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Chiedi e ti sarà tolto

by Sam Lipsyte (Goodreads Author), Anna Mioni (Translator)

3.26 of 5 stars 3.26 · rating details · 4,009 ratings · 751 reviews

Milo Burke lavora come fundraiser per un'università mediocre popolata di figli di papà con velleità intellettuali: dovrebbe strappare donazioni alle ricche famiglie degli studenti o a generosi filantropi, ma le public relations non sono il suo forte. Milo - aspirante artista mai uscito dall'anonimato - è un intemperante, un contestatore, un frustrato, forse un genio incomp...more

Paperback, 371 pages

Published April 2011 by Minimum Fax (first published 2010)

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Jan 09, 2010 Greg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Ask is a weird novel to find yourself really enjoying--it's like getting punched in the face and laughing about it. It's hilarious and dead serious at the same time; on one page you laugh out loud, only to be soberly put in your place on the next by the pitiless resentment and biting cynicism that plagues Milo, Lipsyte's hapless protagonist, who gets fired from his job at the development office of a Manhattan university after mouthing off to an overly entitled student. Then there's all the o...more The Ask is a weird novel to find yourself really enjoying--it's like getting punched in the face and laughing about it. It's hilarious and dead serious at the same time; on one page you laugh out loud, only to be soberly put in your place on the next by the pitiless resentment and biting cynicism that plagues Milo, Lipsyte's hapless protagonist, who gets fired from his job at the development office of a Manhattan university after mouthing off to an overly entitled student. Then there's all the other failure in Milo's life--the failure to be a successful painter, son, husband, and father--and the added burden when his college friend Purdy (the picture of wealth and success) comes out of the past with a particularly awkward proposition for him.

An early review at the Quarterly Conversation has called The Ask "another unrelenting tour de force of black bile...there is no cushy fictional distance between the world [Lipsyte] describes and the world he inhabits." But even though The Ask ends on the most unnerving note possible--and regardless of whether or not you're repelled by Milo's view that "stories were like people...we pretended they all counted, but almost none of them did," you at least realize (as Milo does) the guilt-inducing fact that there are always people worse off than you, that no matter how low you think you've gone, there are things to feel lucky for. "Everybody wanted to get home," Milo reminisces after he hits rock bottom at his childhood home in New Jersey, where his lesbian mother lives with her longtime lover. "Home could be a ruined place, joyless, heaped with the ashes of scorched hearts, but come evening everybody hustled to get there." A concrete sense of home is what Milo apparently seeks the most, but ultimately he wants a life free of illusions about what "home" really means.

What really won me over in The Ask was not only the razor-sharp writing--phrases like "sexagenarian whippersnappers" and "greeting card ontology" are abundant--but Lipsyte's equally razor-sharp observations about the absurd truths of American life: of the spoiled, uber-connected kids at the university ("they were happy, or seemed happy, or maybe they were blogging about how they seemed happy"); the purgatorial middle class existence he is destined never to leave ("We still did not own the devices that let you skip the commercials. Would we always be part of the slow television movement?"); the satirical, misguided manifestos of child daycare centers; and the sobering realities embodied by war veterans. The Ask avoids tempering the bitterness that comes with all this; instead, it stews in it, even embraces it. It's sort of exhilarating to finish the book seeing Milo "digging in for the long night of here."If he gains anything, it will be peace...maybe.(less)

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Nov 23, 2012 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

This is not a bad book, Sam Lipsyte has a cute turn of phrase, but it's just not funny at all and makes you feel bad when you're actually reading it so that you feel good when you stop. Ugh. I checked up my list of all time favourite novels to answer the question - well, maybe you just don't like comic novels. Here are the ones on my list with some comic elements:

the fountain overflows
the mezzanine
catch 22
eighty-sixed
trainspotting
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
lolita

You might p...more This is not a bad book, Sam Lipsyte has a cute turn of phrase, but it's just not funny at all and makes you feel bad when you're actually reading it so that you feel good when you stop. Ugh. I checked up my list of all time favourite novels to answer the question - well, maybe you just don't like comic novels. Here are the ones on my list with some comic elements:

the fountain overflows
the mezzanine
catch 22
eighty-sixed
trainspotting
the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
lolita

You might possibly say that The Mezzanine, Catch-22 and Eighty-Sixed are comic novels rather than novels which have a lot of comedy in them, but you will note that two of these three are about Aids and War & so have that tragic undertow. Only The Mezzanine proudly declares itself to be Light as in light music. The narrator never impales himself on a stapler. He suffers mortal embarrassment in a men's urinal, but he figures out how to overcome his urethric strangulation problem and everything's plain sailing apart from the shoelaces.

Novels which notice everything about Modern Life in America and then jeer loudly at it like The Ask have three terrible giants breathing down their neck; there's Tom Wolfe, who invented this micro-trend the-future-is-already-happening Americans-are-really-absurd stuff way way back in great books like The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby which was in like 1965 which was, well, before before; there’s Jonathan Franzen who is doing this sort of stuff in giant novels once every 8 years (and how glad I am he's so slow); and of course there’s David Foster Wallace about whom I would not wish to comment because I haven't read enough but he is the Galactic Warpdrive model of all Noticing Machines. It’s a brave author who sails his skiff into those waters hoping to catch an overlooked eel. And Mr Lipsyte then goes and sets his novel in a not-very-good University, just like about ten thousand novelists have been doing since the 50s – Snow, Bradbury, Barth, Amis, Sharpe, Lodge, Delillo, Jacobsen, Byatt, Tartt, Powers, Smiley, Chabon, Roth, Coetzee, Roth, Roth, Roth… and so you see that even though Mr Lipsyte has a cute turn of phrase, sometimes very cute, nonetheless, I have to report that this stuff has been

DONE TO DEATH
(less)

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Jun 24, 2011 Bradley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: from-library

Sam Lipsyte is a great prose stylist, but this book was about 100 pages too long. It only had enough plot for a short story, but was stretched into a novel. His writing style made about 200 pages highly readable and enjoyable, particularly due to the author's humor. But because of the book's minimal plot, an extra 100 was pushing it. It's a prime example of the stereotypes that genre fiction writers and readers have about literary fiction: a focus on style rather than plot and character developm...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Sam Lipsyte, author of the cult favorite Home Land, is back in fine form with his third novel. In The Ask, Milo Burke is a not-very-lovable loser (think Paul Giamatti playing him in the movie, and you'll get the idea), who's approaching middle age with nothing much to show for it but a bachelor's degree, a failed career as an artist, and a crummy job as a development officer at Mediocre University in New York City. Unfortunately for Milo, he's never quite perfected the art of The Ask -- the deli...more Sam Lipsyte, author of the cult favorite Home Land, is back in fine form with his third novel. In The Ask, Milo Burke is a not-very-lovable loser (think Paul Giamatti playing him in the movie, and you'll get the idea), who's approaching middle age with nothing much to show for it but a bachelor's degree, a failed career as an artist, and a crummy job as a development officer at Mediocre University in New York City. Unfortunately for Milo, he's never quite perfected the art of The Ask -- the delicate process of cultivating potential donors for large sums of money. Even more unfortunately, Milo loses his temper with the bitchy daughter of an Ask (the word is also a noun), and his crummy job evaporates. This state of affairs doesn't help his marriage, which has stagnated into one of those where the parties can't seem to remember why they got together in the first place.

Lipsyte spins this scenario into a comic narrative that somehow manages to incorporate internet zillionaires, meth freaks, helicopter parenting, the Iraq War, and Astoria without ever coming close to losing its footing. To make matters even better, Lipsyte is more than capable of coming up with full paragraphs that will make you do a double take just to admire them. For example, about the aftermath of a home invasion robbery:

"But no matter my conversational machinations, I knew the truth. Nobody ever mentioned it, of course. It meant not much. Physical bravery probably held the same value in our milieu as skill at parallel parking: a useful quirk. But the box score stayed in my wallet, or the wallet of my heart, so to speak, a smeared and origamied scrap to remind me how little I resembled the man I figured for the secret chief of my several selves."

And if you're looking for a redemptive narrative of dawning acceptance and enlightenment, look elsewhere, because Lipsyte doesn't make it easy on himself, or on the reader, by taking the easy way out at the end of this one. Fortunately for Lipstye's audience, neither he nor and Milo buys into the rose-colored, easy-listening pablum of works like American Beauty. This book hurts at the end, but it's worth it.(less)

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Apr 11, 2011 Justin Evans rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Has anyone else noticed that there is a new grammatical person? We've always had first ("I fell") and second ("You fell") and third ("She fell.") But now we have the first middle-aged white middle-class reasonably well educated underemployed male person, "I fell into a [sea of references], and made a joke about it, but mainly focused on my self-pity and my loathing for my self-pity." Ladies and Gentleman, this is the literary form embodied in The Ask. It could be much worse; it could be 'The Fin...more

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Jan 25, 2011 Nomi rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cantbebothered, adultfiction

I read about 60 pages. I started out thinking this novel about an underachieving poor excuse for a husband/father employed in the development department of a third rate art college was witty and amusing but then the whole tone of the novel got on my nerves. The protagonist's ability to call everyone around him out on their pretensions and apply a meta cultural analysis to every event/situation he found himself in started to feel like too much whining. What I took for the author's wit and clevern...more

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Jun 07, 2010 Geoff Watson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

truly one of the funniest voices i've ever read. only issue was that the plot meandered and the ending felt tacked on, thin, and a little random. it's as if he outlined this book on the back of a cocktail napkin.

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May 07, 2013 Bill rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

The Difficulty of Being Funny

Lipsyte, Sam (2010). The Ask. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

A book universally acclaimed as “hilarious” is usually disappointing. There are some funny lines and scenes in The Ask, and it is well-written, if not hilarious:

“Our intimacy was largely civic. We spoke at length about our shared revulsion for the almost briny-scented, poop-flecked plunger under the bathroom sink, and also of a mutual desire to cut down on paper towels, but we never broached topics...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Ajk rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Yeah, so guyfriend told me that I should read this book. He also gave me the book, and I saw that he marked it up he liked it so much. So I came into The Ask with pretty high expectations and hopes.

And it's not a bad book by any means. Lipsyte is very clever with words, particularly dialogue. He does a very good job with creating a very human, very intelligent protagonist. The dialogue between the protagonist and the rest of the characters is very lively and fun. The actual, literal, style of th...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Maggie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a terrible, pointless, thoroughly unenjoyable book. I haven't disliked a book this much in a while.

What other reviewers have called 'razor sharp writing' I found relentlessly pretentious, forced and way too 'trying-too-hard.' I guess the plot could've been mildly interesting, if told properly, by more interesting characters, but I despised the narrator - to the extent that I would've been A-OK if something horrendous happened to him mid-book and the story ended abruptly. He lives a somewhat...more

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Nov 12, 2012 marg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I first picked up The Ask, I read the first fifteen pages or so and felt I had a pretty good sense of the book - quirky, funny in a depressing sort of way as well as depressing in a funny sort of way, and ultimately something I would not be able to take seriously. I wouldn't have bothered picking it up again, but a professor ended up recommending it (in a sort of offhand, not sure you';d like it but give it a shot for craft tip XYZ kind of way) that same week so I went back to it and found...more When I first picked up The Ask, I read the first fifteen pages or so and felt I had a pretty good sense of the book - quirky, funny in a depressing sort of way as well as depressing in a funny sort of way, and ultimately something I would not be able to take seriously. I wouldn't have bothered picking it up again, but a professor ended up recommending it (in a sort of offhand, not sure you';d like it but give it a shot for craft tip XYZ kind of way) that same week so I went back to it and found that on the one hand I liked it a lot more than I thought I would, while on the other my original sentiments were on target.
This book felt sort of Then We Came to an End meets Catch 22 meets Empire Falls (briefly) meets All Those Books About Sad Loser Dads and How Life Keeps Failing Them/They Keep Failing Life and the People Therein. Milo (his name kind of says it all) is the dead beat loser in a dead end job whereby he needs to grovel for money for the mediocre university he works for, all of which just reinforces how sad he truly is. He loves his wife but she has lost interest in him, he adores his son but is not a very effective dad, and after being ceremoniously dumped by his job, a foil from his past resurfaces with an "Ask" that could change his life. Or not.
So the thing is, I was surprised by how much this book did have to offer despite its bleak premise, offbeat -hard to take seriously - wit, and general oddness. It ended up being funny (sometimes amazingly so) and at times brilliantly written (there are several pages I want to use in my creative writing class) - insightful, poignant. Other times it read like one man's list of private jokes with himself, and I either could not follow or did not care to, because, also, I mean, these loser characters - they are not very compelling.
This definitely ranged from two to four stars, and rests at three for being an original and often worthwhile read, even if the parts are greater than its whole. I would recommend it as a book worth picking up even though it is by no means a staggering hit.(less)

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Sep 25, 2012 Zeo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: jewstuff, manhood, schlubbiness

Enjoyable, but too long for what it was. Lipsyte reminds me of hearing thirty seconds of some techno in a movie or commercial or something and thinking, wow, that's interesting, but upon getting hold of the whole piece realizing that it's essentially the same thing over and over and over and then I never need to hear it again. His writing is fine for a short story, but longer than that and all his formulas for funny become transparent and I found that it was basically the same few formulas over...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Ms.pegasus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who appreciate black humor

Shelves: fiction

To call Milo Burke alienated fails to capture the fullness of his isolation and bitterness. He is a failure, as a painter, as a colleague, as a husband, a parent, a neighbor, in his job as a development officer in a college arts department, and as a human being. He prides himself as the total realist, viewing not only himself, but the world with a jaundiced eye, yet maintaining the illusion of functionality by being a verbal chameleon.

This was a difficult book to get into, and for nearly half o...more To call Milo Burke alienated fails to capture the fullness of his isolation and bitterness. He is a failure, as a painter, as a colleague, as a husband, a parent, a neighbor, in his job as a development officer in a college arts department, and as a human being. He prides himself as the total realist, viewing not only himself, but the world with a jaundiced eye, yet maintaining the illusion of functionality by being a verbal chameleon.

This was a difficult book to get into, and for nearly half of it, I was held solely by the virtuosity of the writing. Milo’s pointed and truly funny extended riffs on his job, the circumstances of his firing, child development theory, trendy food, and reality TV, to name a few targets, cut a wide swathe. The writing can be brutally blunt. “What should I do?” he asks his smug colleague, Horace. He is promised his job back if he can get a large enough donation out of a former college roommate. The question is how much should he ask for. Horace’s counsel: “Bleed him.” At other times he seduces us with impossibly baroque prose, as when Milo ponders about lunch: “I...should have been Tupperwaring couscous from Queens, ...could just barely afford this go-goo for the regular folks, these lumpy lumpen lunches, reveled in them, or at least the idea of them...I was the smorgasbord’s voyeur.” The modulation of these different voices, the abrupt changes in rhythm, are masterful.

There is a synchronous relationship between writer and character in this book. Milo despises cliched emotions; Lipsyte despises cliched expressions. Their sensitivities conjoin in a discussion of the stock phrase: “rough patch.” The irony is that sometimes we need these facades, sometimes we just need to get by –just for a while. In a profoundly moving passage, Milo reflects on the house of a neighbor who, with his entire family, was killed in a car accident. He hardly knew the family, but “I would feel a jangled shiver...maybe just my nerves trying to ...throw up some farce of hauntedness...to save me from the brute fact of their oblivion.”

There are no great philosophical truths to be had. No moment of redemption; no moral triumph. In the beginning there is the writing, unaided by bucolic description or exotic locale, peopled by ludicrously self-involved characters. And then, the plot elements are laid down like clever snares, ready to spring up as unsurprising surprises, catching the reader off guard. From the mid-point on, I was unable to put this book down. (less)

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Jun 12, 2012 Thomas rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'll let this book speak for itself (pp. 228-9):

I came to with Vargina leaning over me, her breasts brushing up against my chest.

"I'm sorry I undress you with my eyes," I said.

"It's okay, Milo. Just breathe."

"I do a lot worse with my eyes. Am I the only one?"

"Of course not, Milo. You just lack subtlety. But breathe now."

"Subtlety," I said.

"Breathe."

"I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just wanted to slide my dick between your breasts."

"A Sabrett man," said Vargina.

"What?"

"Breathe. You're okay, but...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Mike Ingram rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rounded up from 3.7 stars out of general goodwill toward Sam Lipsyte and deep enjoyment of his particular brand of dark satirical humor. The fact he recently bought me a beer and busted my balls a little about the podcast review I did of his book doesn't hurt.

Reading this made me think back to Nathanel West's Miss Lonelyhearts, a book in which the main character searches for earnest meaning in a world filled with people who have given up said search and descended wholly into irony, becoming, in...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Dara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First published on Irish Left Review.

Milo Burke is a man in distress. He’s a man who was whelped in a liberal college that let him believe he was the future of visual art, but now he’s stuck raising the money for another such institution to prop upsimilar self-delusions. But he’s not very good at it. And so he’s fired.

A saving call comes from Purdy, one of his old college circle, the one that really made it, a scion of the financial elite who wants Burke’s help for his own dubious reasons, resto...more First published on Irish Left Review.

Milo Burke is a man in distress. He’s a man who was whelped in a liberal college that let him believe he was the future of visual art, but now he’s stuck raising the money for another such institution to prop upsimilar self-delusions. But he’s not very good at it. And so he’s fired.

A saving call comes from Purdy, one of his old college circle, the one that really made it, a scion of the financial elite who wants Burke’s help for his own dubious reasons, restoring his job as down-payment. Milo gratefully squirms back into his office, but soon finds himself some where much more complicated, employed as moral janitor for a millionaire’s misdemeanors.

Milo stumbles around, never quite sure how to react to the events in which he’s caught up. He visits Purdy’s parallel reality with a temporary visa, takes rest stops in his own mid to low range crappiness and tours the sincerely shitty world of Don, a mentally damaged Iraq veteran. But there’s only so much reality a man can stand, and Milo’s own self-deceit soon start to suffer from exposure.

Some reviewers have noted that creating an impressive novel with such a bare, or at least brief plot is testament to Lipsyte’s gift for prose. It is certainly the writing that captivates, providing the warm scalpel to accompany Burke’s caustic contempt. But the characters also work, even if they don’t really attract. We soon realise that Purdy’s confident and all-controlling affability is that of a man who has no friends, only associates. Burke, the perpetual loser, has neither, but he wins the reader over eventually. His scorn and disillusionment provides real penetration, and his unarticulated anger resonates with the generalised rage that is only now emerging.

‘The Ask’ refers to Burke’s job - big sum charity mugging, but it soon comes to reflect his plaintive struggle to figure out what’s happening. It’s a story about the lies people tell to drown out the truth, told by a man who only has his cynicism and self-hatred to keep him going. It’s a funny book, which is good, because it’s also nasty. It’s a book about trying to shed delusions and meet reality. The delusions are pretty funny, but reality is very nasty.(less)

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Jan 16, 2012 Kira rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At the end of the day, many a beautifully written book has, for me, been tainted by whiffs of mid-life crisis oddness. I’m puzzled by novels with characters or circumstances that don’t seem to jibe with reality, and even more puzzled by the feeling that said characters/circumstances aren’t supposed to jibe with reality and I’m just not understanding why. The Ask, thankfully, is too well-written to really be affected by this malady. Sure, there are parts of it that are strange, but not so strange...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, author_male, humor, pub_post-1945, type_fiction, experience_jewish-american

I found this book mentioned by several different people on a list of "best books of 2010" compiled by the British newspaper The Observer. Everyone who mentioned it said it was one of the funniest books they had read in a long time. Believing that one can never get enough laughter in one's life, I put the book on my short list to investigate. When I did a bit more research and found out the protagonist was a fundraiser, just like me, I knew I had to read it. Unfortunately, the book wasn't full of...more

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Jan 04, 2012 Jerome rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-recent

This book is hilarious. Well, no, there's actually nothing hopeful at all in this book. It's rather all about the extremely modern lexicon and mood, the milieu, from which the book arrives. It may be a rather depressing story of a man who seemingly loses everything he knew about, but there's something humorous in the writing of Lipsyte as he throws in modern expression out of nowhere. It may help that I attended at outdoor reading of this book, but I will never forget the moment when Lipsyte re...more

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Nov 08, 2011 John Arfwedson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dark, darker, darkest. The attitude/voice/style here are blacker than the blackest coal mine but not only have all the canaries died...they never existed.
Milo Burke, whose job is to get rich people to donate money to a third rate New York university, is fired and then temporarily "rehired" because of his long-ago college friendship with a megawealthy guy who's thinking of giving. It's "the ask" versus "the give", but of course never that simple.
Lipsyte is witheringly whipsmart and his lash cut...more

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Sep 30, 2011 Yaroslav rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Уже заказал предыдущий роман Липсайта и даже строю планы о замене своего мягкого и хрупкого издания The Ask на экземпляр в твердом переплете. (Думаю, это яснее говорит о том, что книга мне понравилась, чем поставленные пять звезд.)
Фабула? Да какая разница? Тем более, что в финале роман останавливается, как игрушка, у которой кончился завод. Но это единственный (и давно уже простительный) минус.
Кстати, выяснил тут, что у нас выходил перевод его первого романа The Subject Steve. Не открывал, но з...more

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Sep 10, 2011 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-reads

This is the kind of book that makes a reader alternate between hate and love for a novel. So I split the difference with three stars even though I might give it four in certain moods. Milo is the annoying anti-hero of Gen-X who cannot help but to cynically point out everyone else's foibles, all the while slidiing down his own self-made scale of rootlessness. Milo needs to learn how to Ask for support for his own personal foundation of well-being. But to get that Give he has to be willing TO give...more

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Aug 23, 2011 David Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The rants are far more biting and thrilling in Homeland, but this story is way better. The characters are deeper, and more depressing. It was hard to put down.

It's when they stop trying to destroy you, my mother once said, is when you should start to worry.

I lost out to kids who lived on hummus and misapprehension of history, and bight newbies bosses exploit without compunction because these youngsters are, in fact, undercover aristocrats mingling with the peasantry, each stint entered on their...more

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Aug 14, 2011 Iris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Upon hearing Marc Maron (of the WTF podcast) and a handful of Slate writers rave about this comic novel set in Great Recession-era Queens, I took up with "The Ask." Lipsyte's first-person lead is a distinctively contemporary type: the self-pitying, anxious man-child, fraternally similar to the hero of "Super Sad True Love Story" and the onstage persona of every male standup comic at your local comedy club's amateur night.

In the passenger seat on a Saturday road trip, I flipped through the book t...more

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Aug 09, 2011 Tim Storm rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The protagonist of this novel is an interesting guy. He's witty, well-educated, liberal, and relatively self-aware, but he's also a jackass. Lipsyte does a good job keeping him a real person, even while the comedy flattens many of the supporting characters. In fact, some of the funniest characters are the least complex. Bernie, the protagonist's son, is hilarious, as are his coworkers Horace and Vargina. I don't have complaints with these characters; I'm just noting that comedy seems to rely on...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Joe rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, 2011

The entire novel, from its office mope opening to its cheap karmic close, is petty. We all think the self-hating thought of Milo Burke occassionally throughout our everyday lives, but who wants to read an entire novel composed of the worst bits of self-doubt? As Milo Burke makes his ask for a big give (to the university he sort of works for), we cannot help but wonder what exactly Sam Lipsyte is asking from us, other than painful endurance of his overwraught quarter-life crisis porn.

I'm surpris...more

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May 24, 2011 Michael Batz rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've read enough books about middle aged men seeing their lives fall apart around them, so I put this off for a while. But I'm a fan of Lipsyte's debauched short stories (Venus Drive) and I kept hearing really good things. I'm glad I gave in, because once I started, I tore through it.

Lipsyte rips up everything: well-intentioned hippie childcare, ass-kissing ladder-climbers, the money-rot at the heart of academia, the permanence of power, the invincibility of wealth, the lasting impacts of war....more

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Feb 05, 2011 Justus rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read something not too long ago talking about how most authors are terrified and/or unable to write about modern life. One example cited was Cormac McCarthy, who while widely celebrated, sets his books in the distant past (or future). Not to pick of McCarthy because virtually all authors do it. Even when they set it in the present, they seem to find ways to escape, ignore, or elide the type of modernity that is reality for so many people. Here I'm think of, for instance, Philip Roth and his sm...more I read something not too long ago talking about how most authors are terrified and/or unable to write about modern life. One example cited was Cormac McCarthy, who while widely celebrated, sets his books in the distant past (or future). Not to pick of McCarthy because virtually all authors do it. Even when they set it in the present, they seem to find ways to escape, ignore, or elide the type of modernity that is reality for so many people. Here I'm think of, for instance, Philip Roth and his small-town professors.

Where are all the books about people working office jobs? Maybe they're out there but I just never hear about them. It is amazing how much of a role work plays in our lives and how little in plays in the lives of fictional characters. I suppose even the most literary of fiction can't escape it escapist roots.

All of which is a long rambling way to say that I really like what Lipsyte tries to do in The Ask. I give him an A+ for effort, for vision, for chutzpah.

However, the execution has enough flaws to bring my final rating down considerably. Lipsyte just goes over the top one time too many for me to get wholly behind this book. Milo is a loser, I get it, but the sheer number of bizarre loser episodes seem to push this from tragedy to farce. (There's also an underlying tension about the tone of the book; in the early parts you think it is a kind of dark comedy but other parts veer wildly.) The finger thing while crashing at Horace's, the cafe pick-up, things like that feel out of place to me.

There's a passage late in the book that feels like some meta-dismissal to this argument. Milo says, "No, I mean if I were the protagonist of a book or a movie, it would be hard to like me, to identify with me, right?"

Horace replies, "I would never read a book like that, Milo. I can't think of anyone who would. There's no reason for it."

It's almost like Lipsyte is trying to convince me that I am wasting my time reading this book. Or using reverse-psychology to convince you to finish reading it.(less)

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Jan 05, 2011 Bart Thanhauser rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to give this book a better rating (the stars seem silly, but damn do they stand out). And I thought Lipsyte had some very funny moments in this book (the Salamander Day School, Dead Man Dining) as well as some pretty moments full of a potent sadness. He calls the women of one family 'dented cans', which has a poignancy that sums up what I like best about this book.

But what comes through more than the occasional humor or the occasional poignancy, is the sadness. Man, is this a depressin...more

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Oct 14, 2010 West Hartford rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

About two-thirds of the way through The Ask, Milo considers himself as a character in a novel or film. There would never be a film or book like that, he is quickly told. No one would want to waste time consuming a narrative about a loser like him. And that's the irony: this was my favorite book of the year just because of the Milo character. Sure, his mother, his co-workers, and son are all sharply drawn, interesting and complex. But Milo is the perfect Gen-X anti-hero, bemoaning when "parent" b...more

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About Sam Lipsyte

Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collection Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five book of its year by the Village Voice Supplement) and the novels The Subject of Steve and Home Land, winner of the Believer Book Award. Lipsyte teaches at Columbia Universitys School of The Arts and is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. He lives in Manhattan.

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Quotes from Chiedi e ti sarà tolto

“We are going to eat ice cream and we are going to eat shit. The trick is to use different spoons.” — 11 people liked it

“Judging by your face, the what-the-fuck nodes in your cerebral cortex must be a real light show.” — 6 people liked it

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