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A review by plattcraig
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
2.0
I was very excited to read The Ask, Homeland was a very good book, though I was a little disappointed in that one too and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Having read this one I realize that the elements of all Lipsyte's books rest on the objectification of a class of people the narrators feel are unintelligent. What's worse is the sanctimoniousness of the protagonists who eventually realize they are the ones who aren't in on the joke at all. It's as if he took Ignatious Reilly and multiplied him into some awful monster whose affect on the literary world, in my opinion, could be completely debilitating.
It's as if to say that description and the development of a truly fictional world with rich characters and surroundings is unnecessary. Lipsyte relies on the readers knowledge of the world and more importantly their warped view of contemporary sex, love, social networking and the economy. This is is simply a rant and I should save it for the book club, but based on all the press Lipsyte was getting I was expecting the book to be transcendental, but what it truly is, and what it aspires to be I think, is about failure and not just any failure, but the failure of our generation to surpass our parents. And while that's a subject we should all be interested in, I somehow feel like it fails here because Lipsyte never really allows Milo to grow up. Not even slightly. And the last 50 pages or so are a sort of apology. A mea culpa, this is how so many of us have turned out, sorry I made you read about it.
I would recommend this book to you because the language, the way it is written, is very dazzling, a writing workshops dream. But, in the end it is an empty story about nothing.
It's as if to say that description and the development of a truly fictional world with rich characters and surroundings is unnecessary. Lipsyte relies on the readers knowledge of the world and more importantly their warped view of contemporary sex, love, social networking and the economy. This is is simply a rant and I should save it for the book club, but based on all the press Lipsyte was getting I was expecting the book to be transcendental, but what it truly is, and what it aspires to be I think, is about failure and not just any failure, but the failure of our generation to surpass our parents. And while that's a subject we should all be interested in, I somehow feel like it fails here because Lipsyte never really allows Milo to grow up. Not even slightly. And the last 50 pages or so are a sort of apology. A mea culpa, this is how so many of us have turned out, sorry I made you read about it.
I would recommend this book to you because the language, the way it is written, is very dazzling, a writing workshops dream. But, in the end it is an empty story about nothing.