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The Ask: A Novel |  | Author: Sam Lipsyte
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  41 reviews
Sales Rank: 16010
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.1 x 1
ISBN: 0374298912
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374298913
ASIN: 0374298912
Publication Date: March 2, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2010: How can a life so miserable be so funny? Is it because the stakes are so low (Milo Burke, the antihero of Sam Lipsyte's novel, The Ask, is a failure at many things, but most prominently at his job of pulling in major donors for a deadwater arts program at a middling university neither you nor he care about), or because they are so high (among them death, love, and the general squandering of the glories of creation on trivia)? Lipsyte's brilliant bile earned his previous novel, Home Land, one of the most passionate cult followings in recent years, and in The Ask that verbal invention is often the only thing that can rouse Milo and his peers from their ennui. They bait and badger each other and toss off complex cultural analyses to little effect, all the while haunted by the gap between wit and wisdom. Lipsyte manages to be both sour and tender to his characters, Milo in particular, whose barest shambles toward self-respect come to seem like the first baby steps of an honorable quest. --Tom Nissley
Product Description
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. 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. But it turns out that the ask is Milo’s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the “give” won’t come cheap. 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, The Ask is a burst of genius by a young American master who has already demonstrated that the truly provocative and important fictions are often the funniest ones.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
 One of the funniest books I've ever read September 4, 2010
andyf333
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sam Lipsyte is a comic genius and this is one of the 10 funniest books I've ever read (the list includes Lucky Jim, Portnoy's Complaint, Money, Decline and Fall and Scoop). Lipsyte is a terrific stylist and his ability to find the perfect phrase (always dark and sometimes disgusting) had me laughing out loud dozens of times. No one has ever captured the lunacy of an office meeting better. Lipsyte's portrayal of the relationship between the hero Milo Burke and Purdy, the rich former classmate from whom he seeks a "philanthropic" donation, is funny, fascinating and moving. As soon as I finished The Ask, I ordered Lipsyte's previous novel, Home Land. It is also hilarious, but The Ask is even better.
I urge you to read this book.
 Okay August 9, 2010
DC reviewer (Washington, DC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love a black, satirical, self-loathing comedy, but I didn't love this. I'm fine with the nasty characters (and can even sympathize with some of them), but I found myself dragging through this book. The story sort of wandered, and while I guess there was some direction, it just wasn't compelling enough for me. Yes, this book has great writing and fantastic quips and mini-scenes, but there wasn't enough glue between them to keep me hooked. And after you've read the 20th funny back-and-forth sitaution, you start to find it hard to pay attention to all 4 pages of it, because by this time you're just not that vested in the story line. For a self-loathing novel, suggest How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby, which I couldn't put down.
 Funny, if you hate women August 5, 2010
JAG
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
People think this novel is hilarious; I can see their point, I suppose. Lipsyte's trying, at least, to satirize *something*, and the other reviews pretty much cover the topics of his scorn.
That said, I appreciated this novel more as a parody of a certain kind of work -- think Chuck Palahniuk -- where men have problems and those problems are all women's fault. Really, if The Ask accurately reflects the anxieties of middle-aged male Gen-Xers, you'd expect Freudian analysis to be making a killing these days -- nearly everything about this novel reflects Milo's emasculation anxieties and difficulties with his mother. I mean, let's just count the ways:
Milo begins the novel working for a woman he disrespects but lusts after. It becomes clear, later on, that she's aware of his lust, but thinks it so unworthy of notice she's not offended by it. Milo is outshone by a successful fund-raiser, a flashy fellow (code homosexual -- there are no actually gay men in this novel) that everyone loves, and a slacker who secretly assumes that Milo is both gay and into him. Milo loses his job, early in the novel, because some entitled daughter of a wealthy donor pushes him into an invective-filled tirade. Having lost his manlihood/means of providing for his family, his relationship with his wife quickly disintegrates, causing Milo's wife to run off with her trainer, who we are initially led to believe is actually gay (so, you see, he's not just cuckolded, he's cuckolded by a "gay" man). Milo attempts to seduce the mother of a child in the same day care as his son, but fails miserably (Lipsyte makes sure to describe the look on her face as one of disgust and pity). His mother abandons him emotionally for her late-in-life sexual conversion to lesbianism. At his lowest point, he attempts to participate in a threeway with his slacker co-worker and an unknown woman, though only in a very minor way, which the woman rejects all the same.
That is, thankfully, only the first half of the book. The rest has to do with Milo's attempts to get his old job back. You can guess how well that goes.
It is no doubt part of the "satire" that everyone in The Ask is better off without Milo, including the reader. Lipsyte denies us even the possibility of a bohemian illusion, or, I found, the satisfaction of having read a worthwhile novel.
Virtuosity, sour-osity July 26, 2010
longfellow (New York, NY United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am totally fascinated by the disparity in reviews for this book (as well as how few there are!) -- and I have decided that each reviewer is reflecting his/her perfectly legitimate world view.
Certainly Mr. Lipsyte's world view is feverish and dark, with elegant spills and cascades of language abutting a general viciousness about the state of the world and humanity. And his mordant humor leavens the wicked and whip-smart smacks and slabs and slings of outrageous fortune that beset Milo Burke, our protagonist. I give Mr. Lipsyte points for his love and fearless use of idiom and syntax, and an aria-like ability to spin disquisitions at a tremendous velocity before bringing them back to earth. Plus, great dialogue from a 3-year old.
Yet in the long run, despite the energy in his writing, the language begins to thrum, as if style collapses into a kind of literary pattern recognition. And the characters are relentless in their unforgiving, ungiving nastiness. How thrilled are we, really, when surprising plot twists are in service -- exclusively -- of such misanthropic bile...?
He's a terrific, smart writer using his gifts to tell powerful stories that bludgeon his characters to pieces, and thus elicit only a cool, distant appreciation from his readers. Some may like their cup of tea laced with battery acid, but it's not to my taste.
despicable characters July 16, 2010
the overmouth (New York, New York)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Sam Lipsyte is an incredibly talented writer with a genuinely funny sense of humor. But, it's fair to say that the overabundance of despicable characters in his books makes for a very limited readership. When one day his characters are likeable, I think he will become a much bigger, much more widely read author. That said, this is my favorite of his books, but I want to be a bigger fan than I am.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 41
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