Subject Steve [Paperback]

Sam Lipsyte (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 3, 2003

Dark, dazzling American satire from the natural heir to George Saunders or David Sedaris. 'A brilliant novel, in every conceivable way.' Toby Litt Steve's fettle is absolutely fine, but nevertheless, he's dying -- of a mystery disease that just might be boredom. At least, that's what the guys in the white coats say. They're not doctors, they're just guys in white coats, and the subject's name isn't Steve, either, but we'll get to that!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Subject Steve, Sam Lipsyte's remarkable debut novel, is an ebullient, bawdy, and idiosyncratic assault on American consumer culture. Like fellow mercurial satirists Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace, Lipsyte is an impressive stylist. His argot is the psychobabble of corporate jargon, advertising slogans, and sound bites. Wordplay rather than characterization is Lipsyte's métier and his language positively fizzes with invention. The characters here don't so much converse as exchange obtuse epigrammatic non sequiturs and indulge in linguistic quips. This should, of course, be utterly infuriating, but it isn't. The dialogue, like the rest of this savage, absurdist take on contemporary life (and more precisely our horror of death), is startlingly acute and unrelentingly funny.

The eponymous Steve (who claims his name is not Steve) is a mild-mannered 37-year old ad man who pens slogans celebrating the "ongoing orgasm of the information lifestyle." Unfortunately, he's dying, but "he's dying of something nobody has ever died of before: he's actually going to die of boredom." The scientists (who may not be scientists although they do wear white coats) "calculate that there can be no calculations" about how long he has left to live. Faced with this eventuality he embarks on a particularly wayward sexual, narcotic, and religious odyssey. Lipsyte fills Steve's journey with so many oddball doctors, multimedia weirdoes, dysfunctional gurus, and bizarre sexual encounters that it's actually rather difficult to imagine anyone dying of boredom. Exhaustion, perhaps. Ludicrous and occasionally even a little bit sick, Lipsyte's surreal, intelligent black comedy proves that death really can be a laughing matter. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Lipsyte's latest is a dark satire in which a protagonist named Steve is diagnosed with a vague but deadly disease called Prexis that sounds suspiciously like terminal boredom with modern life. Steve's doctors, two shadowy figures known only as the Mechanic and the Philosopher, try a variety of equally vague experimental treatments on him until their programs are exposed as fraudulent. His bizarre illness sets off a panic and a media frenzy, and Steve finds himself drawn to a clinic in upstate New York called the Center for Non-Denominational Recovery and Redemption run by a shady former torture expert known only as Heinrich of Newark, who uses pain-based "treatments." The cultish clinic proves equally ineffective, so Steve takes a couple of stabs at alternative medicine before heading west into the desert to join a futuristic cult called the Realm, where he prepares to meet his maker through a strange series of therapy sessions and off-the-wall broadcasts. In the stretches between the erratic and often bizarre plot twists, the author explores the disaffections of a divorced middle-aged man, delving into his professional disappointments, the emptiness of his marriage and love life, and the death of his best friend. Lipsyte (Venus Drive) has come up with an intriguing experimental concept, but the absence of coherent, linear plot means the commentary must be particularly sharp and interesting, and much of what Lipsyte offers is rambling, self-absorbed and at times just plain annoying. The troubles of the alienated and estranged offer plenty of opportunities for an adventurous approach, but much of what Lipsyte submits is familiar, a mannered echo, product of a sensibility halfway between Lish and Vonnegut.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (March 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007133669
• ISBN-13: 978-0007133666
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,514,737 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sam Lipsyte is the author of Venus Drive, a collection of short stories to be published by Flamingo in Dec 2002. His work has appeared in The New York Times and The Quarterly. He was born in 1968 and lives in New York City. This is his first novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Astoria Statement from Seattle, September 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Subject Steve (Hardcover)

Well, the other reviews here wrote there great synopses, but here's my two cents.

David Foster Wallace has this essay about the difficulty today's novelists have competing with mediated reality. Roth wrote this essay first, and Franzen's written it since (and has now written a novel following Wallace's advice) But despite W's literary catholicism, his fictions wallows in exactly the same stuff he abhors. And, of course, that's what makes it great, and it's what most fortysomething novelists spend a lot of time thinking about. I'd guess that Lipsyte's just get that this is stuff you learned in college--mediated reality is just a given.

This book is usually descibed as satire, and I guess that's true because it reminds me of Nathanial West--it manages to be scathing and poignant at the same time, and it's very human. It's also very--and I mean, <i>very</i>funny. It's like some sin not to be a realist today, but it's also not like the book is particularly difficult or anything (it's moving, but that's another story). I mean, it feels silly to recommend this book--you just want to thrust it into people's hands. On the other hand, this just might be a book that should have "this book is not for you" sticker slapped across the shrink wrap. You're always laughing at stuff that is real, which hurts. Which makes it so cool. Which also hurts.

I guess you all know this book is about a dying man whose condition is universal. Which is funny, because explains why something which reminds me of the best ever episode of the Simpsons has been reviewed as if it were an episode of ER. But it's not at all a morbid book. Steve-not-Steve (see? already it's confusing) really just has these poignant, hysterical adventures, told in these amazing sentences which read kind of like what street poetry would sound like if street poems were beautiful. Which is not to put down Franzen or street poetry or anything, but simply to say that if you have a good year you just might like this book. I did.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Weird, May 31, 2004

By 

T. Carlin "tmstripes" (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Subject Steve (Hardcover)

I was intrigued within the first 50 pages or so because of the direction it seemed to be heading. Then it got bland in the middle . It just seemed to be the same thing spit over and over to the reader. It did have its high moments in the middle. Then at the end of the book it got better, but it was hard to get through the 2nd third of the book, it probably goes deeper than i gave it. I really didn't get into it, so that may be why, also I am still a teenager but I did get most of the satire. My recommendation is that it's one of those books you have to read yourself to judge because you may take it a different way. It just wasn't for me.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars SAFE, by Chuck Palahniuk ..., April 22, 2002

By 

"mrertia" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Subject Steve (Hardcover)

... with a little Vonnegut leavening. (SAFE, for those not in the know, is a Todd Haynes movie from the mid-90's about a woman suffering from a mysterious illness.)

For those who are Palahniuk fans and have blown through all of his books (not a difficult task), THE SUBJECT STEVE may be a good followup. It veers a couple degrees farther away from reality (and closer to a Vonnegut-esque satirical future), and is potentially even more willfully transgressive than any of Palahniuk's work, without any of the underlying thematic logic that Palahniuk's transgressive bits seem to have.

But there's definitely something with potential here, and it's intermittently fulfilled. Perhaps the biggest problem is that it's attempting to be a satire, and the target (or targets) of its satire gets so diffuse by the end of the book that it's obscured entirely. Regardless, a quick read, and there will be those who love it, so definitely check it out if your tastes lean in the directions outlined in this and other reviews.