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3.13 AVERAGE
3.13 AVERAGE
Lots of funny riffs about the peculiarities of Internet Age life for a man who graduated with a liberal arts degree in the early 90s. But the plot and neurotic main character might have been cobbled together from any number of satirical novels published since [b:Money|18825|Money|Martin Amis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1297100735s/18825.jpg|85999], and so apart from the lingering bitterness of witnessing the protagonist come undone (largely through his own efforts), not a whole lot of the book has stayed with me in the week since I finished it.
Kind of an odd novel. About an unlikeable guy who wants to be liked but his marriage is over and he's barely hanging on to his career, and, frankly, he's not that likeable or fully interesting. There are some funny passages and a few eloquent ones but overall a bit of a tough read.
Just short of a modern classic. It takes a pretty great writer to make the many flawed characters in this book funny, fleshed out, and sympathetic all at once. A sort of companion to Daniel Clowes' Wilson with its anti-hero protagonist and mining the disappointment that often colors middle age to produce uneasy humor. If this sounds like your cup of tea, then this is a must-read.
One of those novels where the narrator starts in a bad place and just slides downhill throughout the entire book - ending up in a worse place. Milo is a well-educated former painter who now works as a fundraiser for a second-rate, expensive, private college in New York City. He gets fired, but might have a chance to get his job back if he can land a big donation to the college from a man who happens to be one of his old college friends (who has gone on to much greater dot-com success). Oh, and Milo's wife is having an affair and his four-year-old son is somewhat incomprehensible and slightly unlovable. The writing in this is great but the story just slides along until the end.
Original, vulgar, poignant, cynical, funny, and real are all adjectives to describe this book!
All the trademark humor and language play I love form Lipsyte, though this novel was quite a bit more depressing than his other works. He is really a master of tapping into disenfranchisement.
I got about 200 pages in and just wasn't feeling the momentum. I was super excited to read this one after hearing Lipsyte on Marc Maron's show and reading Homeland, which was fantastic. There were good sections, but somehow there wasn't anything inspiring me to pick up this book every day. Maybe it wasn't the right book for this particular time.
This book is NOT about "The Ask." It is about a sad, middle aged man who loses his job and keeps thinking that his life in the past was much better than his current situation. The man spends much of the book lamenting his life, his decisions, and his past (which also sucked), instead of pulling up his bootstraps and getting on with life. Despite the excellent reviews and the title's connection to my job, the book is not funny or amusing. It is a sad, bitter ode to the state of apathy and disfunction that many people seem stuck on these days.
I'm not sure why I finished reading this book. It just didn't have a point. I kept waiting for it. I kept hoping it would come - even if it came in the last 10 pages. Nope. I didn't think the book was funny. I felt like I spent the entire book trying to get it...being on the outside looking in. Not a pleasant experience when reading a book.
This has so many funny lines and bright and shiny and sharp observations. But that's kind of it. I could be convinced to come back to him when he gets his hands on a story.