In the new issue of Poets & Writers there’s a profile I did of Sam Lipsyte, who is sort of a hero to my generation–maybe our Shakespeare and definitely our Swift. Lipsyte is the one who most perfectly articulates our mix of ambition and disappointment, dreams and despair, humor and pathos.  His renditions of the lives we’ve cobbled together out of the rubble of the eighties resonate deeply and his new book, The Ask, is no exception. In it, he’s taken his craft to another level, and written a truly great book.  For more on his life and times, check out the profile, which is not online and probably won’t be. For more on the book, a review is here. I’m going to go out on a limb here and venture that this will be his big one.