The Subject Steve - Tapa blanda

Told by his physicians that he is dying of a terminal illness that they call Goldfarb-Blackstone Preparatory Extinction Syndrome, Steve--a divorced husband, absent father, and advertising executive--will do anything to avoid his death sentence and heads for the Center for Nondenominational Recovery and Redemption in the hopes of a cure. A first novel. Reprint.

was bad. I was dying. I was dying of something no one had ever died of before. I was dying of something absolutely, fantastically new.

The Subject Steve is a dark, dazzling, and totally original satire on human mortality and our desperate efforts to evade it. Meet Steve (not his real name), a Special Case, in truth a Terminal Case, and the eponymous antihero of Sam Lipsyte’s savagely funny first novel. Steve has been informed by his two doctors, the Philosopher and the Mechanic, that he is dying of a condition of unquestioned fatality but no discernible physical cause. Eager to brand a new plague with their names, they call it Goldfarb-Blackstone Preparatory Extinction Syndrome, or PREXIS for short.

The news that this perfectly ordinary postmodern citizen–bitter ex-husband, quasi-deadbeat father, midlife adman, creator of such resonant dot.com slogans as “Reality Is for Those Who Dream” and “How Did You Like Tomorrow