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jaxkep's review against another edition
3.0
Was not a huge fan...I guess did not get the message the author was putting out there. Like, be happy with your lot because you could wind up living in a basement apartment with the crazy guy who owns the Dunkin' Donuts? Meanwhile your wife and son live nearby but you ruined your relationship with them? And your rich friend totally screwed you over and you ruined the relationship with him too? Just wasn't into it. It's a relatively quick read, and somewhat thought provoking but unsure why it was a NY Times Editors Pick and a best seller.
gregzimmerman's review against another edition
3.0
Turn to any page at random of Sam Lipsyte's darkly comic novel The Ask, and there's approximately a 99 percent chance you'll find a sentence or two that will have you guffawing, rolling your eyes in amusement or outright laughing out loud. Let's give it a try:
Pg. 33 - Yep, here we go: "The room seemed cozy and cavernous at once, the kind of place I would later describe to Maura as tastefully lit. A few bourbons, and so was I."
Pg. 69 - Aha! "'I know you think I'm homophobic, but I'm not. You're the one who betrayed all your gay friends by having a baby."
Pg. 147 - Again: "It meant not much. Physical bravery probably held the same value in our milieu as skill at parallel parking: A useful quirk."
Amidst all this wit is a rather inventive plot. Milo Burke works in the development office in a crappy NYC liberal arts college, a job from which he is promptly fired in the first chapter of the novel for balling out a rich donor's daughter. Milo is coasting through a boring marriage the only joy of which is his four-year-old son Bernie. When his now-filthy-rich college friend Purdy offers a significant give to Milo's college, but only if Milo be put in charge of "the ask," Milo is re-recruited to his job. Also, Purdy has a secret problem, which he hopes Milo will help him resolve. Will Milo succeed for once in his miserable, self-pitiful life?
Two characteristics of this novel stuck out for me, besides the humore: 1) It's much less successful when it tries to be profound and serious, which it does over the course of the second half, as Milo's life and marriage careen southward, and 2) The peripheral characters in this novel are much more interesting than its main characters Milo and Purdy.
You may notice that the three quotes above are all in the first half of the novel. That's not an accident. The turn-to-any-page-experiment actually on works in the first 150 pages or so. The second half of the novel is sad. Milo turns from lovable loser to just loser. And the quirky dialogue, snappy turn-of-phrase and hilariously observed observations largely disappear to be replaced by supposed profundities and appeals for sympathy that sort of fall flat.
Thankfully, the supporting cast, Milo's mid-20s co-worker Horace, and Purdy's secret son, Don, rescue the novel. Horace opens the novel by proclaiming that America is a rundown, demented pimp. He's the hilarious counterbalance to Milo's sad wussiness. Don, an Iraq vet who lost his legs to a bomb, is angry. But he's also glib and sarcastic, with quite the "don't give a shit" attitude. He gets the best lines in the novel. For instance, Don tells Milo that "Arab men are attracted to me. They have a whole different take on buttly rapaciousness over there." So, just when you're starting to get annoyed over Milo and Purdy's sobfests, Horance or Don will show up, steal a scene, and make you remember what a fantastically funny writer Lipsyte is.
Overall, 3.5 stars for The Ask. I'm a sucker for good funny writing, and Lipsyte's sense of humor closely matches my own. For the first half of the book, I was envisioning writing an absolute gushfest and proclaiming it my favorite book of the year. But the tail end sort of put a damper on that. Still, though, it's a fun book. I'd recommend it to fans of Jonathan Tropper, Gary Shteyngart and Jess Walter.
Pg. 33 - Yep, here we go: "The room seemed cozy and cavernous at once, the kind of place I would later describe to Maura as tastefully lit. A few bourbons, and so was I."
Pg. 69 - Aha! "'I know you think I'm homophobic, but I'm not. You're the one who betrayed all your gay friends by having a baby."
Pg. 147 - Again: "It meant not much. Physical bravery probably held the same value in our milieu as skill at parallel parking: A useful quirk."
Amidst all this wit is a rather inventive plot. Milo Burke works in the development office in a crappy NYC liberal arts college, a job from which he is promptly fired in the first chapter of the novel for balling out a rich donor's daughter. Milo is coasting through a boring marriage the only joy of which is his four-year-old son Bernie. When his now-filthy-rich college friend Purdy offers a significant give to Milo's college, but only if Milo be put in charge of "the ask," Milo is re-recruited to his job. Also, Purdy has a secret problem, which he hopes Milo will help him resolve. Will Milo succeed for once in his miserable, self-pitiful life?
Two characteristics of this novel stuck out for me, besides the humore: 1) It's much less successful when it tries to be profound and serious, which it does over the course of the second half, as Milo's life and marriage careen southward, and 2) The peripheral characters in this novel are much more interesting than its main characters Milo and Purdy.
You may notice that the three quotes above are all in the first half of the novel. That's not an accident. The turn-to-any-page-experiment actually on works in the first 150 pages or so. The second half of the novel is sad. Milo turns from lovable loser to just loser. And the quirky dialogue, snappy turn-of-phrase and hilariously observed observations largely disappear to be replaced by supposed profundities and appeals for sympathy that sort of fall flat.
Thankfully, the supporting cast, Milo's mid-20s co-worker Horace, and Purdy's secret son, Don, rescue the novel. Horace opens the novel by proclaiming that America is a rundown, demented pimp. He's the hilarious counterbalance to Milo's sad wussiness. Don, an Iraq vet who lost his legs to a bomb, is angry. But he's also glib and sarcastic, with quite the "don't give a shit" attitude. He gets the best lines in the novel. For instance, Don tells Milo that "Arab men are attracted to me. They have a whole different take on buttly rapaciousness over there." So, just when you're starting to get annoyed over Milo and Purdy's sobfests, Horance or Don will show up, steal a scene, and make you remember what a fantastically funny writer Lipsyte is.
Overall, 3.5 stars for The Ask. I'm a sucker for good funny writing, and Lipsyte's sense of humor closely matches my own. For the first half of the book, I was envisioning writing an absolute gushfest and proclaiming it my favorite book of the year. But the tail end sort of put a damper on that. Still, though, it's a fun book. I'd recommend it to fans of Jonathan Tropper, Gary Shteyngart and Jess Walter.
meade1111's review against another edition
2.0
Why do I keep falling for things like, "New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice?" I heard constant praise for this book when it came out two years ago and I believed it. I get so mad when I get disappointed, when things don't live up to the hype. I get really mean when that happens and I am about to get pretty mean about this book.
But first, a note about the New York Times:
The New York Times, as a cultural commenter, should be ignored.
I think most reviewers there are trying to praise or deride a book based on a set of principles for an imaginary audience of newspaper subscribers who no longer exist. A good reviewer is honest about their attempts to please themselves. That is impossible for the staff of the NY Times. The NY Times’ commercial interests compromise the opinions of their reviewers. That is why I have always trusted writers’ recommendations the most. That is how I found Denis Johnson and George Saunders, Jorge Luis Borges and it is how you should find things too. The publishing world is too focused on what "should" be liked vs what is good.
Ok. Now some mean things about the Ask which I had high hopes for and really wanted to like, but just ended up hating:
The book starts off a bit unfocussed, but at least funny. Funny is not easy and if you can be funny, it goes a long way with me. Also, he's got most people pretty much figured out. I like that. I like that he can call people out for their bull shit. The entitled, the lazy, the delusional, the bored. He has them all dead to rights. I like that.
However, the motivation of this book's main C, a sad sack named Milo, is a little amorphous. Early in the novel he is fired from his shitty job at the development office of a school. He is desperate to get his shitty job back and Lipsyte never bothers to explain why. There is no period where Milo tries to convince himself he can do anything else [paint, work somewhere else, raise a child full time, etc.] A more complete book would show him trying and failing at these things and then realizing that the only thing he is capable of is working at the development office.
But things, in this novel, just sort of happen. Milo has a job, then he has no job, then he has a job again. Milo is hanging out with the neighbor for seemingly no reason. Milo takes walks to the park, takes train rides to meet people, he eats from time to time... the book could use a bit of structure.
Lipsyte borrows heavily from several of his sources and he does very little to bother covering the elements that are snipped entirely from other, superior works. The plot of a mysterious benefactor who leads an in-over-their-head protagonist through an obstacle constructed by the true elites of this country is lifted from the Crying of Lot 49. The main difference is that in the Crying of Lot 49, all the plot gets taken over by the insane conspiracy theories and the machinations of the shadow organizations, and that is so much fun that you don't care that there are silly names instead of real characters. This book pulls off no such feat.
The Purdy character is basically a 21st Century Gatsby, which is a little lazy, but books have done it and gotten away with it very often for a long time, so it is one of the book’s more forgivable sins. One of the worst sins of the book is that it makes you want to be experiencing the other, better sources that the book is based on. For example, the tone of the novel is cooked from knowingly neo-noir Big Lebowski-esque ingredients, including the bumbling guy who get selected as the investigator who will turn out to, miraculously, be the perfect guy for the job; the war veteran who won't stop talking about his war (in Lebowski it is Nam and in the ask it's Afghanistan); and each main character have their own signature cuisine, in Lebowski it’s the hilarious white Russian and in The Ask it is, appropriately, a boring turkey wrap. Just give me a special edition of The Big Lebowski and leave me be. You can keep your fake existentialism and hand ringing.
Lipsyte does come up with one compellingly batshit idea. And he knows it. He keeps coming back to this Dead Man Dining idea which is a reality television show one of the characters is pitching constantly. The idea is that it would be a 1 hour show based around a chef cooking a last meal for a person on death row. If Lipsyte was a better writer, or a braver writer, he would structure the whole novel around the quest to get this bananas show made, allowing all the sane (and insane) characters to comment on how stupid/ impractically expensive/ morally bankrupt the idea is.
Why not just make that the centerpiece of the story?
The book can still start with milo trying to get the Gatsby-esque Purdy to contribute money to the crappy school Milo works for, but Milo can have a little more agency as he puts into action the quest to get this TV show on the air. It would at least be something happening. As a matter of fact, if Lipsyte had Milo leave the development office behind to become a producer, he could have a new Rabbit on his hands (because let’s face it, Lipsyte desperately wants to be John Updike). In the sequel to the Ask (The Give), Milo could leave TV behind to become a politician and then, in a 3rd book (let’s call it Also Critical of This Era of American History), he could leave Office to become a lobbyist. Lipsyte sure left a juicy trilogy on the table.
But this book, this non-Updikean, non-trilogy version of the book gets worse the deeper you get into the plot. The more you read, the more you realize the story is going nowhere. It slips from a solid 3 star status as it gets to be more nostalgic about, what I assume to be, Lipsyte's own college experience. The characters also seem to lose personality as the book meanders to a finish and they become outsized caricatures of what they were designed to represent. The wealthy won’t live lives that are emotionally rich, the women insist on being cold and manipulative, and children really do say the darndest, most profound and revelatory things.
It feels like Lipsyte has a checklist of what a big 21st century book should address and just by mentioning stuff (a veteran, death row, corpratism, etc.) he can just check it off without really exploring anything, and he can still get credit for challenging his readers with the big issues. And because all issues become boiled down to a single sentence and every character is a cliché, the book actually reveals itself to be pretty shallow.
It does have its moments, though.
Some funny lines include a scene where Milo’s mother explains she is going to win 500 dollars at a race to which Milo says, “I thought it was a charity race” to which she responds, “It is… But there’s always side action.”
His mother later derides him, “The system’s rigged for white men and you still can’t tap in.”
But the mother character, and her doting lover Francine (my mother is a lesbian, oh my!) is there merely as a punch line. She serves little purpose in the overall story.
But for every useless mother character there is an interesting cameo. For example, at one point Purdy’s shady, envelope full of cash dispensing lawyer explains to Milo, “We are going to eat ice cream and we are going to eat shit. The trick is to use different spoons.”
It’s a nice moment and one that rings particularly true, but the wacky three ring circus of capitalism and self-loathing that is this book’s modus operandi picks up again and the stark profundity is buried once again under the casual racism of the characters and the nihilistic acceptance of the wealth disparities of this country.
Which reminds me, there are a lot of pot shots taken at what Lipsyte calls “the dead corpse of America,” but it all seems unearned. Almost all of it. The veterans, the class warfare, the griping about the mediocrity of a college education… It all feels very much of an earlier era. It all feels very pre 911. A generation stunned and stunted, still pissing and moaning over its inability to fight in an idealized version of World War II.
There is a bit from the Comedy Central television show Key & Peele where the eponymous cohosts talk about the difference between what they call “white college movies” and “black college movies.” They point out that the characters in the “white movies” take college for granted and they just want to take a break for a while, while the “black college” movies begin and end with the line, delivered with steely and earnest determination, “I am gonna graduate college.”
And maybe that is just the point. Books of this sort (books like James Woods’ Book Against God, Ben Kunkel’s Indecision are two that come to mind) are a probably dying breed, thankfully. The college novel that is about how college is a total drag is probably over. The college novel that is not about anything substantive or earnest is probably dead. And good riddance. The book and the generation that can afford to screw around and does not have to love anything, or ever be earnest or serious about a single thing is no longer going to be in fashion as we all learn, the hard way, that we have to give a shit about something. This book, unfortunately doesn’t give a shit about anything and you shouldn’t give a shit about it. Skip it. Read The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao instead.
But first, a note about the New York Times:
The New York Times, as a cultural commenter, should be ignored.
I think most reviewers there are trying to praise or deride a book based on a set of principles for an imaginary audience of newspaper subscribers who no longer exist. A good reviewer is honest about their attempts to please themselves. That is impossible for the staff of the NY Times. The NY Times’ commercial interests compromise the opinions of their reviewers. That is why I have always trusted writers’ recommendations the most. That is how I found Denis Johnson and George Saunders, Jorge Luis Borges and it is how you should find things too. The publishing world is too focused on what "should" be liked vs what is good.
Ok. Now some mean things about the Ask which I had high hopes for and really wanted to like, but just ended up hating:
The book starts off a bit unfocussed, but at least funny. Funny is not easy and if you can be funny, it goes a long way with me. Also, he's got most people pretty much figured out. I like that. I like that he can call people out for their bull shit. The entitled, the lazy, the delusional, the bored. He has them all dead to rights. I like that.
However, the motivation of this book's main C, a sad sack named Milo, is a little amorphous. Early in the novel he is fired from his shitty job at the development office of a school. He is desperate to get his shitty job back and Lipsyte never bothers to explain why. There is no period where Milo tries to convince himself he can do anything else [paint, work somewhere else, raise a child full time, etc.] A more complete book would show him trying and failing at these things and then realizing that the only thing he is capable of is working at the development office.
But things, in this novel, just sort of happen. Milo has a job, then he has no job, then he has a job again. Milo is hanging out with the neighbor for seemingly no reason. Milo takes walks to the park, takes train rides to meet people, he eats from time to time... the book could use a bit of structure.
Lipsyte borrows heavily from several of his sources and he does very little to bother covering the elements that are snipped entirely from other, superior works. The plot of a mysterious benefactor who leads an in-over-their-head protagonist through an obstacle constructed by the true elites of this country is lifted from the Crying of Lot 49. The main difference is that in the Crying of Lot 49, all the plot gets taken over by the insane conspiracy theories and the machinations of the shadow organizations, and that is so much fun that you don't care that there are silly names instead of real characters. This book pulls off no such feat.
The Purdy character is basically a 21st Century Gatsby, which is a little lazy, but books have done it and gotten away with it very often for a long time, so it is one of the book’s more forgivable sins. One of the worst sins of the book is that it makes you want to be experiencing the other, better sources that the book is based on. For example, the tone of the novel is cooked from knowingly neo-noir Big Lebowski-esque ingredients, including the bumbling guy who get selected as the investigator who will turn out to, miraculously, be the perfect guy for the job; the war veteran who won't stop talking about his war (in Lebowski it is Nam and in the ask it's Afghanistan); and each main character have their own signature cuisine, in Lebowski it’s the hilarious white Russian and in The Ask it is, appropriately, a boring turkey wrap. Just give me a special edition of The Big Lebowski and leave me be. You can keep your fake existentialism and hand ringing.
Lipsyte does come up with one compellingly batshit idea. And he knows it. He keeps coming back to this Dead Man Dining idea which is a reality television show one of the characters is pitching constantly. The idea is that it would be a 1 hour show based around a chef cooking a last meal for a person on death row. If Lipsyte was a better writer, or a braver writer, he would structure the whole novel around the quest to get this bananas show made, allowing all the sane (and insane) characters to comment on how stupid/ impractically expensive/ morally bankrupt the idea is.
Why not just make that the centerpiece of the story?
The book can still start with milo trying to get the Gatsby-esque Purdy to contribute money to the crappy school Milo works for, but Milo can have a little more agency as he puts into action the quest to get this TV show on the air. It would at least be something happening. As a matter of fact, if Lipsyte had Milo leave the development office behind to become a producer, he could have a new Rabbit on his hands (because let’s face it, Lipsyte desperately wants to be John Updike). In the sequel to the Ask (The Give), Milo could leave TV behind to become a politician and then, in a 3rd book (let’s call it Also Critical of This Era of American History), he could leave Office to become a lobbyist. Lipsyte sure left a juicy trilogy on the table.
But this book, this non-Updikean, non-trilogy version of the book gets worse the deeper you get into the plot. The more you read, the more you realize the story is going nowhere. It slips from a solid 3 star status as it gets to be more nostalgic about, what I assume to be, Lipsyte's own college experience. The characters also seem to lose personality as the book meanders to a finish and they become outsized caricatures of what they were designed to represent. The wealthy won’t live lives that are emotionally rich, the women insist on being cold and manipulative, and children really do say the darndest, most profound and revelatory things.
It feels like Lipsyte has a checklist of what a big 21st century book should address and just by mentioning stuff (a veteran, death row, corpratism, etc.) he can just check it off without really exploring anything, and he can still get credit for challenging his readers with the big issues. And because all issues become boiled down to a single sentence and every character is a cliché, the book actually reveals itself to be pretty shallow.
It does have its moments, though.
Some funny lines include a scene where Milo’s mother explains she is going to win 500 dollars at a race to which Milo says, “I thought it was a charity race” to which she responds, “It is… But there’s always side action.”
His mother later derides him, “The system’s rigged for white men and you still can’t tap in.”
But the mother character, and her doting lover Francine (my mother is a lesbian, oh my!) is there merely as a punch line. She serves little purpose in the overall story.
But for every useless mother character there is an interesting cameo. For example, at one point Purdy’s shady, envelope full of cash dispensing lawyer explains to Milo, “We are going to eat ice cream and we are going to eat shit. The trick is to use different spoons.”
It’s a nice moment and one that rings particularly true, but the wacky three ring circus of capitalism and self-loathing that is this book’s modus operandi picks up again and the stark profundity is buried once again under the casual racism of the characters and the nihilistic acceptance of the wealth disparities of this country.
Which reminds me, there are a lot of pot shots taken at what Lipsyte calls “the dead corpse of America,” but it all seems unearned. Almost all of it. The veterans, the class warfare, the griping about the mediocrity of a college education… It all feels very much of an earlier era. It all feels very pre 911. A generation stunned and stunted, still pissing and moaning over its inability to fight in an idealized version of World War II.
There is a bit from the Comedy Central television show Key & Peele where the eponymous cohosts talk about the difference between what they call “white college movies” and “black college movies.” They point out that the characters in the “white movies” take college for granted and they just want to take a break for a while, while the “black college” movies begin and end with the line, delivered with steely and earnest determination, “I am gonna graduate college.”
And maybe that is just the point. Books of this sort (books like James Woods’ Book Against God, Ben Kunkel’s Indecision are two that come to mind) are a probably dying breed, thankfully. The college novel that is about how college is a total drag is probably over. The college novel that is not about anything substantive or earnest is probably dead. And good riddance. The book and the generation that can afford to screw around and does not have to love anything, or ever be earnest or serious about a single thing is no longer going to be in fashion as we all learn, the hard way, that we have to give a shit about something. This book, unfortunately doesn’t give a shit about anything and you shouldn’t give a shit about it. Skip it. Read The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao instead.
jeffgrann's review against another edition
3.0
Fraternal and modern anxiety explored through many themes, including social role, work, success, friendship, manhood, parenthood, and employment. Enjoyed the diverse characters and their struggles to understand and accept themselves.
segue's review against another edition
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.5
readingrealgood's review against another edition
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
pattiea's review against another edition
This wasn't awful, but I just couldn't finish it.
elkensky's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
4.0
tonyhightower's review against another edition
challenging
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
They're are times I want to read something clever, and this is oh so terribly clever. But I have a thing where I need to have someone - anyone - in the story who's not an insufferable shitheel, and as it became clearer & clearer this wasn't happening, I had a hard time getting through this.