The Fun Parts: Stories

Lipsyte (The Ask) conceived a great title for this book. There are "the fun parts"; then there are parts that aren't. The stories are all edgy, testing the boundaries between the ultra-real and the surreal. As one of the characters says, "Everything's weird if you look long enough." In the best of the stories, "This Appointment Occurs in the Past," an old college clique of poseurs reunites after many years to play out the second part of a pistol duel à la Pushkin. Other tales: a drugged-out proto-thief pitches a juvie biography of Marvelous Marvin Hagler, a second-class dungeons-and-dragons klatch is headed by a nutso dungeonmaster, and some young men bring back the Jersey shot-put scene of the mid-1980s. The not-so-great stories have their moments, like the longish "Republic of Empathy," but at other times just seem self-indulgently experimental.