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Closure, for Sam Lipsyte, is generally a sign that things have hit rock bottom. Lipsyte's last two novels, Home Land and The Ask, were cris de coeur—the sweaty, panting quests of solo protagonists who ...

Sam Lipsyte's fifth book, The Fun Parts, which comes out tomorrow, is the follow-up to his hugely acclaimed The Ask. A book of stories teeming with what The New York Times dubs "sublime mayhem," The ...

Even the sharpest literary satirist of his generation can’t afford to ignore Valentine’s Day, especially if his wife is turning 45 the next day. And so Sam Lipsyte, whose last narrator disdained the ...

In a recent essay on the "awkward art of writing about sex," Sam Lipsyte encourages writers to "trust in the modern gods who guide your hand: Sad and Funny." It's a piece of advice the author has ...

At one point in Sam Lipsyte’s bestselling 2010 novel The Ask, a walking disaster named Milo asks his supervisor, “If I were the protagonist of a book or a movie, it would be hard to like me, to ...

These are golden times for American satirists. After years of relentless brilliance, George Saunders finally seems to have crossed into the mainstream with his absurdist short-story collection Tenth ...

Sam Lipsyte comes up with the world’s best band names. Take the one from “The Worm in Philly,” the seventh story in his new collection, “The Fun Parts.” Readers will remember the titular worm, Gary, ...