avalanche would kick off a flood. Rivers would swell, whole villages would be wiped out. It was horrible, horrible. These goddamn countries were exporting horror and they had to be stopped. Maybe invaded, even."
"Surly sons punched down the channel changer for some late-afternoon bikini tit before Mom came home. Disaffected daughters carved Wiccan proverbs onto their arms. Cats dozed on quilts, recovering traumatic memories in dream. Most cats were once mishandled kittens. This was all waiting for the men and women in the cars and they leaned on their horns as though they did not know they were already home."
"Sunlight caught the metal at his neckline. It did not make him dazzling. It looked like he was getting knifed by God."
"'What is it? Your chips? Your legs? We'll figure something out.'
'No, we won't,' said Renee. 'Why do people always say that? We won't figure anything out. We'll stare at each other and wonder why the other person hasn't figured anything out. That fucker said we'd figure something out, and we haven't figured jack shit out. That's what we'll say to ourselves, and it's just a matter of time before we say it to each other.'"
Things start out crazy, but in a fun, innocent way. A little off! Goofy! Parable-y! "Wheee!" You say, "This is fun!" You don't quite grasp everything you encounter, but you don't mind too much, either, and every now and then the light shines a certain way, and you're like "oh my god, that is so TRUE and BEAUTIFUL, I need to REMEMBER that".
So you keep trucking along, peeling that orange and becoming convinced it's a living animal and you've deconstructed its spine, and there's a woman trapped in the walls? or something? you just touched her hand? and for good or ill -- things keep getting crazier. And suddenly you're like "how long have I been reading this book, anyway? How much is left? What are hours?" And suddenly normal sounds so refreshing and great, but you're kind of trapped in this almost-done state, and GOD DAMN IT ALL, shit just got incomprehensibly bizarre, and can't it just be over now, can't you just have your regular brain back?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
TRUE and BEAUTIFUL:
"We'd married out of school, Maryse and I, maybe just to be rebellious, fallen into faction-hood the way rebels at rest will do. The worse things got, the more we cooed our devotion."
"We got a good movie on the bus. It was about airplanes falling out of the sky. Airplanes fell, boats sank, what could you do but get nervous? Buses swerved into ditches, mostly, or they tumbled from mountaintops in mountainous countries and only the chickens lived. But the chickens, they'd get buried in an avalanche. The avalanche would kick off a flood. Rivers would swell, whole villages would be wiped out. It was horrible, horrible. These goddamn countries were exporting horror and they had to be stopped. Maybe invaded, even."
"Surly sons punched down the channel changer for some late-afternoon bikini tit before Mom came home. Disaffected daughters carved Wiccan proverbs onto their arms. Cats dozed on quilts, recovering traumatic memories in dream. Most cats were once mishandled kittens. This was all waiting for the men and women in the cars and they leaned on their horns as though they did not know they were already home."
"Sunlight caught the metal at his neckline. It did not make him dazzling. It looked like he was getting knifed by God."
"'What is it? Your chips? Your legs? We'll figure something out.'
'No, we won't,' said Renee. 'Why do people always say that? We won't figure anything out. We'll stare at each other and wonder why the other person hasn't figured anything out. That fucker said we'd figure something out, and we haven't figured jack shit out. That's what we'll say to ourselves, and it's just a matter of time before we say it to each other.'"
Read
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...
December 21, 2015
One of the promotional blurbs on the back of my copy of this book (from Esquire, as it turns out) compares Lipsyte to Chuck Palahniuk, George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, and Thomas Pynchon.
Not so much.
This is one of those books where I can see the promise of the author, and I can see why people might enjoy it, and there are certainly parts I enjoyed (and found funny), but overall, it really didn't come together for me into an enjoyable whole in the same way that Saunders or Vonnegut does--perhaps because the humor and absurdity remain much more deadpan in this novel than they do in works by the other two. I would be interested in giving one of Lipsyte's more recent novels a try to see if that works better for me.
Not so much.
This is one of those books where I can see the promise of the author, and I can see why people might enjoy it, and there are certainly parts I enjoyed (and found funny), but overall, it really didn't come together for me into an enjoyable whole in the same way that Saunders or Vonnegut does--perhaps because the humor and absurdity remain much more deadpan in this novel than they do in works by the other two. I would be interested in giving one of Lipsyte's more recent novels a try to see if that works better for me.
October 5, 2014
I have recently become a huge Lipsyte fan but this, I believe his first novel, doesn't have the depth in the voice on his narrator I have come to enjoy from him, which is doubly disappointing because in his more recent work he even manages to fill the narrators of his short stories with a ton of substance. If you enjoyed Paul Nielan's "Apathy and Other Small Victories" this is a better version of that, IMO, and you'll enjoy it more. Although the plot is not the same, the nameless narrator has that same feel, a sort of one dimensional and distanced character, the inconsequential and ineffectual voice, held together mostly by quips and observational humor, who travels through the story wit a lack of agency. This is obviously by design and plays into the greater commentary on the everyman's impotence when faced by technology and experts, but that doesn't make every page entertaining so much as it plays into the author's grand scheme. Sure, Lipsyte pulls it off, but you won't have the same impressive experience here you will with "The Fun Parts" or "Venus Drive"
August 15, 2010
Despite not liking this book quite as much as The Ask, Lipsyte's most recent novel, I had to give it four stars as well. How can you not when a book makes you laugh out loud dozens of times? A bit choppier with less fully defined characters, The Subject Steve chronicles Steve's (not his real name) battle with a deadly disease that no one has ever had before. His disease makes him a celebrity, or perhaps celebrity makes him diseased? Anyway, we follow Steve from initial diagnosis through through the normal stages of dying: blowing your 401K on coke and prostitutes; trying to reconcile with your precocious, sexually active 13 year old daughter; joining a "non-denominational" cult where members are tortured into enlightenment; moving in with your ex-wife and her wealthy new husband; and finally achieving mass fame and universal scorn and hatred on an internet reality show. It's a wild ride, but a funny one.
April 24, 2019
A lot of mockery, not much genuine satire. The protagonist doesn't so much do than is done unto, which doesn't help. But for me there's not enough structure here to support such a limp protagonist. It's as though Lipsyte got bored writing about cults, so he moved his character into a family situation; and once he got bored writing that, he moved his protagonist somewhere else. We never learn enough backstory to know why he's so much of a doormat; I think Lipsyte is too focused on making fun of the world to actually develop his characters. That coupled with multiple paragraphs made up of descriptive lists, I really should have given in to an early impulse to abandon. One and a half stars though, because every now and then a sentence sparkled and made me laugh out loud. I remember loving 'Venus Drive' when it came out, so this was a disappointment.
April 21, 2016
I'm writing this little mini review of Sam Lipsyte's The Subject Steve about 13 years after reading it. This was a seminal book for me at the end of high school. It was one of the rare books I actually enjoyed during high school, and one of the extra rare books that i read on my own and not for class. Basically I had only read old classics or modern classics from the '60s at the point of my life back in the '90s. So when I read the Subject Steve, and experienced its stinging satirical look at life during that decade, I was left completely changed. I don't remember much now, but some parts of the novel will never leave me as I was absolutely pleasantly disgusted and shocked. I have been dying to re-read this book, and hopefully will shortly.
Want to read
September 26, 2007As much as I loved Home Land, the beginning of this book is not drawing me in and I am going to put it back as "to-read" and try to finish one of the bazillion books I really am all the way in the middle of. It's not really like me to have all these books half-read, but then again, never before have I had a shelf full (two rows, even!) of books I have yet to read (and two borrowed from Gina, and three still to read from Marianne, and one from Jay). This one's gonna have to wait. I keep being really interested in the stuff that Laura June is reading and I want to add that stuff to my "to read" list but my to read list is worse than my currently reading list. I'm going to have to quit my job. Maybe if I just read enough while I'm at work, I'll get fired, and hey, problem solved!
September 21, 2011
This book has some great absurdity and some wonderful lines. I do have to say that I enjoyed the bits outside Heinrich and his crew (whether in the compound stage or in the media production stage) more than the Heinrich and crew portions. Those portions were just so ridiculous as to be a bit over the top. I mean, the absurdity in the other portions came through better because of the juxtaposition to expectations and reason. The Heinrich and crew portions just didn't seem as funny or absurd because they lacked that normality reference point and were so over the top for so long that the absurdity started seeming normal after a while. In any event, the book is a lot of fun to read and has some interesting insights into modern western culture.
April 25, 2016
- ...stumbled upon a very positive review on the (usually trustworthy) Guardian Unlimited Books website. The line that snagged me was "It is reminiscent of Douglas Coupland in its authorial style, and contains echoes of Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius in its use, or mockery, of audience-reader interaction." BOTH WRITERS SHOULD SUE! Aside from the original premise of the protagonist being diagnosed with a terminal illness (the first case ever) terminal boredom; and a few snappy one-liners, it was a little too often gross and offensive.
- "I have a happiness-deficiency."
- "I kept my Jews of Jazz calendar up on the kitchen door."
- "Who wants to be in the pace car in the race to oblivion?"
- the sad image of Steve's daughter "...playing divorce with her Barbies."
- "I have a happiness-deficiency."
- "I kept my Jews of Jazz calendar up on the kitchen door."
- "Who wants to be in the pace car in the race to oblivion?"
- the sad image of Steve's daughter "...playing divorce with her Barbies."
January 21, 2008
Although Sam Lipsyte's talent is well on display here, the last third of the book was a struggle to get through. The long-winded monologues and conversations of the characters, though funny in effect and theory, became incredibly tedious and boring about half way through the book. I also felt that rather than each character having his or her own voice, they all spoke in the same voice and therefore were incredibly difficult to keep track of.
It was a very clever idea, but not terribly well executed. After having read Home Land and really enjoying it, I was disappointed with The Subject Steve.
It was a very clever idea, but not terribly well executed. After having read Home Land and really enjoying it, I was disappointed with The Subject Steve.
May 31, 2010
I'm actually giving this book 3.5 stars. I think the writing is really great and really snappy, but the plot is sort of disjointed. Though the plot is intended to be disjointed, I found that when I'd come back to it after a day or two of reading something else, I'd feel a little lost in the narrative and have to go back and read to figure out where I was. I've heard this book described as a condensed version of D. F. Wallace's "Infinite Jest" which, while I indeed can see the comparison, I don't think it's probably a fair one given that this is Sam Lipsyte's debut novel. I will say however, that I'll absolutely be reading his latest novel, "The Ask".
February 15, 2019
This is a great book. Laugh-out-loud funny, dark, profound. Poetic and snarky and satiric and brilliant. Certainly Lipsyte got better after this first novel. Homeland and The Ask are better. But if you're a fan and a completist, definitely read this.
The drawbacks are that Lipsyte is one of those authors that is all about style rather than realism. His books are bit like Aaron Sorkin's scripts. Nobody really talks that way, but, but it's so good that you don't care. Except you wouldn't want to read only this kind of thing. It's like poetry, rather than a story you can believe in. And that's fine.
The drawbacks are that Lipsyte is one of those authors that is all about style rather than realism. His books are bit like Aaron Sorkin's scripts. Nobody really talks that way, but, but it's so good that you don't care. Except you wouldn't want to read only this kind of thing. It's like poetry, rather than a story you can believe in. And that's fine.
April 13, 2010
Me: but subject steve was really too loose for me. i liked homeland
but SS wasn't my cup.
wgrofic: i loved subject steve
me: i know. also why i bought it. didn't like it.
wgrofic: reminds me of a boring summer i interned for bureau labor of statitistics. is just very unhinged in best way.
me: douglas coupland did better when he did All Families Are Psychotic. too unhinged. i just remember his advice about writing
"it's masturbation"
but SS wasn't my cup.
wgrofic: i loved subject steve
me: i know. also why i bought it. didn't like it.
wgrofic: reminds me of a boring summer i interned for bureau labor of statitistics. is just very unhinged in best way.
me: douglas coupland did better when he did All Families Are Psychotic. too unhinged. i just remember his advice about writing
"it's masturbation"
Read
August 14, 2012It wasn't worth even one star. I hated this book. I paged through it, noted that all they talk about it how much they hate cunts, and promptly returned the book to the library. Judging from the cover and the back of the book, it was supposed to be a good book. I figured it would be like Girl, Interrupted but for boys. It is not like that at all. It is very rare that I would pick up a book and not read it all the way through because it was just that bad. This deserves a review simply because it was just that bad. Grow up. Women are people, not body parts.
April 26, 2011
This book is on the cusp of 4 stars, especially as the ending seems to pull it around. Its ambition is clear and strong. What is not clear sometimes is the dialog with myriad characters going back to forth and jumping around so much. I have read similar problems with the book. Sometimes it was removed from fun and just became tedious. The dialog is generally fun and funny even when it is confusing. I look forward to my third book by Lipsyte, probably for the summer.
September 26, 2012
I don't know what to say about this book. I REALLY liked it when I started. The first two "Items" specifically. Then the crazy people showed up, and the satire got into the swing of things following things to their illogical conclusions. I did not like reading about the crazy people. Then things get rather jumbled, and it's a mixed bag of good parts and bad, and then the ending. Which was great, but can't make up for the middle bits.
March 6, 2013
I guess this fits well in the love-it-or-hate-it category of books. I loved it. Kind of. I didn't like the plot much, nor the narrative. But I loved the offbeat dialogue, some killer lines and what is sure the sign of good talent - awesome characters. The size of the story, a bit less than 250 pages, is both a blessing and a curse, meaning, I don't think I could keep moving towards the direction it was going but I would love to dwell in the characters' company some more.
July 31, 2014
I can think of few books as soulless as this. Lots of dialogue in which characters cut off their interlocutors as the knees with a snide non-sequitur. There are a few good concepts floating around in here, not least the end part with a look at a cult-cum-media organisation, but it's all too diffuse and I'm not aware of what the targets for the satire are because it's written for laughs rather than being anchored in anything with depth. 3 books down and I think I'm done with Lipsyte.
September 3, 2019
I was rooting for Steve (not Steve) even if he was dying of boredom, at times while reading I was right there with you Steve, bored.
Didn’t hate it but didn’t love it either.
Gratuitous gore.
Character development was so-so.
Didn’t hate it but didn’t love it either.
Gratuitous gore.
Character development was so-so.
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