Sam Lipsyte is another author I’m happy to have discovered this year, whose writing is also very funny and often ridiculous, therefore, shockingly real. His novel, The Ask, is fantastic, and easily one of the best books I read in 2010. His skill lies in the inclusion of achingly beautiful sentences and turns of phrase into profane and often silly situations.
The Ask is satirical and clever, but never mean or without heart (The UK cover is above–it’s much more attractive than its US counterpart…). A glimpse into what Lipsyte can do:
The privileged of our generation did what they could, like the rest of us. We were stuck between meanings. Or we were the last dribbles of something. It was hard to figure. The fall of the Soviet Union, this was, the death of analog. The beginning of aggressively marketed nachos.
He also recently published a story in The New Yorker, which can be read online.
“The Dungeon Master” is sort of, kind of about D&D and growing up.
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