The ask by sam lipsyte news
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Before long Milo finds himself serving as a queasy mix of factotum, bagman, client state and sounding board to his old college buddy Purdy Stuart, who assigns him the task of delivering hush money to Purdy’s secret illegitimate son, a legless and spectacularly embittered Iraq War veteran. Members of the Ramapo College community filled into the H-Wing auditorium to listen in and ask questions.
Professor of creative writing Hugh Sheehy introduced Lipsyte with anecdotes of their first meetings at a writers conference in Russia and spoke about Lipsytes work.
From the author of Home Land and Venus Drive comes Sam Lipsyte'ssearing, beautiful, and deeply comic novel, The Ask.
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has "not been developing": after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed.
The piece was paired with a photograph by Jordan Wolfson.
The author’s most ambitious work yet—a brilliant and scabrously entertaining riff on contemporary America.Lipsyte read excerpts from his work “Friend of the Pod,” a book that was commissioned by Emma Cline forGagosian’s Picture Books, a publication that prints fiction alongside artwork.
Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor—a major "ask"—who, mysteriously, has requested Milo's involvement.
“I’m not being brave and I’m not making a call,” Lipsyte said. Once again, Lipsyte creates a main character whose lacerating, hyper-eloquent wit is directed both outward at the world—sardonic commentary on parenthood, class privilege, sexuality, the working world, education, ideas of Americanness and much more—and inward; Milo spares himself no degradation, no self-loathing, nothing.
But it turns out that the ask is Milo's sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart.
As Lipsyte read, he skipped over some parts of the narrative, filling the audience in between sections. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. As it goes on one can’t help noticing, beneath the fevered playfulness, a deeply earnest moral vision akin to that of Joseph Heller or Stanley Elkin.
“Lipsyte represents, I think, the convergence of two important literary traditions,” Sheehy said.
To help make ends meet for his (possibly wayward) wife and young son, he takes odd jobs, including a brief and memorable stint as assistant deck-builder to a man whose cherished big idea is a show that features celebrity chefs cooking last meals for the condemned on Death Row. Then he gets a mysterious reprieve from a major potential donor—an “ask,” in development parlance—who specifically requests that the university detail Milo to court him and his money.
Lipsyte talked about how, for him, writer’s block stems from not wanting to make a decision about the narrative. “It’s not ‘blocked,’ I’m just spinning my wheels.”
Featured photo by Jessica Hammer
“The fiction is very, very good, not only as literature, but as a kind of medicine for times like these,” Sheehy said.
Probing many themes— or, perhaps, anxieties—including work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, Sam Lipsyte's The Ask is a burst of genius by an author who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.
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THE ASK
Another savage, hilarious black comedy from Lipsyte (Home Land, 2004, etc.).
Now in his early 40s, Milo Burke has given up his youthful dream of art-world stardom for a sad but steady gig as a development officer at a second-rate university in New York City.
“He’s widely recognized as a stylist who worked with the famous or maybe infamous, depending on who you talk to, Gordon Lish, and his ability to use repetition and sound to grow both style and story is evident in just about any sample of his writing.”
Sheehy read an excerpt from Lipsytes “Ode to Oldcorn,” noting how Lipsyte combines the comedic and the satirical to move his readers.
Jason lands a position producing a podcast for Ted Goldsworthy where he must commute to New Jersey.
At the end of the reading, Lipsyte took questions from the audience about his cure for writer’s block, where he gets ideas for his fiction and the distinction between a short story and a novella. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual.