Grade:

C-

Reading this book is like being dropped off at your high-school graduation party after getting your wisdom teeth pulled. Too many people are talking to you at once and you have no idea what is going on.

Sam Lipsyte is the author of "The Subject Steve." The main character, Steve, is diagnosed with a terminal disease by a philosopher and a mechanic. Confusing?

Steve is the first human to have this condition. There are not any physical ailments yet, and the doctors give only one explanation: The subject is dying of boredom. When the media broadcasts the diagnosis, people from every state begin to claim that they, too, are dying from purposelessness.

With all of the insignificant characters running in and out of the patient's hospital room as well as the book, the reader is eternally plagued by the question: "What just happened?" Steve is not dying from boredom, but bewilderment. Maybe the man just wants everyone to stop nagging at him. He has a daughter at his bedside that is asking him if he has ever pictured her sex life, a philosopher telling him to pull up his gurney to inject a large needle into the tip of his penis, and a nurse offering him holocaust-flavored steak sauce. Can a man get some space?

The book is supposed to be a dark satire. Lipsyte is disturbing in his distortion of human nature and he is bleak in his outlook of the mortal, yet his downfall is in the dialogue. Eavesdropping on crazy people's conversations is only funny for so long before you walk away shaking your head. Lipsyte is poking fun at how comfortable we are. Americans are so comfortable that there is fear we can die from it. He tickles you with a funny thought, but then he keeps tickling until it starts to bruise your ribs. Yes, certain books can bruise your ribs.

Lipsyte's voice comes across loud and clear, but as a man going through his mid-life crisis. Steve's illness is another name for men who approach forty, lose reality and comply with crazy ideas. Instead of Lipsyte writing a metaphor for his "illness," could he not have just bought a convertible or had an affair?

This book made me want to curl up with a novel from Safeway, one with a cover of a Fabio look-alike holding a woman on the edge of a cliff with her hair blowing in the wind. That reading material used to be the lowest, but at least you could read it without wanting to papercut yourself to death with every turn of the page.