Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Sam Lipsyte is a wickedly gifted writer. Venus Drive is filled with grimly satisfying fractured insights and harcore humor...A collection that represents the emergence of a very strong talent." Robert Stone
Review
"Sam Lipsyte can get blood from a stonerich, red human blood from the stony sterility of contemporary life. His writing is gripping at least I gripped this book so hard my knuckles turned white." Edmund White
Synopsis
From the peep palaces of Times Square to the cubicles of corporate America, Sam Lipsyte's stories wander a dark, comic road full of need and regret. His damaged, searching narrators deliver their reports of addiction, lust, loneliness, grief, and the doomed dream of rock 'n' roll with a sly lyricism and eerie spareness that somehow redeem them. Listen to this chorus of gallows humor and goodwill sometimes gone bad and hear wild voices rise out of the din of city living: Gary is a failed punk icon turned petty drug dealer and amateur self- actualization guru; the Chersky girl makes a strange midnight discovery roller-skating through a Depression-era morgue. Pot-dazed Trotskyists, summer-camp sadists, and babysitters with an eye toward erotic humiliation also make themselves known in the lost, shattered landscapes of Lipsyte's fictions. "When you have an old soul like I do," deadpans one hero, "everything gets old really quick. Nothing is new. An avocado, a glass of beer, everything tastes like it's been sitting out on a table too long." These stories, loosely linked in character and setting, recall the stark realism of Denis Johnson and the wild humor of Barry Hannah. In these poignant, sharp-witted tales, Sam Lipsyte proves himself one of today's most visceral and fearless short-story writers.
Table of Contents
Old soul -- Cremains -- The morgue rollers -- I'm slavering -- Admiral of the Swiss Navy -- Ergo, ice pick -- Beautiful game -- The Drury girl -- Probe to the negative -- The wrong arm -- My life, for promotional use only -- Torquemada -- Less tar.