Customer Reviews

Home Land

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Tracing the genealogy of Sam Lipsyte's 'Homeland' would lead you back eventually to Frederick Exley's 'A Fan's Notes.'The prototypical book concerning middle-aged substance abuse addicts too well-read for their own good; their literateness serving as a kind of gauntlet as they stumble through a world governed by their illiterate, successful, yet somehow more brutish, less sympathetic peerage. Though the format is highly orginal (the book takes the form of notes written to ones high school alumni newsletter) the protagonist certainly is not, as many other reviewers seem to point out. Something that several reviewers seem to ask as well is 'why should I care about such a self-destructive looser?'

Well, these are the people that probably put down 'A Fan's Notes,' which, whether they are sympathetic to Exley or not, was one of the best American novels of the second half of the century. So what if the obese, over-read and balding looser is a stock character? Such a figure is an ameican icon. An institution, and increasingly resembles the only remaining enclave of literate amercian male citizenry outside of acadamia.

I hear Lipsyte getting compared to a lot of other cynical contamporaries: Chuck Paulinuk, David Sedaris and others. The difference being that unlike many of these writers Lipyte loves, and is a master of, language. This is some of the most skillful, hilarious, and impressive writing to have come along since 'A Fan's Notes.' those of you that can't appreciate Lipsyte's dark wit, and his epic failure of a protagonist Lewis 'Teabag' Minor, well you can just go order yourself a copy of "Tuesdays with Morrie," or sit down with some Tony Robbins motivational tapes and some decaf coffee. Leave Lipsyte to the big boys. A more accurate comparison would be to Barry Hannah; the only other contemporary writer that comes to mind as possesing an equally masterful, hyperbolic and dark humor.

Why only four stars you may ask? Well, towards the latter half the book begins to loose the format of 'notes to an alumni magazine,' and becomes a bit more of a straight-forward narrative- albeit it an interesting, hilarious narrative. Perhaps this is inevitable given the need for characters to develope more fully. So the book maintains its hilarity, its tone, and its razor sharp language, if not entirely its premise.

I really did. In the (glowing) review I read, it sounded clever and original, and at first, it was, but unfortunately, it quickly ran out of steam. The main character in this book reminded me a lot of Ethan Hawke's character in "Reality Bites", and I didn't like that movie for the same reason I didn't like this book.

As any adolescent knows, it's very easy to criticize society and those who play by it's rules. It's a lot harder to turn that criticism into insight. Pointing out how foolish the "norms" are doesn't, in and of itself, make you better than them or make you more profound. And ultimately, that's what annoyed me the most about this book- it ended up playing out like some kind of adolescent fantasy, like "It's cool to have sex and do drugs and hang out with degenerates and have no responsibility". Unfortunately, that sentiment is neither new nor novel, and the author offers no new insight into either that lifestyle or those who choose to live it.

Still, I'm giving this 3 stars. It reads quickly, and there are enough funny scenes scattered through out that it will at least keep you interested and entertained, if not enlightened.

Sam Lipsyte sees things more clearly than most writers, and he doesn't flinch. What is portrayed by even his admirers as over-the-top satire strikes me as a dead-on adumbration of every value Americans hold dear, every piety we utter, every meaningless counter that marks our status. While the marvelous conceit of this book--letters to a alumni newsletter--has been recognized and applauded, what hasn't really been remarked upon is that in firing off his jeremiads, Lewis Miner's is a voice speaking into a void. There is no wise and simple man in his Connemara clothes waiting for Lewis's epistles. This book is funny, yes: laugh out loud funny. But it is also dark, a blending of the intense and somber tones of VENUS DRIVE with the brighter and more detached comedy of THE SUBJECT STEVE. It is also very wise: Lipsyte posits no solution to the waste he portrays, no utopian ideal to which his book serves as an illustration of its dystopic opposite. Yet Lewis Miner leaves us with hope, he threads his way through the sheer, glittering, noisy, cacophanously glorious surface of Lipsyte's book to find his way to a sort of self-knowledge. Buy the book.

Reading Home Land is therapeutic. It has an autobiographical feel, as if he's spun the events of his life into fabulously cynical gold. You can just picture Lipsyte enduring a whole lot of hell in his life- but with utmost patience, knowing it was just for the mill that would ultimately produce a work of genius. He's got everyone figured out. The characters and dialogue are indicative of an author with incredible psychological consciousness and emotional intelligence. Picture Arrested Development actually fulfilling its satirical aspirations. That's Lipsyte.

People will think you're crazy when you start laughing like a maniac. I could relate to many of the situations described here. It reads like some of the better Blogs out there (true diamonds in the rough those are, but they are worth the effort to look for).

I loved this book, truly and honestly. Although my school life was never as bizzare as that of the characters in this future classic, this is definitely the funniest book I've ever read where Home Land was the title.

Okay, it's only the second book I've read with sucha title, the other being Homeland by R.A. Salvatore (Book 1 in The Dark Elf Trilogy) and that one wasn't intended to be funny.

One complaint I do have though. Why no audiobook version? Honestly, if you were to do one and couldn't get the author, Marc Maron or Chasing Amy's Jason Lee would be perfect.

I'm in highschool and am proud to say that this book is the the funniest book about high school that I have ever read. My girlfriend gave me the great book Venus Drive, and after reading it, I thought this is my new favorite writer. I will admit that I did not really understand what the heck was going on in his follow up, the Subject Steve, but Home Land is as funny a book as I've ever read.

There may be a novelist out there as funny as Sam Lipsyte, and maybe a few who can produce characters who will break your heart as tenderly, but probably not. There is absolutely no one else who can do both together so beautifully. Lewis Miner's absurdly honest, appalling, wonderful updates to his New Jersey high school alumni bulletin come in the sort of voice writers dream of creating, if they're smart enough to dream dreams like that--a voice unlike any other. The updates, concerning Lewis's thumbless best friend, his lost love who preferred her own brother, and the constant disgrace of being an American who did not, as he says, pan out, are hilarious, but what makes them so extraordinary is Lipsyte's construction of a new sort of language: his sentences rip English apart and put it back together in strange, playful configurations that make it mean more, not less. He's a master of a sort of comedy that keeps you laughing so hard you can't quite figure out when you began crying, but it doesn't matter, because by now you're laughing again.

If you like the music of Steven Seagal as much as I do, then I guarantee you'll love this book. If not, if you don't necessarily like the music of Seagal or you just haven't had the pleasure of his new album "Songs From the Crystal Cave" (available on amazon also, I believe), then I'm still pretty sure you will love this book. Like Seagal steppin' foot on a railroad car ("Under Siege 2"), jetliner ("Executive Decision"), aircraft carrier ("Under Siege"), or stepping out of a nine-year coma ("Hard to Kill"), Lipsyte writes like a man who knows he's about to kick your ass. And trust me, my friends, with "Homeland" Lipsyte breaks your arm in half at the elbow, backwards-style, twisting it ever so, a la you know who. There's only two things stopping you from buying this book: fear and common sense. But you're just crazy enough to do it anyway. Isn't that right, my friend?

Sam Lipsyte has taken an anti-hero and made him likable. This is a tall order, but Lipsyte is not fazed.

Lewis Miner aka Teabag is one of the most acerbic and cynical narrators I have seen in literature. His view of the world is entirely jaundiced. There is no secret hope or longing. Everything in his life turns to crap, and he's come to accept it. Rather than being overtly bitter, he accepts this fate and moves on with life. The only chink in his armor is his drug abusing, possibly incestuous, ex-girlfriend, Gwendolyn. Lipsyte makes the "successes" in this book so two faced and unappealing that the reader has no choice but to root for Teabag. But, the characters never become outlandish, save Fontana, Teabag's profane and sexually deviant high school principal.

The narrative is told as a series of letters. Each chapter crackles with the wit of a man who has accepted that he will never amount to anything and thus has no expectations of the world. Through Teabag, Lipsyte rails against the phoniness of people in modern society, fan worship, the battle of the sexes, and the results of one's role models failing. Even though the book itself is hilarious, the issues bubbling beneath the surface make the reader think. I found myself seeing a lot of the so-called "popular kids" from my high school in Teabag's nemeses.

Lipsyte is one of the great new voices of our generation. I will be looking out for his other books.

Home Land: A Novel by Sam Lipsyte aims to reveal the absurdity of the pristine lives and career and parental successes we portray to society by contrasting such notions with the opposite and equally ridiculous life of the "loser" main character, Lewis Miner. Miner tells his story through updates to his high school alumni newsletter, a great stylistic choice that left me with the feeling that Lipsyte could not have told this story with as much success any other way. I often found myself laughing out loud despite the inanity of much of Miner's updates, and at the same time the novel implicitly asks why we do not similarly laugh at the cheery but equally inane updates found in our own alumni newsletters. Throughout the book I could not help thinking that this was a novelized American version of the movie Trainspotting. Miner even gives a monologue near the end baring more than a resemblance to that movie's "Choose Life" monologue. In a similar way to Trainspotting, Home Land says something as a whole without actually saying much of any substance within. It's funny, entertaining, even thought-provoking, but it often sacrifices emotional depth and insight for vulgarity and a good laugh making this a good read but nothing like the revelation of modern writing many of its critics would have you believe.