Professor’s book meshes satire and self-reflection

Milo Burke is having a tough time—he just lost his job as a development officer at Mediocre University, his wife is having an affair, and his preschool-age son frequently calls him a pansy.

Burke is the donut-loving unlikely protagonist and narrator of “The Ask,” released last month by Columbia School of the Arts professor and satirical master Sam Lipsyte. In the course of attempting to right his problems, Burke encounters—to name a few—a hostile young amputee veteran from the Iraq War, a Queens neighborhood “kiddie-diddler,” and an elusive and controlling pal from college named James Purdy.

It’s Purdy who gives direction to Burke’s troubled life, when he requests that Burke handle his donation to the university—“a give,” in Mediocre jargon—and the development office is forced to give Burke a second chance at work, despite his lousy record at excelling in such situations. The book tracks Burke’s plight from its inception, following him on a journey through his past and present actions and decisions, which are usually more lame than heroic.

Lipsyte’s résumé is certainly more impressive than his protagonist’s. He received a B.A. from Brown University and worked in freelance journalism as well as fiction. Lipsyte has published three other works since 2000: “Venus Drive,” a collection of short stories, and novels “The Subject Steve” and “Home Land.” He became an adjunct professor at Columbia seven years ago and joined the full-time faculty two years later. Lipsyte teaches both graduate and undergraduate seminars in fiction. “Teaching workshops and engaging with the work of others really inspires me, instructs me, and helps me think about my own goals,” he said.

Lipsyte is currently working on another collection of short stories, which no doubt will include the intricate play with language he explores in “The Ask.” For example, at one point in the novel, Burke comes to the conclusion that “this not working thing wasn’t really working.” Lipsyte explained, “We use language every day, but as writers of fiction or artists, we need to create a separate place for language to function in a less utilitarian way.”

Lipsyte’s attention to craft and subject matter in “The Ask” has garnered an impressive amount of positive critical reception. A contributing factor to these impressions is perhaps the novel’s meta-sense storytelling and reception. Burke often questions his own position in the narrative arc: “Something about this story, its specificity, bothered me, more so now that I seemed to be a part of it.”

“The Ask” contemplates not only its surrounding society, but its place as a work within it. Lipsyte said, “I think it [the book] jumps off the idea, ‘We all consider ourselves the stars of the movie.’ I think that we all live in a much more heightened awareness of how stories get made and how narratives get generated and how our position in them operates. So I was having some fun with those notions.”

As a satire, “The Ask” is bold in its confrontation with its subjects. Burke questions, “Why was I such a diseased fuck? It had to be society’s fault.” Through Burke’s cynical, acute, and often humorous observations, the novel presents a critique of modern society and some of its institutions and attitudes.

“I think what I’m really getting at in this book is the idea that people study with a certain kind of expectation of material reward at the end of their course of study—specifically in liberal arts education—but that’s not really the point,” Lipsyte said. “What’s happened in the economy has created these incredible pressures that almost necessitate this kind of thinking. But it’s sad the way that it intrudes upon the learning process.”