The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 2010
Milo Burke is typical of Sam Lipsyte's (Home Land) anti-heroes. He's not fit, tan, or well-coifed. In fact, he's the opposite of these things - a disheveled, semi-bitter failed artist, married and raising a son in Astoria, Queens. He's also, admittedly, a mediocre employee in the development office of a mediocre New York university, where his job is to "grovel for money." It's not something he excels at.
"I'd become one of those mistakes you sometimes find in an office, a not unpleasant but mostly unproductive presence bobbing along on the energy tides of others, a walking reminder of somebody's error in judgement."
Milo loses his mediocre job when he verbally eviscerates an "arrogant, talentless, daddy-damaged-waif" whose father bought the university's observatory, but he quickly recovers it when the opportunity arises to land a major "give" from Purdy Stuart, a millionaire tech entrepreneur who happens to be an old college buddy. It's a surprising reunion for Milo, one that reconnects him with his past and calls into question his assumptions about the future.
Lipsyte's writing is sharp and funny, each sentence a pleasure to read, and not much escapes the critical attention and ascerbic wit of his sad sack protagonist - work, death, sex, fatherhood, even his very merit as a protagonist:
"No, I mean, if I were the protagonist of a book or a movie, it would be hard to like me, to identify with me, right?"
"No, I mean, if I were the protagonist of a book or a movie, it would be hard to like me, to identify with me, right?"
"I would never read a book like that, Milo. I can't think of anyone who would. There's no reason for it."
"Oh."
The Ask is lewd and often hilarious; its characters, both likable and not, are believable and captivating figures; and though it seemed merely to unravel towards its close rather than actually ending, its satirical story of middle class mediocrity is unpredictably captivating.
The Ask is lewd and often hilarious; its characters, both likable and not, are believable and captivating figures; and though it seemed merely to unravel towards its close rather than actually ending, its satirical story of middle class mediocrity is unpredictably captivating.
http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/fiction/fr/the-ask.htm
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