The dazzling debut novel from the author of The Ask and Home Land, Sam Lipsyte's The Subject Steve is by turns manic, ebullient, and exquisitely deadpan―and belongs in the company with the master American satirists. Meet Steve (not his real name), a Special Case, in truth, a Terminal Case, and the eponymous antihero of Lipsyte's first novel. Steve has been informed by two doctors that he is dying of a condition of unquestioned fatality, with no discernible physical cause. Eager for fame, and to brand the new plague, they dub it Goldfarb-Blackstone Preparatory Extinction Syndrome, or PREXIS for short. Turns out, though, Steve's just dying of boredom. “I laughed out loud -- and I never laugh out loud.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and Choke “Sam Lipsyte [is] scabrously, deliriously, piss-yourself funny.” ― Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Review of Books “Lipsyte is a gifted stylist, precise, original, devious, and very funny. In a time when the language of most novels is dead on arrival, this book, about a dying man, is startlingly alive.” ― Jeffrey Eugenides, author of Middlesex “Falls somewhere between Chuck Palahniuk and George Saunders. Let's throw Vonnegut in there as an influence too. And Pynchon...This is Satire with a capital S....An enormously likable first novel. ” ― Esquire “A spot-on DeLillo-like excavation of our consuming consumer culture, and the ultimate fear---the fear of death---that lurks behind it. ” ― San Francisco Chronicle Sam Lipsyte was born in 1968. He is the author of the story collections Venus Drive (named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) and The Fun Parts and several novels, including The Ask , The Subject Steve and Home Land , which was a New York Times Notable Book and received the first annual Believer Book Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University. The Subject Steve A Novel By Sam Lipsyte Picador Copyright © 2011 Sam Lipsyte All right reserved. ISBN: 9780312429973 Items #1 Bastards said they had some good news and some bad news.“Stop,” I said. “I’ve heard this joke before.”“What joke,” said one of them, the Mechanic.“He means that joke,” said the other, the Philosopher.“That bit about the doctors. He thinks we’re doctors.”“Aren’t you?” I said.They had white coats, their own wing.“This ain’t no joke, Jack,” said the Mechanic.My name’s not Jack.My name’s not Steve, either, but we’ll get to that.“We have some good news and some bad news.”I can’t remember what the good news was.The bad news was bad. I was dying of something nobody had ever died of before. I was dying of something absolutely, fantastically new. Strangely enough, I was in fine fettle. My heart was strong and my lungs were clean. My vitals were vital. Nothing was enveloping me or eating away at me or brandishing itself towards some violence in my brain. There weren’t any blocks or clots or seeps or leaks. My levels were good. My counts were good. All my numbers said my number wasn’t up.Fine fettle for a dead man, they said. Days, they said, months, maybe a year, maybe more than a year. It was difficult to calculate. Nobody had ever died of this before. By their calculations there could be no calculations.“You’ll have to live like the rest of us,” the Philosopher told me. “Just less so.”“You mean more so,” I said.“No time for semantics,” said the Mechanic. “You’d best get ready.”I readied myself for the period in which I’d have to get ready. I waited for the time during which I’d have to wait. I tied up loose ends, tidied up accounts, put my papers in order, called old friends. I didn’t really have any papers.I did have friends.I had Cudahy.I called Cudahy.“I’m coming to see you,” said Cudahy.“Come soon,” I said.I called my ex-wife, nothing if not a loose end, or at least a bit of untidiness, what with all we had left unaccounted for.“I knew you’d call,” said Maryse. “I had a dream about you last week. You were walking through the pet food aisle at the supermarket and a kind of viscid bile was streaming down your chin.”“It wasn’t a dream,” I said. “I’m dying.”“I know, baby. I’m dying, too. But we’ve tried so many times already. We just have to learn to live with things the way things are. Things are not so bad. Truth be told, I’m not unfulfilled by William.”“William’s a very good fellow,” I said.“He’s not you,” said my ex-wife, “but then again, you’re not him.”William had once been my hero. Then he whisked away my wife. Now he was a very good fellow, a fucker, a thief. He deserved to die of whatever everybody had ever died of before, but with more agony, a heavier soiling of sheets.“You may not hear from me again,” I said.“That’s probably a wise choice,” said Maryse.“I don’t think it’s a choice,” I said. “I’m really dying.”“Don’t threaten me,” said Maryse. I quit my job, jammed a letter under my supervisor’s door. He waved me in anyw