Sam Lipsyte

On his recent Gen X masterpiece novel

Aug 04, 2023

Hey Friends, Sam Lipsyte is on the show today. Sam is the author of many astonishing books, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and on faculty at Columbia University.

I’ve known Sam for over 20 years, but was still weirdly nervous about interviewing him. (I get nervous before all my interviews.) But we ended up having a great fun deep talk, and I learned a lot. You can listen to our interview here:

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In this episode, Sam talks about the classes he took with the legendary editor, Gordon Lish. (Sam recently wrote about this experience in The New Yorker, but I wanted to learn more about Lish’s curriculum). We also go deep on Sam’s newest novel, No One Left To Come Looking for You, which is a Gen X masterpiece. The novel is set in the early 90’s in New York City, and follows a bassist in a punk rock band who gets sucked into a criminal underworld. (Marc Maron on WTF said he wants to option this novel and make it his directorial debut). We also talk about Public Enemy, his father’s relationship with Muhammad Ali, and his time as the lead singer (or “screamer”) for the noise-punk band, Dungbeetle.

On Gordon Lish’s creative pedagogy

“The monologue itself was a demonstration of prose composition in real time. The ultimate lesson was seeing how somebody constructed that as they went.”

On the tight plotting in his newest novel

“This time, I set these strictures. I said this was happening in a week. And I knew which week it was. And I looked at the calendar from 1993. And I looked up weather reports from those days in 1993. So I would know exactly what was happening and what was happening in the news. And I knew I wanted it to end with a certain weather event that had happened and was very meaningful to me.”

On writing his first story collection

"Those were the stories I wrote when I finished Lish’s workshop. When I finished Lish’s workshop, I was like, I know what I want to do and I think I know how to go. But I was still struggling. And then I started writing this one story, it’s in that first book, it’s called “Old Soul.” And I’m writing it and I was just sitting there, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh this is what he was talking about. Now I get it.’”

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