The Subject Steve: A Novel
by Sam Lipsyte

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Book Reviews of The Subject Steve: A Novel

Book Review: Get On With It.
Summary: 1 Stars

And at 256 pages, he is not dying nearly fast enough.

In the technical sense of the word, "satire" could be a valid term of description for "The Subject Steve." However, the same logic would classify MAD Magazine as being a Social Studies / Current Affairs periodical.

But the catch is, it's not funny. As humorous a subject like terminal illness can be, Lispyte drops the ball on every possible occassion. Each quirky passage doesn't merely fall flat in delivery - it explodes on contact, taking the lives of little old ladies and brown-eyed puppiy dogs with it. And then, it returns to beat them further into oblivion.

The characters, too, are not sympathetic. They aren't even caricatures or symbols of humanity - they are more along the lines of shells torn from foreign B-Movies, reanimated in some lunatic's mind, lobotomized in a sinister dungeon-laboratory hidden therein, and finally rendered in crayon on the back of a brown paper bag. That's where the author discovered them, and created a story revolving around them.

But the question is, how much of the story is his own creation? the mysterious illness scenario has been done before in the third season of Monty Python's Flying Circus. The track-suit wearing friend of Steve's appeared in all his glory in "The Tall Blond With One Red Shoe." The bizarre notes and "doctors" are all revived from Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." And all of the above were much funnier in their original settings.

Satire works best when taken subtle. In this case, the reader feels just as bruised and broken trudging through the mess as the articles Lipsyte savages in his novel. Savages, yes - with dulled bloody teeth.

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