Home Land
by Sam Lipsyte
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Read in January, 2005
recommends it for:
Lovable losers
There are two kinds of readers in this country: those who know that Sam Lipsyte is the funniest writer of his generation and those who haven’t read him yet.
Lipsyte’s new novel Home Land is the epistolary tale of Lewis Miner, aka Teabag, a freelance writer of bogus FunFacts and self-appointed chronicler of the strange fates that have befallen the Catamounts of Eastern Valley High. The novel is written as a series of updates to the alumni newsletter, but in Lipsyte’s capable hands the f...more
Lipsyte’s new novel Home Land is the epistolary tale of Lewis Miner, aka Teabag, a freelance writer of bogus FunFacts and self-appointed chronicler of the strange fates that have befallen the Catamounts of Eastern Valley High. The novel is written as a series of updates to the alumni newsletter, but in Lipsyte’s capable hands the f...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
misfits
So I started reading this book and it took me a few chapters to get into it and I was starting to totally like it but then my Klosterman book arrived, so I read that for a bit. I realized that I needed to finish this one though, so I picked it back up last night and whipped through it: The character of Lewis "Teabag" Miner is a total Generation X stereotype: Very intelligent waste of potential who thinks he is so different and his brilliance is the reason that he is failing at life. H...more
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Read in June, 2005
Fiction. Framed as a series of updates to his high school alumni bulletin, Lewis "Teabag" Miner journals his life six years after high school. I was tired when I started reading this and it was so post-modern I had to put it down because I couldn't pay enough attention to the prose. A little Eggers, a little Palahniuk, the writing twists around, lunges in unexpected directions, wanders along lazily, and loves contradicting itself. The characters are mostly unlikeable, the kind of shift...more
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Read in January, 2005
This book focuses on a loser ten years removed from high school, and his struggle with drugs and not having any life ten years later. The principal of his school and former members of his graduating class form the rest of the main characters. The prose is told as a series of fictional letters to the school alumni bulletin, but is just a different take on conventional first-person memoir narratives. As a strung-out loser, the prose ranges from longwinded rants about nothing to surreal wordplay...more
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Read in March, 2008
Oz told me about this book and I liked it quite a bit. I started reading it during the "retreat" after first getting to costa Rica, I thought it might stir some soul searching as I finish out my twenties, but not really. I had a lot of weird reactions when people asked me about the book (Dude writes angry updates to high school newsletter!), some people asked me if it was fiction and others probably got a little weirded out.
That is pretty much what the author does, reflect on hi...more
That is pretty much what the author does, reflect on hi...more
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Read in July, 2007
A recent discovery of Mr. Lypsite in the latest edition of Diane William's NOON moved me to read his larger works, the first of which, Homeland, led me to believe Lipsyte may be a man so embittered about the past that he became a particularly sharp novelist just to spite it.
Lewis Miner, a.k.a Teabag leads the reader through his scathing high school newsletter updates. Miner, an overweight, balding, middle-aged stoner, lacks a definite dignity, a much needed maturity, as the name Teabag sugg...more
Lewis Miner, a.k.a Teabag leads the reader through his scathing high school newsletter updates. Miner, an overweight, balding, middle-aged stoner, lacks a definite dignity, a much needed maturity, as the name Teabag sugg...more
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Read in January, 2008
It's an unbeatable comic premise: Lewis Miner, aka Teabag, writes a series of updates to his high school alumni newsletter not to brag about his latest promotion or recent marriage, but to provide shockingly honest diatribes on how he "did not pan out." He writes with a sort of exhilarating looseness of language, a Humbert Humbert with not enough ambition and too much weed, that matches his outsized delusions of grandeur.
And while parts of the book are truly hilarious, the conceit...more
And while parts of the book are truly hilarious, the conceit...more
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Read in March, 2008
I am completely in awe of Sam Lipsyte's command of language, most pointedly in terms of humorous usage. I am not exaggerating when I say many passages in Home Land (in fact, pretty much one per page on average) had me chortling with glee, if not at their sheer funniness, than at least at the sheer joy that comes with seeing fabulous words on the page, beautifully used. I tend to write too much in these stupid comment fields, so I'll just leave you with one of my favorite Lipsyte blurbs, a...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
people dreading their high school reunions, rebels brave enough to tell it like it is
"Look, here's the deal... I didn't pan out. But what the hell does that mean anyway? What's success? What's achievement? What's wealth? What's power? What is anything besides climbing over the courpses of your fellow human fucking beings? And when you get there, then what? Everybody's gunning for you."
Meet Lewis Miner- Teabag to those who knew him in high school. You get to know Lewis better through completely innapropriate posts he attempts to have added to the Catamount Notes- hi...more
Meet Lewis Miner- Teabag to those who knew him in high school. You get to know Lewis better through completely innapropriate posts he attempts to have added to the Catamount Notes- hi...more
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Read in March, 2006
This book was not really what I expected it to be (although I'll admit, I didn't quite know, I had just heard it was funny). I didn't quite find it laugh-out-loud funny, and some parts were depressing! Lewis and Gary and everyone else's life was so depressing, although I guess that was the point. Some parts I didn't care for, like the discussion of The Kid and some of the more crass parts, but that's just not my sense of humor. I did, however, like the ending, especially how Lewis finally got a ...more
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Read in October, 2007
There are parts of this book that convinced me that Lipsyte is a genius, that's how funny it can be. But I found that halfway through, I had zero interest in the story at all, and was reading solely for the jokes (The good news is that there are a lot of amazing jokes). The end salvaged a lot of that for me, the final rant is hilarious and pointed, and the final chapter managed a degree of actual human sadness that I liked.
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Read in March, 2007
The main character (the narrator) immediately comes off as cynical and, in some instances, downright mean, and that made the novel a little difficult to get into at first. But after the first thirty or so pages, it really takes off, and it's quite entertaining and compelling how the author makes you feel for the narrator (and various other characters) who are, on the surface, rather unlikeable.
The writing style is engaging, setting each chapter as a would-be letter to the character's high...more
The writing style is engaging, setting each chapter as a would-be letter to the character's high...more
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Read in October, 2007
Fantasizing of the cheerleaders never stop, nor why should it? Writing updates back to the school to let everyone know how messed up your life is, a fired principle found bleeding from the base of the head at a strip club, and an AA sponsor/drug dealer greasing his mace for war. There is nothing this book doesn't have, and in case you, oh reader, wondered, yes this book does contain within it a tale of a book signing at a Nazi bar.
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Completely brilliant and hilarious book that takes the form of letters written by an admitted loser named "Teabag" to his high school alumni newsletter. It's amazing that Lipsyte is able to pull this off. In lesser hands it would be a one-joke, 1500 word short story, but he turns it into a hilarious, affecting riff on growing older and dealing with our shitty pasts, and all kinds of other stuff. Read it.
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
Anyone who needs to laugh. And laugh. And laugh.
The tone's a little harsh, but this book made me cackle out loud repeatedly...even while sitting on a crowded subway train, which for me is the truest test of good humor writing.
Catch this guy's loopy humor before he gets widely discovered and starts writing quaint New Yorker essays or gets chosen to blather on VH-1 or whatever happens to funny people before they get too well-fed to be funny any more.
Catch this guy's loopy humor before he gets widely discovered and starts writing quaint New Yorker essays or gets chosen to blather on VH-1 or whatever happens to funny people before they get too well-fed to be funny any more.
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This is the funniest book ever written. And if you don't agree with me I will box your ears in until I have you tucked into bed like a good little boy so that I can read this to you and watch you laugh and laugh and laugh until I say The End and you say Thank You. I don't hit girls though so I will need to come up with something else for the disagreeable ladies of the literary world. Maybe tickling?
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I'm all weak at the knees at passages like this:
' "Suit yourself," my father had said.
What I think he meant...was that we never really suit ourselves. Wwe suit a notion of what we dream we could be in the eyes of others, when in the eyes of others, we are at best a blur, at worst a sty, or corneal abrasion.'
There are lots of passages like these in Home Land.
' "Suit yourself," my father had said.
What I think he meant...was that we never really suit ourselves. Wwe suit a notion of what we dream we could be in the eyes of others, when in the eyes of others, we are at best a blur, at worst a sty, or corneal abrasion.'
There are lots of passages like these in Home Land.
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Read in April, 2008
This book was damn hilarious. I found myself laughing out loud. Sure it's nearly plotless, but the main characters asides about the state of his world are hilarious. Lipsyte is a dirty pervert but manages to lace his perversion with a stunning array of well used vocabulary.
If you're looking for a short, quick, hilarious read, this is one for you.
If you're looking for a short, quick, hilarious read, this is one for you.
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Read in June, 2008
Around page 40 of this book, I was wondering how I could make it through an entire novel with this narrator. By page 100 I couldn't put it down. Which is just to say, it may take some time to warm up to it, but once you do, it's extremely funny. More anecdotal than plot driven, but the voice and the wonderful characters keep pulling you along.
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The good part about this book is that Sam Lipsyte just does whatever the hell he wants to, and he doesn't care what you think about it. Predictably, that's also the bad part. Even so, it's funny at times, and reads quickly. I prefer "The Subject Steve" and "Venus Drive", but if you've already read those two, you might as well read this one.
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