The Subject Steve: A Novel: Books: Sam Lipsyte Editorial Review by Travis Elborough

Wordplay rather than characterization is Lipsyte’s métier and his language positively fizzes with invention. The characters here don’t so much converse as exchange obtuse epigrammatic non sequiturs and indulge in linguistic quips. This should, of course, be utterly infuriating, but it isn’t. The dialogue, like the rest of this savage, absurdist take on contemporary life (and more precisely our horror of death), is startlingly acute

re: An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin

“Who knows if it’s true, but it’s unbelievable reading,” Mayer says.

Like (that).

Amazon.com: From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction: Books: Robert Olen Butler,Janet Burroway

It seems to me that a lot of literature classes go wrong because the teachers, unintentionally but often intentionally, give the impression that writers are rather like idiots savants: they really want to say abstract, theoretical, philosophical things, but somehow they can’t quite make themselves do it. So they create these objects whose ultimate meaning and relevance and value come into being only after they have been subjected to the analysis of thoughtful literary critics. . . In how many literature classes have you heard it asked, “What does this work mean?” As if it had no meaning in the mere reading of it. (p. 108)