December 26, 2017 THE K PAOLETTER Sam Lipsyte’s collection Venus Drive— a modern masterpiece, at least as far as writing professors in MFA programs are concerned— opens with a story called “Old Soul,” featuring a lech of a narrator who spends his days alternating between the booths at “Peep City” and “Peeptown” (there’s a difference). The story’s climax comes when he takes a break from ogling sex workers to visit his sister in the hospital, where she lies unconscious, kept alive only by a respirator. “My sister did a snort through her air mask, this noise like everything that had always been my sister was clotted and wet inside her and we might need a tool to scoop it out. I gathered up the covers, slipped my hand under her gown.”
K Paoletter December: Men in Winter
K Paoletter December: Men in Winter
K Paoletter December: Men in Winter
December 26, 2017 THE K PAOLETTER Sam Lipsyte’s collection Venus Drive— a modern masterpiece, at least as far as writing professors in MFA programs are concerned— opens with a story called “Old Soul,” featuring a lech of a narrator who spends his days alternating between the booths at “Peep City” and “Peeptown” (there’s a difference). The story’s climax comes when he takes a break from ogling sex workers to visit his sister in the hospital, where she lies unconscious, kept alive only by a respirator. “My sister did a snort through her air mask, this noise like everything that had always been my sister was clotted and wet inside her and we might need a tool to scoop it out. I gathered up the covers, slipped my hand under her gown.”