{"product_id":"bastards","title":"Nate Lippens: Bastards (pre-order)","description":"\u003csection class=\"books_about-book-section__s7jrV\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"books_container__K63E6 container_full__wdr7R\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"books_right-column__zGVRF\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"books_inner-content__f36zr\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"Synopsis_wrapper__fYU_w\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"Synopsis_synopsis__S3HlC Synopsis_clamp__tBoqj\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\n\u003csection class=\"books_about-book-section__s7jrV\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"books_container__K63E6 container_full__wdr7R\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"books_right-column__zGVRF\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"books_inner-content__f36zr\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"Synopsis_wrapper__fYU_w\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"Synopsis_synopsis__S3HlC Synopsis_clamp__tBoqj\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"\"\u003e\u003cheader\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSemiotext(e), 2026, softcover, 160 pages, 12.7 x 20.3 cm\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA full-on breakdown, wouldn’t that be fabulously dramatic? Instead, I ended up in green gripper socks, sweatpants, and a T-shirt, a look like a California cult member or a suburban schlub (same thing) on a seventy-two-hour hold—a crackup fortnight—until I started acting like myself. Well, not myself, because how would they know who that is? A facsimile of normal. I mimed coherence, the continuity of a person moving from room to room. I performed my sadness convincingly, pimped memories of Rudy, flensed my crazy down to thimbles of death, an understandable loss.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eYou win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRecently sprung from a stint on a psychiatric ward, the narrator of Bastards works hard to perform at being a person while questioning the concept of identity and what it means to be an aging working-class gay man when the word queer has become so elastic and gentrified it’s used to conservative ends. Struggling to survive, pay rent, and navigate a hostile world, he takes solace in art and his friends and measures what makes a life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBorrowing from the tropes of fragmented lyric essays, New Narrative, autofiction, and transgressive literature, Lippens is a bricoleur who creates a confected new form in his short novels. Queer pessimism in the age of affirmation. A search for something honest. An old queen’s cackle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/header\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/section\u003e","brand":"ICA Bookstore","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59917939474816,"sku":null,"price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0012\/4390\/6109\/files\/images_6_058c06c6-741b-400a-b8e4-0fd1204ab1e3.jpg?v=1789726930","url":"https:\/\/shop.ica.art\/products\/bastards","provider":"ICA Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}