There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Martenโs prose. Waste is an exhilarating and unnerving piece of fiction.
Sam LipsyteI felt as though I were snorting cocaine, or rappelling down a cliffside, or cliffsurfing off a cliff of pure cocaine.
Sam LipsyteI'd become one of those mistakes you sometimes find in an office, a not unpleasant but mostly unproductive presence bobbing along on the energy tides of others, a walking reminder of somebody's error in judgement.
Sam LipsyteOne of my big revelations was that nobody cares whether you write your novel or not. They want you to be happy. Your parents want you to have health insurance. Your friends want you to be a good friend. But everyoneโs thinking about their own problems and nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, โBoy, I sure hope Sam finishes that chapter and gets one step closer to his dream of being a working writer.โ Nobody does that. If you want to write, it has to come from you. If you donโt want to write, thatโs great. Go do something else. That was a very liberating moment for me.
Sam LipsyteThe place resembled a new model prison, or one that had achieved a provisional utopia after principled revolt, or maybe a homeless shelter for people with liberal arts degrees. The cages brought to mind those labs with their death-fuming vents near my college studio. These kids were part of some great experiment. It was maybe the same one in which I'd once been a subject. Unlike me, though, or the guinea pigs and hares, they were happy, or seemed happy, or were blogging about how they seemed happy.
Sam Lipsyte