Sam Lipsyte: The Ask from KQED: The Writers' Block Podcast

Sam Lipsyte reads two hilarious passages from THE ASK about recently unemployed, middle-aged Milo Burke and all of his anxieties.

Download the podcast here. There's also this NY Times piece on The Ask:

Sam Lipsyte’s third novel, “The Ask,” is a dark and jaded beast — the sort of book that, if it were an animal, would be a lumbering, hairy, crypto­zoological ape-man with a near-crippling case of elephantiasis. Literary satire has become a rare form in America over the past three decades. When it does make an appearance, it almost passes for a nostalgic gesture despite its typically cutting-edge content. As a result, Lipsyte is one of a handful of living American satirists (and when I say “handful” I mean a very tiny hand, with three fingers at most, including the thumb) who can tell a traditional story while remaining foul-mouthed and dirty enough to occupy the literary vanguard. This stuff wouldn’t play well at, say, meetings of the D.A.R. — too bad in a way, because it might not hurt them to hear it. Lipsyte is not only a smooth sentence-maker, he’s also a gifted critic of power.

See also: Home Land: A Novel, Venus Drive: Stories, The Subject Steve: A Novel