Comment on 'The Fun Parts,' by Sam Lipsyte

'The Fun Parts,' by Sam Lipsyte

'The Fun Parts,' by Sam Lipsyte According to Lipsyte, "Sad and Funny are both the world and how we withstand it," and nowhere is this more powerfully felt than in the fictional worlds he evokes. The author's latest work, a collection of short stories called "The Fun Parts," is populated by a motley cast of characters, all of them social misfits and at least a few downright creepy. Who's going to teach the boy to make faces, he wonders as he curls up next to the boy's crib, eyeing the moon through the window and reading its expression: "We Are All Schmucks, but I Control the Tides." "Deniers" is about a recovering alcoholic whose father, a Holocaust survivor, is fed up with hearing of people's everyday complaints. In Lipsyte's deft authorial hand, the endless flow of sinister developments works somehow, even if it means the protagonist will ultimately, after repairing the world, pedal her way "across the face of the earth" until she giggles her way "right off the edge." Reading this collection of stories, I found myself wishing that Lipsyte had let us see just a bit more of his process, of him groping for the right words to convey specific emotions - if only so that I could feel more deeply moved by this author's exquisite writing.

 

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