Home Land: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "IT'S CONFESSION TIME, Catamounts..." (more)
Key Phrases: war mace, liquid smoke, leg warmers, Eastern Valley, Daddy Miner, Stacy Ryson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former Feed editor Lipsyte was one of the young writers to come out of Open City's initial rise in the '90s; his collection of short stories was followed by 2001's The Subject Steve, a kind of condensed Infinite Jest. This second novel is written as a series of insanely baroque, inappropriately intimate letters to a high school alumni newsletter, 20 or so years after graduation. The letters' fictional author, Lewis Miner, aka "Teabag," is clearly lucid enough to know that the letters could never be printed, let alone appreciated by what emerge as his philistine fellow graduates, but he persists anyway. That giddy, passing-itself-off-as-ordinary persistence becomes the point of the novel, which presents lives that continue in the face of crushing, banal and heartbreaking failures. Lewis can barely make his rent payments, is employed writing "FakeFacts" for a cola outfit and is recovering from his fiancée's recent departure. He and his clique of Eastern Valley High leftovers cope as best they can, taunting and analyzing one another unceasingly. The novel climaxes, if it can be called that, at a surreal gathering of former classmates dubbed a Togethering. At every turn, Lipsyte plays on the clichés of the stuck-white-aging-male, though he embellishes them with sharp dialogue. That the novel is an unpleasant, static read is a sign of its uncompromising, mise-en-abyme success.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

The hero of this comic novel, Lewis Miner, a.k.a. Teabag, was a high-school stoner, and now makes it his mission to write extremely candid letters to the alumni newsletter. His life, as he writes, "did not pan out." He works as a dishwasher in his father's cheesy catering business and spends his free time moping with his friend Gary, who sued his parents for molestation and then sued the shrink who conjured up these false memories. Teabag's letters detail his sexual fantasies (most of which involve the leg warmers of the school's jazz-dancing squad), his stalled ambition, and the misshapen pearls of wisdom he's garnered from his bottomed-out life. The story ends in an improbable shootout, but Lipsyte transfigures Teabag's self-loathing into a sensibility that is both hilarious and noble.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Picador (December 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312424183
• ISBN-13: 978-0312424183
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #229,875 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SEAGAL AND LIPSYTE TOGETHER AT LAST AND NEVER BETTER, December 22, 2004

By	Peter Dowd - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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?

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top Ten for the 21st Century, December 30, 2004

By	Alex Abramovich (Astoria, New York) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The first time I read Sam Lipsyte's Home Land, I read it in one sitting. The second time, I had to stop every few pages, call a friend, and read some unbelievably hilarious (or utterly heartbreaking) passage aloud. (I mean, how else would I know I'd really read it? 'Cause, if I hadn't read Lipsyte's last novel, The Subject Steve, too, I don't think I'd believe that anyone alive could actually write like this). Last week, my local bookstores ran out of copies of this handsomely bound novel before I ran out of well-deserving friends to give it too. But a book this good isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

All the same, do yourself a favor and buy a copy today-it's prozac on the page, truer than life, and the funniest stuff since Ali G came out on DVD. Thanks, Sam, for loving us enough to write this seriously, stupendously wonderful book!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars an american tradition, December 13, 2005

By	J. Mayhew - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.