'No One Left to Come Looking for You,' Professor Sam Lipsyte's Latest Novel, Coming Soon
No One Left to Come Looking for You, the latest novel from Associate Professor Sam Lipsyte, will be released early next month by Simon & Schuster.
Lipsyte’s new novel takes readers back to the gritty New York music scene of the 1990s, where his narrator, newly dubbed “Jack Shit,” is setting off on a quest to reclaim his bass guitar. His “fish '' was stolen by his band’s lead singer, the Banished Earl—likely to fund the Earl’s raging drug habit. The chase leads Jack on an unexpected journey, populated by eccentric, memorable characters, and embroils him in the sinister plot of real estate barons and their desire to rebuild the city—a desire which poses an existential threat to the music scene and all the weirdos who populate it.
In the opening chapter, Lipsyte’s sentences sing as Jack heads out to track down his bandmate and his bass: “You may certainly say that the new year, at least so far, slurps the sandpapery, drippy johnson of a clapped-out rhino. I’m happy to say it along with you, or even compose a melody, if you think there’s a song there, though such retrograde, faux-transgressive vulgarity is not quite our style, even if we are called the Shits. Point is, it’s only January and I’m almost broke. My girlfriend, Vesna, has ditched me for good and, perhaps most catastrophically, my J-Bass is gone. Point is, I must locate the Banished Earl before he surrenders my fish for a measly, probably half-beat bag of Tango & Cash, which, if word in the bars can be trusted, is the most undiluted dope east of Ludlow Street. Point is, I need my bass and we need the Earl. If the Shits are not utterly atomized, we have a show at Artaud’s Garage a week from this Saturday.”
“Reading this book is like being duct-taped to a chair with wheels and shoved down a steep hill into eight lanes of oncoming traffic,” said director Steven Soderbergh. “In other words: MY IDEAL READING EXPERIENCE. But it’s more than just the thrills, laughs, and surprises that come with having mad storytelling skills; Sam’s affection for his characters—and the unusual ways they express that affection for each other—give it a warped sincerity that really resonates. That's fancy talk for I dug this book big time.”
Kirkus also praised the novel in a starred review, calling it, “A flaming truckload of humor, wit, and joy . . . A badass book with brains, wit, moral decay, and radical outrage to spare.”
Lipsyte will launch the novel at P&T Knitwear on December 7, 2022, where he will be in conversation with comedian and podcast host Marc Maron. This event is free and registration is open now. He will also appear in conversation with author Joshua Cohen as part of the Christopher Lightfoot Walker Reading Series at Baruch College on December 12. Tickets—both in-person and virtual—are available here.
No One Left to Come Looking for You is available for preorder now.
Sam Lipsyte is the author of the novella Friend of the Pod (2022) and the novels Hark (2019), The Ask (New York Times Notable Book for 2010), Home Land (New York Times Notable Book for 2005 and winner of The Believer Book Award), as well as The Subject Steve and Venus Drive. A Guggenheim Fellow, his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Quarterly, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Noon, Bookforum, n+1, Harper's, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories among other places.