The Subject Steve [Import] [Unbound]

Sam Lipsyte (Author)

Product Details

• Unbound
• Publisher: Broadway Books (October 2001)
• ISBN-10: 0767911024
• ISBN-13: 978-0767911023
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)

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.