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Ripcord
In Ripcord, Lippens continues his meditations on escape and connection, class, sex and intimacy. Stuck in Milwaukee, the narrator cobbles together a living by bartending and catering weddings, enmeshed in a semi-affair with a younger married man. Cruising apps while tallying his youthful romantic failures, he fantasizes about disappearance but finds both solace and frustration in his friendships with Charlie, an aging punk who was prominent in the 1990s Chicago queercore scene, and Greer, a painter who never broke through but continues making work.
160 pages, Paperback
Published October 22, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
January 24, 2025
I can certainly relate to some of the aging queer punk sentiments. That online dating profile (Turn-ons: 70s and 80s performance art, No Wave music, New Narrative writing, ..., Boston School photographers, queer core...), yow. There's some beautiful writing on messy friendships and tender hookups.
I know it's supposed to be a depressing slog, but there's so much of it.
I know it's supposed to be a depressing slog, but there's so much of it.
October 24, 2024
Ripcord is an excellent novel full of humor, humanity, and tragedy all packed into short fragments. Each sentence reads as meticulously crafted for incredible impact in only a few words. Nate Lippens proves himself to continue to be a fascinating author capable of expressing much more emotion in a 160 pages than other books can in two or three times as many.
September 16, 2024
Nate Lippens is one of those authors who makes you feel like you're not trying hard enough to craft the perfect sentence, not digging deep enough to relate your truest feelings, calling Nate a "writer's writer" seems a tad too dismissive of the reverence that I have for his work. Read this book, you won't regret it... or maybe you will.
September 24, 2024
I didn't think Nate Lippens could top My Dead Book (not sure ANYONE can!), but oh my God, Ripcord is a dark diamond that sparkles blindingly on every page. Each paragraph is a shovelful of gloom and wit burying you deeper and deeper as Lippens unspools a life of queer struggle and survival in the Midwest.
It's hard to convey just how perfectly Ripcord blends relentless self-examination, emotional nakedness, beautiful (Lutz-worthy) craftsman-like sentences, and dark humor (the word hilarious seems too silly, but it is indeed hilarious at times). While reading this book, I started to wonder: Is this my favorite book of all time now? Perhaps it is. Maybe it is. All I know is that I'm in awe.
A fragmented, beautiful autofiction of the highest quality.
It's hard to convey just how perfectly Ripcord blends relentless self-examination, emotional nakedness, beautiful (Lutz-worthy) craftsman-like sentences, and dark humor (the word hilarious seems too silly, but it is indeed hilarious at times). While reading this book, I started to wonder: Is this my favorite book of all time now? Perhaps it is. Maybe it is. All I know is that I'm in awe.
A fragmented, beautiful autofiction of the highest quality.
November 1, 2024
I’d recommend reading Lippen’s first book, “My Dead Book� before reading this one, however “Ripcord� certainly stands on its own. The protagonist and narrator is an autodidact whose life is a series of disappointments. Lippen’s remarkable skill with language is on full display here as it was in his first book. Read this book!
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February 1, 2025Nate always reminds me why I still like being (something like) a gay man. 💜💜 hot and funny and resigned, as all my favorite things are
December 23, 2024
I really wanted to like this as much as I liked My Dead Book but it’s just too clever
March 19, 2025
"On the bridge before dawn, the barrier was six feet high. I stood on my toes and took the measure of my own self-destruction."
Ripcord is a novel without much of a plot. It's a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of fractured vignettes, rather than there being any kind of set in stone story here, it's more a series of musings and reflections upon queer culture and messed up friendships, all told with some beautiful and rather tender writing. It's vital to know that Ripcord is not intended to be a happy novel, it's a distressing and heartbreaking thing, there's simply a lot of turmoil across these pages. It's an indescribable but excellent beast of a novel, one that's so extremely authentic and entirely full of humanity. Impactful and savage, there's more passion and tragedy packed into Ripcord's 160 pages than there are in many novels that triple it in page count.
Nate Lippens is one of those authors who has the incredible gift of making you feel seen by the literature you're consuming. He's also an author who writes in such a fantastically honest way about life, when, life doesn't feel all that great. Ripcord was amazing, crushing, yes, but absolutely brilliant. For lack of a better term, it's a very hazy novel, it's all fuzzy around the edges and, at times, a little muted, but it's in that comforting way that a subtle high envelops your brain, strange, yet welcoming. Books like Ripcord are very special things, they must be experienced to be understood. And, that's what makes it so difficult to review, and recommend a book like Ripcord - a book so relentless in its own brutality, yet in this nameless, unspeakable kind of way.
It's a novel of self-examination and emotional warfare, it makes you feel as if your soul has been stripped from your body and laid bare for all to witness. There's such a vulnerability woven into the text, Ripcord details a life that's simply a persistent cycle of disappointments, it's really rather remarkable, how it feels too long, and too short, all at once. Despite the lack of a plot, Ripcord isn't a novel that's just about nothing. It so beautifully explores class, sexuality, romantic shortcomings, addiction, loss and even the anger that comes with that loss. It's a rage fueled novel, but, not openly so, there's that quiet sort of rage that simmers below the surface. It's in no way a happy book, but it's a book I'm happy to have experienced, all the same.
"I knew what I was doing. I have always known what I was doing. Even when I was lying to myself and destroying myself, I knew what I was doing. "
Ripcord is a novel without much of a plot. It's a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of fractured vignettes, rather than there being any kind of set in stone story here, it's more a series of musings and reflections upon queer culture and messed up friendships, all told with some beautiful and rather tender writing. It's vital to know that Ripcord is not intended to be a happy novel, it's a distressing and heartbreaking thing, there's simply a lot of turmoil across these pages. It's an indescribable but excellent beast of a novel, one that's so extremely authentic and entirely full of humanity. Impactful and savage, there's more passion and tragedy packed into Ripcord's 160 pages than there are in many novels that triple it in page count.
Nate Lippens is one of those authors who has the incredible gift of making you feel seen by the literature you're consuming. He's also an author who writes in such a fantastically honest way about life, when, life doesn't feel all that great. Ripcord was amazing, crushing, yes, but absolutely brilliant. For lack of a better term, it's a very hazy novel, it's all fuzzy around the edges and, at times, a little muted, but it's in that comforting way that a subtle high envelops your brain, strange, yet welcoming. Books like Ripcord are very special things, they must be experienced to be understood. And, that's what makes it so difficult to review, and recommend a book like Ripcord - a book so relentless in its own brutality, yet in this nameless, unspeakable kind of way.
"I'm in an abusive relationship with time. I haven't left my apartment in a week. I'm embarrassed to say it but not to live it. I wouldn't call my self-exile a withdrawal. I've been through withdrawal a few times and that was about missing something, wanting something I couldn't have anymore. I do not feel that way about people."
It's a novel of self-examination and emotional warfare, it makes you feel as if your soul has been stripped from your body and laid bare for all to witness. There's such a vulnerability woven into the text, Ripcord details a life that's simply a persistent cycle of disappointments, it's really rather remarkable, how it feels too long, and too short, all at once. Despite the lack of a plot, Ripcord isn't a novel that's just about nothing. It so beautifully explores class, sexuality, romantic shortcomings, addiction, loss and even the anger that comes with that loss. It's a rage fueled novel, but, not openly so, there's that quiet sort of rage that simmers below the surface. It's in no way a happy book, but it's a book I'm happy to have experienced, all the same.
"I knew what I was doing. I have always known what I was doing. Even when I was lying to myself and destroying myself, I knew what I was doing. "
June 24, 2024
My thanks to Pilot Press for the ARC.
Ripcord, for me, read like the angry big brother to Nate’s debut, My Dead Book. Written in a time-fracturing series of dazzling vignettes, it follows the same format as My Dead Book, the troubled narrator musing on anything from class to sex to loneliness to connection, and how hard that connection is for queer people, especially queer people as they age. The only difference, is that in Ripcord, the anger is palpable. My Dead Book was about loss, whereas Ripcord seems to be about the anger that surrounds such loss. You can hear the snarling rage of the narrator, stuck in a world that doesn’t care, in a world that refuses to love him back. This is a book of queer pain. Of homelessness and addiction. Of junkies and poets and artists. Of snatches of love found in cars, in toilet stalls, huddled briefly between blankets, before disappearing again with the dawn. It is not a happy book. Although there are as many laugh out loud moments as there are painfully resurrected memories. It is both harrowing and hilarious. A fearless reckoning. Elegiac, precise, irreverent and viciously unsentimental. If I was the type, I’d have underlined every other line.
Did I occasionally itch for some actual story, or some sort of through-line? Yes, I have to be honest, I did, but that’s on me, for this is not that sort of book. This is the sort of book that creeps up on you. That deserves to be studied. That makes you think. It’s the sort of book to be savoured. Every word, every line, every razor-sharp sliver of flamboyant wisdom. Is it a memoir or a novel? A series of cynical meditations? A damaged stream of consciousness? A philosophy paper? A list of doomed anecdotes? A queer disruption of the traditional narrative? Or perhaps a broken collage on the relentless futility of growing old in a world that doesn’t care? Who knows. But what I do know, is that you won’t read anything else quite like it all year, and that can only be a good thing.
Ripcord is out on the 22nd October, via Semiotexte in the US, and Pilot Press in the UK.
Ripcord, for me, read like the angry big brother to Nate’s debut, My Dead Book. Written in a time-fracturing series of dazzling vignettes, it follows the same format as My Dead Book, the troubled narrator musing on anything from class to sex to loneliness to connection, and how hard that connection is for queer people, especially queer people as they age. The only difference, is that in Ripcord, the anger is palpable. My Dead Book was about loss, whereas Ripcord seems to be about the anger that surrounds such loss. You can hear the snarling rage of the narrator, stuck in a world that doesn’t care, in a world that refuses to love him back. This is a book of queer pain. Of homelessness and addiction. Of junkies and poets and artists. Of snatches of love found in cars, in toilet stalls, huddled briefly between blankets, before disappearing again with the dawn. It is not a happy book. Although there are as many laugh out loud moments as there are painfully resurrected memories. It is both harrowing and hilarious. A fearless reckoning. Elegiac, precise, irreverent and viciously unsentimental. If I was the type, I’d have underlined every other line.
Did I occasionally itch for some actual story, or some sort of through-line? Yes, I have to be honest, I did, but that’s on me, for this is not that sort of book. This is the sort of book that creeps up on you. That deserves to be studied. That makes you think. It’s the sort of book to be savoured. Every word, every line, every razor-sharp sliver of flamboyant wisdom. Is it a memoir or a novel? A series of cynical meditations? A damaged stream of consciousness? A philosophy paper? A list of doomed anecdotes? A queer disruption of the traditional narrative? Or perhaps a broken collage on the relentless futility of growing old in a world that doesn’t care? Who knows. But what I do know, is that you won’t read anything else quite like it all year, and that can only be a good thing.
Ripcord is out on the 22nd October, via Semiotexte in the US, and Pilot Press in the UK.
November 24, 2024
Magnificent. Exquisite. However much this might bear some resemblance to other New Narrative work, or similar fragment-based queer narratives, it rises above everything: Lippens is head and shoulders above other writers. His capacity for hilarious, gutpunch aphorism is unparalleled. His depth of emotion is a gift to literature. His lines are unlike anyone else’s, as though Paul Lynne had Nobel-prize quality writing somewhere that he hadn’t previously shared. It really is that good, in a way most literature conspicuously fucking isn’t.
I loved this book so much I stretched it out for weeks, rationing only a few pages at a time myself and working hard not to underline or take instagram pictures of every amazing line or paragraph or insight. There were so many. This book just keeps giving and I feel so lucky to have been there to receive it. Lippens is a major voice in literature, not queer literature or auto fiction or whatever, but his rising tide lifts literature in English as a whole. READ THIS.
I loved this book so much I stretched it out for weeks, rationing only a few pages at a time myself and working hard not to underline or take instagram pictures of every amazing line or paragraph or insight. There were so many. This book just keeps giving and I feel so lucky to have been there to receive it. Lippens is a major voice in literature, not queer literature or auto fiction or whatever, but his rising tide lifts literature in English as a whole. READ THIS.
January 19, 2025
I was not expecting Nate Lippens to be able to top “My Dead Book� but here we are.
Absolutely devoured this in 3 days really couldn’t put it down - the prose and anecdotal form of Lippens writing has somehow got stronger yet holds the same tenderness as their previous writing that I have read. Moments of real vulnerability and strength are discussed and displayed, huge similarities to the prose of Wojnarowicz too.
I really liked the format of the writing, I usually struggle with literature that is too modernised eg if books read as texts messages/iphone notes but this was the perfect vessel for this writing in my opinion, the gaps in between the paragraphs allowed for reflection and set the pace of the words really well, at no point did I feel bored or overwhelmed. The last few pages in particular had me all choked up as a family of 6 were walking up to the bar which was nice and awkward !
FFO: Wojnarowicz, Genet, Herbert Huncke & Annie Ernaux
Absolutely devoured this in 3 days really couldn’t put it down - the prose and anecdotal form of Lippens writing has somehow got stronger yet holds the same tenderness as their previous writing that I have read. Moments of real vulnerability and strength are discussed and displayed, huge similarities to the prose of Wojnarowicz too.
I really liked the format of the writing, I usually struggle with literature that is too modernised eg if books read as texts messages/iphone notes but this was the perfect vessel for this writing in my opinion, the gaps in between the paragraphs allowed for reflection and set the pace of the words really well, at no point did I feel bored or overwhelmed. The last few pages in particular had me all choked up as a family of 6 were walking up to the bar which was nice and awkward !
FFO: Wojnarowicz, Genet, Herbert Huncke & Annie Ernaux
November 13, 2024
If you like novels about brilliant but damaged working class queer guys battling existential bleakness with witty aperçus, this is the book for you. The narrator is bracingly unsentimental (in a way that reminded me of the late Gary Indiana), but not the least bit misanthropic. There isn't really a plot, but there's plenty of mood to make up for it as the narrator looks for love in all the wrong places and drifts about with a sort of beatnik-y poetic vagueness. Best of all, Lippens is a master prose stylist - easily one of the most exciting new voices I've encountered in years.
February 9, 2025
Beyond genre, this book redefines the novel vis-a-vis the information age, and living on the fringes of the Anthropocene. Witty, penetrating peeps and quips face off with the 20th-century obsessions and turn-of-the-century fabulism from their gutted insides. Lippens leads us down a slanted hallway where we look through keyholes and pick at sinews of what's left behind after a generation of insiders pretending to be outsiders and outsiders pretending to be insiders. We question, "How did I become the library of everyone I love?"
January 22, 2025
Similar beautiful prose as my dead book. But fifteen times darker and self-deprecating. My dead book had some tough, moving stories but with an undercurrent of youthful expectation. This book was very powerful but the undercurrent is cynicism (even though he explicitly says he’s a pessimist and not cynical) seemingly as a result of growing old in an awful, boring, and directionless app-fueled gay world :((((
January 21, 2025
I love these slim books that are told in snippets they are all my weakling eyes can handle. This one however felt like every single little paragraph was so cute and contained and zingy. Every one had a punchline. It made it feel less like an authentic story and more like collected submissions from a micro magazine or tweets or tumblr posts haha.
March 4, 2025
Some people get the glory. Some people get the glory hole.Now that's one hell of an opener. The rest sort of peters out. There's skill here, for sure, maybe I just tire of fragmented novels. Aging queers, yay! Might just need a revisit once I'm in a different mindset.
January 24, 2025
Very real and I loved the narrator. Plot is lacking but if you’re into that and just want to follow this recovering addict, then this is for you
March 14, 2025
big fan! 4.5 - sometimes a little kitschy but mostly funny and raw
March 21, 2025
“Some people get the glory. Some people get the glory hole.�
April 1, 2025
beautiful little fragments of queer humor, queer joy, queer sadness, queer life
January 3, 2025
“The poetry I love is the poetry people say isn’t poetry. It’s usually the universal things I don’t relate to at all. Any honest description of survival isn’t inspirational, it’s frightening.�
December 2, 2024
Had an ARC of this one
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