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A searing, beautiful, and deeply comic novel by a young American master
Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has "not been developing": after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor―a major "ask"―who, mysteriously, has requested Milo's involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo's sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the "give" won't come cheap.
Probing many themes― or, perhaps, anxieties―including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, Sam Lipsyte's The Ask is a burst of genius by an author who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
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Review:
Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2010: How can a life so miserable be so funny? Is it because the stakes are so low (Milo Burke, the antihero of Sam Lipsyte's novel, The Ask, is a failure at many things, but most prominently at his job of pulling in major donors for a deadwater arts program at a middling university neither you nor he care about), or because they are so high (among them death, love, and the general squandering of the glories of creation on trivia)? Lipsyte's brilliant bile earned his previous novel, Home Land, one of the most passionate cult followings in recent years, and in The Ask that verbal invention is often the only thing that can rouse Milo and his peers from their ennui. They bait and badger each other and toss off complex cultural analyses to little effect, all the while haunted by the gap between wit and wisdom. Lipsyte manages to be both sour and tender to his characters, Milo in particular, whose barest shambles toward self-respect come to seem like the first baby steps of an honorable quest. --Tom Nissley
About the Author:
Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collection Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and the novels The Subject Steve and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
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- PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publication date2010
- ISBN 10 0374298912
- ISBN 13 9780374298913
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages304
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The Ask: A Novel + Venus Drive: Stories
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. First edition, 1st printing of THE ASK + First Picador paperback edition, 1st printing of VENUS DRIVE, both 2010 publications, unread AS NEW + sold together as VD has a tie-in excerpt of ASK. "Milo Burke--husband, father, development officer at a third-tier university--has just joined the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is relieved to get another chance from his former boss. All he has to do is reel in a potential donor--a major 'ask'--who, mysteriously, has requested Milo's involvement. [] Probing several themes--or, perhaps, anxieties--including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, THE ASK is a tour de force from a writer who has already shown that the deepest fictions are often the funniest." [jacket copy] "With this novel, Mr. Lipsyte has proven himself to be one of the most unapologetic voices of contemporary literature. He mines the sexual frustration of Philip Roth, combines it with the paranoia of Don DeLillo and fills the space in between with a cast of characters as absurd and enigmatic as anything in a Thomas Pynchon novel. THE ASK is a hilarious book about failure; a scathing unhappy comedy obsessed with a culture that's obsessed with obsessions."--Michael Miller, The New York Observer. "2010 will also be remembered as the year when, thanks to a single book, the literary merit of that somewhat neglected beast, the comic novel, could no longer be denied: Sam Lipsyte's relentlessly and hilariously brilliant THE ASK."--Geoff Dyer, The Guardian. + paperback of VENUS DRIVE: "A man with an 'old soul' finds himself at a Times Square peep show, looking for more than a little action. A young man goes into some serious regression after finding his deceased mother's stash of morphine. A group of summer-camp sadists return to the scene of the crime. Sam Lipsyte's brutally funny narratives tread morally ambiguous terrain, where desperate characters stumble over hope, or sometimes merely stumble." [publisher copy] "Wonderfully written and compulsively readable, with brilliant and funny dialogue . . . Sam Lipsyte is a wickedly gifted writer."--Robert Stone. "These are torqued-up, enthusiastically black-hearted stories by a grimly cheerful author. And the damned things are queerly rather loving and lovely as well. Bukowski meets Haley."--Padgett Powell. Pristine hardcover (ASK) w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding; + the 13 stories in VENUS DRIVE's sharp corners & crisp edges, square & tight binding w/no creases in spine. Both unread & quite presentable. Seller Inventory # RUB2814
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. New York: FSG [2010]. First edition. Hardbound. New/New. A pristine unread copy, very fine in all respects. SIGNED AND DATED BY AUTHOR on title page in March 2010, the month of publication. Comes with mylar dust jacket protector. Shipped in sturdy box. Smoke-free shop. NOTE: Purchased new and opened only for author to sign. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 0310MF-6
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