An often hilarious and sarcastic look at the foibles of modern society. Hark reinvents himself by exploiting the weaknesses of self esteem experiences often met by those struggling in the modern society. They are always looking for the latest fad to save them and Hark decides to give them one. It also looks at the disappointments and dissatisfactions in marriage as experienced through Franz and his wife. It looks at child rearing in what they consider a scary world and the fight they have about a society that thrives on money rather than being kind. You will find many opportunities to laugh out loud at the absurdity of the events described. The author does an awesome job of bringing all these topics together in a fun and interesting way.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

More like a cynical tale, but enjoyable. First time reading from this author.

I was on board with this one's initial premise (a "guru" who's BS-ing his way through the idea he came up with as a way to book corporate seminar gigs), but the book isn't really about the guru! It's about the guru's late-40s part-time right-hand man, who also tutors and is generally kind of a awful human being. Honestly, everyone in this book is kind of terrible, and not in an interesting-to-read way. There's a cast of too many characters in this thing, and all of them sound too similar to really be distinguishable in the plot that's going on.

Satire is being attempted, and there are things that have the cadence of jokes (a neighborhood bar that's always changing to a different ridiculous name and concept! An Irish-Thai restaurant as a setting! Other little details that hit at a post-Trumpian world where there's a land war in Europe while all of this other stuff is going on), but none of it's actually funny. This is snarky and bitter without being anywhere near as zany as it's being advertised, and seems to be trying too hard to say something about These Modern Times and "Wellness" As A Concept that it can't actually deliver. I would have dropped this about halfway through if I hadn't received an advance copy.

I hate to do this but I am not going to finish this book. I really tried to stick with it but it was a struggle to get into the writing style. I loved the description but the book just wasn't for me.

Snarky, irreverent, and absurdist best describes this tale of an unwitting guru, Hark, who becomes known and admired for his meaningless message instructing people to "focus". However, the book really isn't about Hark, but rather about the acolytes that latch onto him and his mental archery methodology. The book's tension mostly comes from the various attempts to monetize and use Hark for profit. But oddly,I found the book to be neither plot driven nor truly character driven, but more of a comedic stand up set in book form. There are elements of plot (mostly in the latter third) and stabs at character development, but what stands out are Lipsyte's skewering of everything from foodies to marriage to therapy to yoga to social justice to technocrats to child rearing to religion; little in today's society goes unscathed. And the characters are weird, but all basically losers or money hungry villians.

There are some truly funny moments in this book, especially in the dialogue. Truth be told, I'm probably not the very best audience for satire (I really couldn't bear The Sellout and that won the Man Booker), but this book amused me in a Monty Pythonesque way. If you like black humor and a sarcastic edge to your entertainments, it is definitely worth giving a try.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hark is part social commentary about current events, part dystopian fiction. The story follows three main people: Hark, a cult-ish leader showing people a way to improve their focus using "mental archery," and then Kate and Fraz, two supporters of Hark.

The book started off pretty challenging for me to get invested in. So much time was spent on character development before the plot started to pick up and I couldn't get into the story until much further in. The first part felt a little pretentious, wordy, and crass. About 30% of the way through, each chapter started to get more interesting and it was easier to keep reading. Two thirds of the way through the plot picked up a lot more and I'd find myself getting more sucked in to each chapter and relating to some of the references to current events.

All in all, I'm glad I read Hark and I think the premise is really interesting, but I don't think the style of this book is for me.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love the concept of this book (and also the cover art is amazing). Following a "cult" leader and his followers is super up my literary alley. Things just don't come together. It starts off feeling like less of a plot driven novel and more developed on characterization. This general vibe continues, however if you're going to down the characterization route, you've got to commit to make it work. And it didn't work. The characters all had the same neurotic Woody Allen/Larry David vibe and felt like slight iterations of the same person (this is the one that's married, this is the one that's rich, this is the one that's mixed race). And this trope of the endearing self-deprecator who is obliviously sexist is 1). overplayed and 2). no one ever needs it. Which leads me to my second main critique is that somehow, this book feels dated. I feel like I would have loved it in 2004 and then re-read it again now and found it didn't age well. WHICH IS NOT GREAT SINCE THIS BOOK HASN'T EVEN BEEN RELEASED YET.

The story feels like one that's been done over and over and over again using shells of characters we've seen over and over and over again. Wah wah.

I really wanted to like this but ultimately it just wasn't for me. It's well written and very clever but there's just too much going on. I liked the concept but the world is well, just not so funny right now and I couldn't buy into it. Others who enjoy satire- wicked satire with a twist of intellectual superiority- will appreciate this more than I did. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

This book has been so well-reviewed that I wanted to love it. I found myself trying hard to engage with Hark, but it felt glib and facile, and I had to keep searching for the heart of it. After many attempts, I gave up and let myself skim ahead, hoping some bit of dialogue or commentary would snag me. It didn't happen.

One literary critic, who praised Hark effusively, said it might serve as a humor test. It seems that I failed.This book has been so well-reviewed that I wanted to love it. I found myself trying hard to engage with Hark, but it felt glib and facile, and I had to keep searching for the heart of it. After many attempts, I gave up and let myself skim ahead, hoping some bit of dialogue or commentary would snag me. It didn't happen.

One literary critic, who praised Hark effusively, said it might serve as a humor test. It seems that I failed.

Poorly drawn characters, stilted dialogue, and no plot. Much of the subject matter was distasteful as well.

Hark by Sam Lisyte is well-written satire about men, women and children trying to find themselves and meaning in our complex world. They ultimately are drawn to a reluctant guru who teaches "mental archery" or focusing on the present. It's not the genre of books I normally read but I wanted to try something different.
While I enjoyed the humor, absurdness at times and always cleverness of the author, the plot became too zanny for me. Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Based on the description of this book, I had really high expectations for it. I wasn’t disappointed, but it definitely took me a while to get there. Hark is a semi-dystopian tale about a new “messiah.” I say semi-dystopian, because clearly it takes place in America, but it’s not the America we know today.

Most of the book is written from Fraz’s point of view. Fraz is a disillusioned, rather unmotivated middle aged man. He comes across this man called Hark who is preaching a new way of thinking. Mental archery is his thing. Draw the bow and let your arrow fly. What does that mean? I’m still not 100% sure after working my way through the novel. Fraz is in a semi-unhappy marriage in this semi-dystopian world. He becomes a Harker, one of the core group of supporters, though his place is rather unknown.

Then there is wealthy Kate. She’s a huge Hark supporter, both emotionally and financially. She is independently wealthy. There is Teal, a longtime friend of Kate’s, who has served time for some white collar crime. Add in assorted others and you have an interesting group of people. A group of people trying to push this Hark way of living and breathing, even though Hark himself is quite unsure of what his message is.

I struggled through part one. Part two picked up, and part three blew by. But part one was absolutely a slow, difficult part of the story. It is not that the story is uninteresting. Quite the opposite. It just seems long and drawn out at times. Too much story, not enough action maybe. Then all of a sudden it picks up steam, and you roll on through the end.

This story in some ways makes me think about the current world in which we live, and I hope that we don’t end up the way that the world of Hark is. It is as though our world took some powerful drugs to turn even more materialistic and cynical. Without saying more, as I don’t want to be a spoiler, it’s a frightening concept.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher and Netgalley. I do not normally read satire, so maybe I just didn’t get it, but I didn’t find this book funny. In fact I found it a little depressing. I tried several times to read it, but didn’t get more than halfway through. I am sure it will appeal to some people, but it just was not for me.

This was an odd one. Remember the movie The Love Guru with Michael Myers? This was a lot like that. Using mental archery he uses with corporations. Unfortunately I lost interest fairly quickly. 

Netgalley/ January 15, 2019  Simon and Schuster

Hark (2019)*
By Sam Lipsyte
Simon & Schuster, 304 pages
★

There is a thin line between that which is snarky and hip, and prose that loses its impact. Sam Lipsyte's Hark weaves across both sides of that border on a regular basis.

The first chapter, which serves as something of a prologue, is so chaotic that I almost bailed on the novel before I even got started. I received an uncorrected advance copy, so perhaps editors have rescued the book's gateway, but the rest of what I read is a mix of sharp satire and sociology masquerading as fiction. Maybe Hark rushes to a brilliant conclusion, but I can't comment upon this. Hark is a work that I kept pushing aside in annoyance and picking up again in the hope that I was missing something. There will be no spoilers in this review; I gave up for good two-thirds of the way in.

Lipsyte's intent is to skewer celebrity culture, as well as Americans' rush to jog down a dollar-strewn path to bliss. His antihero is Hark Morner, who just wants everyone to "focus" and pay attention. His is essentially a Ram Dass Be Here Now point of view that replaces Dass' idea of building mental mandalas with "mental archery." What is mental archery, you ask? It's pretty much as it sounds. There are 52 exercises in which one strikes various archers' poses. There is no quiver or arrow; the act of moving and visualizing allegedly helps one "focus." This is an intriguing backdoor critique of the American Rut, one marked by rushing from one mindless task to another, and the anesthetizing effects of helter-skelter surfing in a plugged in and screen bound world.

Hark's only message is that we need to "focus," but American society isn't big on simple messages unless they can be monetized. Hark is a blissful naïf, but his devotees are neither. Lipsyte populates Hark's world with those who think mental archery is a marketable concept, though they've clearly failed to achieve the focused state Hark advocates. Or, more accurately, they are focused on quite different goals. Hark wants to give mental archery to the world as a gift; his devotees want to promote him as a pay-to-see guru.

Hark is thus shoved into a world of hucksterism and hype that he neither desires nor understand. Imagine a motivational speaker who only tells people to focus. No one would pony up to hear that, right? Wrong! The best parts of Lipsyte's novel probe how easy it is to get people to buy bromides and placebos, no matter how improbable or trite. Hark doesn't even tell his massed audiences what we should focus upon. He is akin to a benign and clueless Wizard of Oz, but there is no Toto to pull back the curtain. The problem, though, is that because we already know this, we plow through Hark hoping to find interesting character backstories. Alas, mainly we find a cast that's either amoral, dull, or both. What is left is a lampoon for the yoga-and-sprouts crowd that they probably won't get.

I leave open the possibility that others will find this book funnier than I. There is, however, no getting around the fact that we are riding the one-trick pony that is the runt litter of a mighty stallion: Jerzy Kosinski's Being There (1970). Hark Morner is an updated Chance Gardner, the shut-in innocent groundskeeper set adrift, and whose knowledge base consists of advertising hooks he overheard on television. Chance is similarly embraced and promoted by those seeking easy answers. Toss in the focus angle from Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) and Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided (2009), her searing critique of the positive thinking movement, and you've got Hark.

There is, of course, room for revisiting old ideas; with the exception of Ehrenreich, we are talking about decades-old works. Alas, Hark is not that book. Lipsyte's pursuit of a hipster vibe that is just out of his reach is made manifest in a lack of thoughtful or likable characters. This distances the reader from both the humor and the author's chosen tone. Regarding the latter, there is a sense that maybe Lipsyte really wanted to remake the values-challenged world of Bonfire of the Vanities.

Once again, I cannot comment upon how Lipsyte resolved (or failed to resolve) all of this. I guess I lost my focus.

Rob Weir

* This book is scheduled for release in 2019, but it's already widely available.

I tried several times to engage with this book, but found it too labored in its attempts to satirize today's world. There are many more targets in other books handled with more finesse. In all honesty, did not finish.

I got this from Netgalley. This was not my type of book. Satire is not normally what I read. I tried but this did not appeal to me at all. I know for others this book will be enjoyed just not by me.

This book was a great book for laughs. It wah Humorous to a point but I just couldn't get into the whole book

What a great book for laughs in today's climate. Humorous to a point. Will admit that you will either love or hate this book there is no in between.

Lypsyte seems to be a polar author; either his readers love him or they hate him, with not many in the middle. There's an appeal in the sardonic take on contemporary mores, but to this reader it soon becomes tedious.