Narrators of comic novels tend to fall into two categories. Either they are jaded insiders in a world they see is a sham, or they are hapless outsiders who long to be insiders, even though they sense it is all a sham. Outsiders are harder to pull off. It takes some convincing to empathise with a true loser.rnSam Lipsyte made his name with "Home Land" (2005), a darkly funny book written as letters to an alumni newsletter. The hero was a washout-loveless, nearly friendless and all but jobless ("It's time you knew the cold soft facts of me. I did not pan out."). But he was also hilarious, with the incisive cruelty of a true underdog. Like "Portnoy's Complaint", Philip Roth's 1969 novel, "Home Land" was less a story than a voice, vital, irrepressible and sexually perverted, just without the exploits.
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