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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 two previous novels: The Subject Steve and Home Land, which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He lives in New York.
The AskFarrar Straus Giroux
'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, The Ask is a burst of genius by a young American master who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.' -- FSG
Excerpt:
“Bernie!” I called, dipped into that familiar parental trot, the one that covers more ground than walking but does not yet reek of pure panic. It’s important to smile a lot while you maintain a steady pace and call out your child’s name in an almost jovial manner, as though it could be a game, and even if it’s not a game, you still aren’t worried, it’s happened before, though not too often, and besides, it’s age appropriate, so you don’t consider it an issue requiring therapy or, heaven help us, a pharmaceutical regimen. This is no big deal, the trot and the smile signal, though it sure would be great to locate the little scamp. But hey, the kid gives back a lot of love, and usually you’re a bit more in control of the situation, though you understand child-rearing throws its curveballs, its cutters and sinkers, too, but still, this is nothing compared to the hard work the parents of, for example, Down kids must put in, or even the folks with autistic children, where you’re doing all that special needs slogging and not even getting those sloppy Down kisses, no, your kid, he’s a regular kid, maybe with some impulse control deficiencies, or dealies, as you laughingly call them with your wife, or maybe, and you’re definitely willing to entertain this notion, especially in this era of so much entitled helicopter coddling, or whatever the term is where the children are literally enfolded in a cocoon of helicopters that entitle them to do whatever they want, because of the culture, maybe this very normal, regular, active boy, who happens to live in a social strata that condemns masculine energies in all its children, maybe he just needs to have his coat pulled, to be briefed, as it were, in an energetic masculine way, to be boxed or cuffed or whacked upside some part of him in that no-nonsense, simple folkways folk way (because throttling and such, it’s worked for thousands of years, no?) or at least persuaded in a compelling and lasting fashion that it is not okay to just dash off into a throng of Russian (gas-rich, reassembling their rabid empire) tourists and ignore his father’s cries, yes, it could be that he needs to be squared away on that score in a more visceral sense, though certainly not in the sense of a spanking or a hiding, such tactics, alas, never work, but anyway that is a separate discussion. Really, right now, you just need to triangulate on the little shit, pronto.
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Derek White is an American writer of surreal and absurdist poetry and fiction, a visual artist, author of the review website 5cense, editor of Calamari Press, and publisher of the avant-garde literary & poetry journal Sleeping Fish. He lives and works in New York City.
Marsupial: Our Mother for the Time BeingCalamari Press
'Marsupial is a heady ride to be sure, linguistically prickly in a manner that is appropriate for writing that wants to puncture mere fiction. One of the many strokes of genius are the "talky talkies" the French crew use to communicate, and that automatically produce babblefish translations for our American hero. But Marsupial's puzzle games and reality shifts are grounded in the body, albeit a disorganized, Deleuzian body of sperm, pouches, phallic appendages, mutant DNA, and crusty, flaking scale-skin. Its high brow if you think about it, but also greatly enjoyable. The work of art I kept thinking about was Neutral Milk Hotel’s album In the Aeroplane over the Sea, with its deeply fleshy psychedelia, but that no doubt says more about me than White.' -- Erik Davis, techgnosis
Excerpt:
from Harp & Altar
The Connection Between Mary X. Lake and the Containment Pond
It was at this lake where we used to fish for catfish. It was a manmade lake our father had surveyed and named after our mother. Unlike most of the murky lakes in Georgia, this lake was clear as a chlorinated swimming pool. A sign identified it as Lake Germfree, though I knew the real name. As a kid, at this lake, I always wondered what bait looked like to fish when we were fishing for them and what the fish looked like as they contemplated the bait. I dove under to find out.
When I opened my eyes I could see perfectly, but saw no fish. There were hundreds of bare hooks hanging from the mirrored surface that I was careful not to get snagged on. I took off my shorts so they wouldn’t get hooked. This made sense at the time. I sensed the fish were there but could see better than me and were keeping their distance in the open water. The water was so clear it was black. As I remembered it, there was a shelf near the shore that John and I suspected was a favorite place for fish to hide. Taking a deep breath, I went down to look under the shelf. Something darted in the shadows. I went further under after it. I followed the darting shadow down a passage into complete darkness. Then it got light again and when I emerged I was in the containment pond at the Gaston sewage treatment center. It was night, but the scene was lit by powerful artificial lights. Taking another deep breath, I retreated back to the lake. When I got there, I was in a boat and the lake was now walled in with cliffs of meat (just like in the script from the movie we were engaged in). There was a staircase cut into the meat cliff but I was having a hard time paddling toward it as the waves were getting bigger. The meaty shores of the lake were receding. Water splashed on my face that tasted of salt. The salt triggered a premonition of a coming hurricane. I had to decide whether to:
a) go for the stairway cut into the meat cliff or
b) retreat back underwater to the containment pond.
(conclusion)
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Kevin Sampsell lives in Portland, Oregon, and works at the legendary Powell's City of Books. He started his small press, Future Tense Books, in 1990 and has published small books by many of America's most exciting new writers. His own writing has appeared widely in publications such as Nerve, McSweeney's, Pindeldyboz, 3 AM, Hobart, Night Train, Elimae, Smith, Opium, and Failbetter. His essays and reviews of books and music have also appeared in various publications. His previous books include Beautiful Blemish (Word Riot Press) and Creamy Bullets (Chiasmus). He also edited the anthologies The Insomniac Reader (Manic D Press) and Portland Noir (Akashic).
A Common PornographyHarper Perennial
'Kevin Sampsell always thought he was part of a normal family growing up in the Pacific Northwest. He never wondered why his older siblings had different last names or why one of them was black. But when his estranged father passed away in 2008, his mother revealed to him some of the family’s mysterious and unsettling history. A history of betrayal, madness, and incest.
'A Common Pornography is a uniquely crafted, two-pronged "memory experiment": a collection of sweet and funny snapshots from his childhood, and an unsensational portrait of a family in crisis. Sampsell blends the catastrophic with the mundane and the humorous with the horrific. From his mother's first tumultuous marriages and his father's shocking abuse of his half sister to Kevin's own memories of first jobs, first bands, and first loves, here is a searing, intensely honest memoir that exposes the many haunting shades of a family—both its tragedy and its resiliency.' -- Harper Perennial
Excerpt:
Records
Two plastic record players and a nice stack of Top-40 45s were all I needed to start my own radio station. My plan was to do a pirate radio show that would broadcast to my neighborhood. Instead I just pointed my speakers out the upstairs window and hoped the sound reached the corner.
----In fifth grade I started writing really bad pop song lyrics.4 When I wrote something I thought to be particularly hitworthy, I'd cut out a piece of paper in the shape of a 45 and then, after coloring in the black wax area, I'd put the name of my song and band on the "label". I can't remember my imaginary band's name but some of the hits were "Sound of Thunder", "Rich Dude", and "Diamond Girl". Come to think of it, I didn't even have an imaginary band; instead I just went by the name Billy Rivers, because I thought it sounded cool. After cutting out the center hole, I'd string the smash hit to a hook on my ceiling. If you ever saw my bedroom you'd think I was a mega-star. Sometimes I'd even put them on one of the turntables and watch it spin. Forty-five revolutions per minute. Once I put a needle on one as it spun and ruined the needle. I had to go to the record store where they sold little smoking pipes and stoner posters, spending my entire allowance on a new snap-on needle.
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Scott McClanahan is the author of Stories (published by Six Galleries Press). His other works include Stories II, Hillbilly and the Nightmares, Stories and Revelations, The Sarah Book (Vol. 3 of McClanahan's Lives) and Crapalachia (all forthcoming). He is co-partner of the company Holler Presents (www.hollerpresents.com), which has produced such films as Preacher Man, Spring, 1386, The Education of Bertie Mae McClanahan, and Lil Audrey's Last Day at School.
Stories IISix Gallery Press
'In STORIES II, we meet a retarded man selling newspapers. We meet the “fever” of suicide. We meet Scott working as a telemarketer, talking to a man who weeps and begs him to stay on the phone. And we meet all of it through the character Scott McClanahan. He writes himself as a character really well. I think what makes it work, for me, is that he is able to go in and out of being purely subjective, to realizing things outside of himself. He writes familiar situations with unfamiliar outcomes.
'Scott’s style is the most lively minimalism I have read. Many sentences begin with “and” or “so” and contain the word “just.” The result is a really smooth minimalism. Not a minimalism that recognizes itself, but one that just happens. If you are ever able to see Scott read, you will understand what I mean. Many of his stories begin as though you just walked up to a conversation. Not, “in the middle of things” but, “in the middle of thoughts.” For example, one story begins, “I’ve stolen things before though.” The result is that it’s like you are put into an already-begun conversation.' -- Sam Pink, HTMLGIANT
Excerpt:
from HTMLGIANT
THE COUPLE
I didn’t have any money for dinner really. I mean I’d never even been on a date before—or at least a date, date. See when I was in school it was all about hooking up at parties and hanging out together with a whole group of friends and maybe finding each other later that night. But this was like a real date. Or at least it felt like a real date when I called her up that morning and asked her if she wanted to go up to Pipestem State Park and look out over the mountains. I told her I didn’t have any money for dinner, but she didn’t seem to mind, or at least she thought I was joking. So that afternoon I picked her up and drove out to Pipestem. And once we got there, we walked hand in hand, up to the observation tower, and she started telling me about how she used to have a lazy eye when she was a kid. I guess it was so bad she even had to wear an eye patch in order to correct it, and all the kids at school started calling her, “the pirate.”
(continued -- scroll down)
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