A brilliant send-up of our contemporary culture *from Sam Lipsyte, the critically acclaimed author of Home Land*, centered around an unwitting mindfulness guru and the phenomenon he initiates.**
In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental collapse, and spiritual confusion, many folks are searching for peace, salvation, andperhaps most immediatelyjust a little damn focus. Enter Hark Morner, an unwitting guru whose technique of Mental Archerya combination of mindfulness, mythology, fake history, yoga, and, well, archeryis set to captivate the masses and raise him to near-messiah status. Its a role he never asked for, and one he is woefully underprepared to take on. But his inner-circle of modern pilgrims have other plans, as do some suddenly powerful fringe players, including a renegade Ivy League ethicist, a gentle Swedish kidnapper, a crossbow-hunting veteran of jungle drug wars, a social media tycoon with an empire on the skids, and a mysteriously influential (but undeniably slimy) catfish.
In this social satire of the highest order, Sam Lipsyte, the New York Times bestseller and master of the form, reaches new peaks of daring in a novel that revels in contemporary absurdity and the wild poetry of everyday language while exploring the emotional truths of his characters. Hark is a smart, incisive look at men, women, and children seeking meaning and dignity in a chaotic, ridiculous, and often dangerous world.
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Review
Advance Praise for*Hark*
Madcap and full of love, laughter and unexpected beauty (not to mention the worlds greatest bone marrow smuggling scheme), ifHarkdoesnt make you stalk Sam Lipsyte and try to break up his marriage, then you are not human.Gary Shteyngart, author of*Super Sad True Love Story*
"Wonderfully moving and beautifully musical, Lipsyte has penneda dastardly hysterical take on modern day rhetoric and the eternal ridiculousness of it all. More than a 'must read,'Harkis a 'must believe!'"Paul Beatty, author of*The Sellout*
Praise for Sam Lipsyte
If you've heard anything about Sam Lipsyte, you've probably heard that he's funny. Scabrously, deliriously, piss-yourself funny (his characters would no doubt find a dirtier, and funnier, way of putting it), drawing audible snorts even from the kind of people, such as the people in his novels, who are way too cool to laugh out loud . . . Lipsyte's prose arrows fly with gloriously weird spin, tracing punch-drunk curlicues before hitting their marks--or landing in some weird alternate.Jennifer Schuessler,*The New York Review of Books*
So let's read Lipsyte and rejoice; let's celebrate the laugh-producing Milo Burkes who are all too rarely brought to us by brave and bitter men--let's celebrate the canny, well-educated yet perpetually failing furtive Internet onanists, the dark, half-crippled, doughnut-gobbling man-apes of the literary world, who cast their lumpen shadows across the rest of us. These are the kind of unlikeable, lovable protagonists we miss; these are the self-loathing, mediocre secret geniuses who can set our people free.Lydia Millet,*The New York Times Book Review*
It's customary for radically sardonic, corrosively funny writers to put in time as mere cult icons, but enough already: everybody should read Sam Lipsyte.TIME
The riffs on fatherhood, work, and sex in Sam Lipsyte's unsparingly comic novelThe Askexplode like a string of firecrackers--so funny you might lose an eye.Vanity Fair
One of the greatest black-humorists alive, Lipsyte has gone unnoticed for far too long. With his third novel, about the painfully hilarious adventures of a failed painter in a dead-end job, he should finally get the acclaim he deserves.Details
There's probably not a living American writer who has so comprehensively mined the comic possibilities of that particular anguished, hapless combination of the overeducated and the underachieving as Sam Lipsyte. Against all odds, his heroes refuse to succeed, and they and we are rewarded with the endlessly entertaining spectacle of their nonstop humiliation.Jim Shepard,*Bookforum*
Lipsyte can't be matched...A literary rock star.The New York Times
About the Author
Sam Lipsyteis the author of the story collectionsVenus Drive(named one of the top twenty-five books of its year by the Voice Literary Supplement) andThe Fun Partsand four novels:Hark, The Ask,The Subject Steve,andHome Land, which was aNew York TimesNotable Book and received the first annualBelieverBook Award. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.
Number of Words in Auth: 2
Formats : EPUB
Number of Formats : 1
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All Identifiers : amazon:B07GNTDC4Q
Single Author : Sam Lipsyte
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Sorted Author by LN, FN: Lipsyte, Sam
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