Here's a mini-review of each of the stories collected in Venus Drive.Old SoulLipsyte's poignant 30-something dream fog account of perversion, replete with the clipped sentences and hard imagery of Burrhoughs, is brought to the loser set, a sort of Bret Easton Ellis for working class New Jersey.CremainsThe narrator's pain and decay are projected out onto the old ladies of his tenement. There's desperation here, in the matter-of-factness of the 'morphine drawer' and the surrealism and wish fulfillment of shooting his mother's ashes up into his veins.The Morgue RollersA demented family circus out of Woody Allen, this story fails to capture the perspective of a little girl, but casts a great group of wartime Jewish stereotypes from a Korean girl's point of view - the drunk dad, dreamy uncle and crazy gramother.I'm SlaveringA high point in this collection, this cocaine nightmare, where a whole childhood is blinked away and chipped off with the tip of a thumb, disappears into claustrophobia on the tip of the member of the man from upstate, you know where.Admiral of the Swiss NavyThis coming of age camp story, where boys' cruelty shows real and violent with the little nicks out of Van Wort's flesh, like scars from parasites, shows hints of the humor Lipsyte would hone with Home Land, especially in the phrase 'struck by faggot lightning.'Ergo, Ice PickA paranoid, naive ADD revolutionist hangs on the cottails of a pseudo-intellectual and morning BJs, all fogged over by the sacred mist of ignorance and lust, which leads back to daddy's plush house.Beautiful GameFinally, a story from Gary's point of view. He's a slack straight from Bukowski, Burroughs, or Welsh, hopped up on cok and O'Doul's and fading indie cred, a fan of soccer because it's European. Gary missed the train, years ago.The Drury GirlThe boy's father is made impotent by balls cancer. The boy is made impotent because the girl is aggressive and scary. The bucket and galoshes are the artifacts of disease and death. Wes Anderson choreographed the naked dance of the stamp covered boy narrator.Probe to the NegativeA demented Office Space with shades of Chuck Palahniuk, this story reeks of Gary, though he never appears. The narrator is dead to his job and the Larrys, the Fink Frank, Carla with the hairy thighs, they all reject him. Then he goes to Gary's apartment, finds an ex-girlfriend there, is rejected without his drugs and pulls a move only Lewis 'Teabag' Miner could love.The Wrong ArmA sort of Stanley Elkin Fantasia, this idyllic trip for a freak, who seems all the more freakish in the great American boredom of meaningless trips driving and arguing. What's bigger in an American life than driving and arguing?My Life, For Promotional Use OnlyA fading noise rock frontman confronts peaking too fast and realizing far too young that all is for naught. He's a tired, self-important slob - very relatable.TorquemadaThe narrator, an adolescent Philip Roth, jonesing to screw the Jewish girl, stuck hating all the trashy idiots of his town that don't understand the complexity of his love, is the only one who cares about anything. He wonders why no one thinks about the Inquisition.Less TarThis brief cancer memoir with gaudy washed-out late 70s colors, and broad strokes of suburban yearning, comes from a naturalized Bezmozgis, wrapped in the vision of a prick in an office, on his way out of the smoke room, desparately sad about his dead mother.
This is another shorts collection where any single story in it could convince me that the guy is a genius, but I found the whole of it to be a bit less than the sum of its parts. Sort of how I felt about that Joy Williams collection, and that last George Saunders collection I read. Geniuses all, but maybe I shouldn't read their stories all in one sitting like that.I adored certain stories where Lipsyte has all his skills in tight control around a driving purpose -- the first story, Old Soul, is like that for me, and so is Admiral of the Swiss Navy. There are some other stories, though, where I feel he's Doing His Writer Voice just a little bit too hard, in a way that either buries the reality or tries to obscure the fact that there's not actually a story there at all. And he leans on a couple tropes: druggie behavior, poignantly dying relatives, the banality of offices ... the bourgeois problems of characters who lack real problems. There are a lot of moments I'd call "too MFA-ey." But shit, the writing is gorgeous! It's full of cutting phrases and lovely lines. I'm very glad Nick lent me this. I live for this kind of stuff.I guess the thing I'm trying to begrudge Sam Lipsyte in this otherwise four-star review of his book is that some short story collections don't work right. Every story in them can be perfect but when I read them serially I sometimes end up more focused on the writer than the story. I start to notice their tricks, their obsessions, their tropes, the things they repeat. I snap into Student Of The Craft Of Writing mode, which is a buzzkill but very important to me lately for work reasons. So what is the thing that hurts this? Is it the recycling? The image of a drugged girl twitching in a chair was striking the first time, but then reused two stories later it only served to crash my suspension of disbelief. Is it the doomed-ness? These characters never get better, never overcome, never right wrongs or apologize -- they just chuckle and watch themselves descend. Some people are like that, but I hope not everybody. Though I hate to call out for happy endings and character arcs, there's something cumulatively numbing when I read too many stories about broken people in one afternoon.But all that aside, the long and short of it is: this is Sam Lipsyte's first story collection, and it's better than mine. Its eloquent degeneracy has brought comparisons to Denis Johnson -- by which people usually mean Jesus' Son rather than anything else Johnson ever wrote. But Johnson tells his stories with an autobiographical wistfulness and a recovered junkie's embarrassment. Lipsyte's narrators are jaded veteran fuckups who recount their failures bravely, in the moment and without apology. It reminds me of some entertaining crackheads I've known. Obviously, this book is not for the kittens and unicorns crowd, but it's the kind of thing I love. I recommend it in small doses. Now I'm going to go read his first novel, and then maybe his second one.
Do You like book Venus Drive (2000)?
I came to Sam Lipsyte after hearing him on a live WTF podcast with comedian Marc Maron. The two are friends so the conversation was loose and funny, nostalgic and slightly dark. I said to myself, if Sam Lipsyte's writing is anything like who he is in conversation, I'm really going to enjoy this. I picked up Venus Drive as an introduction and was not disappointed. The stories are dark but funny. I wouldn't be the one to say laugh out loud because I have a tendency to focus too much on the negative but even I can see where the laughs are.The stories are of a time and place that are very foreign to me and can roughly be categorized in two categories: the malcontent/addict twenty something in what I can only assume is 90's New York (when it's not obvious), and the suburban kid going through something significant, soft focus with a sharp edge you know? (though that's not always obvious). I really like these stories. Even the familiar ones (which I never present as a bad thing) have a tone and voice to them which make you lean in close because if you don't, you will miss something. There are at least two or three stories in this collection I will have to go back to because I blinked. It's story telling with absolutely no waste. It's Raymond Carver territory, in a different era.
—Patrickmalka
After reading The Ask and Home Land I thought Lipsyte's short stories would be even more enjoyable than his novels, without all that time and space and extended character development to worry about. Maybe if he wrote some short stories now, after the novels, this would be true. Venus Drive felt a bit over-eager most of the time, especially in comparison with Home Land (which I finished the day before starting Venus Drive, liked more than The Ask, and has a lot of overlap of characters and incidents with Venus Drive). It's a good, fun little collection with some very good stories ("Admiral of the Swiss Navy" stood out), but Lipsyte does better later.
—Will
My first introduction to Sam Lipsyte's writing, other then the brief passage's rad on Marc Maron's podcast. I thought the stories were okay. There were a couple stand out's, "Probe to the Negative" and "My Life, For Promotional Use Only" being my favorites. However, the stories don't seem to really be about anything plot wise. They are more like slices of life about various people with issues, whether it be a pedophile, or various sorts of junkies. I couldn't really see the point in it all, or what the "bigger picture" was. The stories were well written and I am curious about his novels.
—Jonathan
