The Dungeon Master

The marvelously talented Sam Lipstye has a short story published in the New Yorker. Enjoy The Dungeon Master.

It begins...

The Dungeon Master has detention. We wait at his house by the county road. The Dungeon Master’s little brother Marco puts out corn chips and orange soda.

Marco is a paladin. He fights for the glory of Christ. Marco has been many paladins since winter break. They are all named Valentine, and the Dungeon Master makes certain they die with the least possible amount of dignity.

It’s painful enough when he rolls the dice, announces that a drunken orc has unspooled some Valentine’s guts for sport. Worse are the silly accidents. One Valentine tripped on a floor plank and cracked his head on a mead bucket. He died of trauma in the stable.

“Take it!” the Dungeon Master said that time. Spit sprayed over the top of his laminated screen. “Eat your fate,” he said. “Your thread just got the snippo!”

The Dungeon Master has a secret language that we don’t quite understand. They say he’s been treated for it.

Whenever the Dungeon Master kills another Valentine, Marco runs off and cries to their father. Dr. Varelli nudges his son back into the study, sticks his bushy head in the door, says, “Play nice, my beautiful puppies.”

“Father,” the Dungeon Master will say, “stay the fuck out of my mind realm.”

“I honor your wish, my beauty.”


For more on Lipsyte, the Paris Review recently interviewed him, here.

From that piece...

A lot of young indie writers who are published by small presses look up to you as an example. I was with some of them the other night, and I heard one say, “Sam Lipsyte is the only writer who has made it from the small presses to the big house without giving an inch.” What do you say to this? Did you give an inch? And any advice for the young punks out there still sweating it out?

I’ve given (or perhaps taken on?) several inches, mostly at the waistline. I’ve been careful to preserve what inches I've been given below that. The thing is, I never had the whole thing planned out, and it never occurred to me that I would ever be put in the predicament of publishing fiction I thought was compromised. It didn’t occur to me that the next book could be with a major house until after my first book came out. I’ve had some great editors who have helped me get closer to the things the work was groping toward, but nobody’s ever said, change it to make it more marketable, or you’re out. I don’t even think they do that anymore. It’s a waste of time. If you’re an editor looking for a certain “thing” to make a buck, it’s easier to find the already perfectly packaged nullity than to wrench it out of some authentic piece of fiction. But that’s just a guess.

Starting with a small press was the best thing that happened to me, and I do not doubt I will publish with similar places at different points in the future. Being at a place like FSG, or publishing in The Paris Review, is also wonderful. These are relatively new developments. I spent a good deal of time being rejected by everybody everywhere. Still do. The bullshit never ends. That’s the main thing to remember. It never ends. The assholes are stronger in most ways. So you have to ignore them and just write and let that be the meaning of it all. If you publish at a small place or a large one, great. If you make some dough at, without messing with your work in ways that make you uneasy, great. But the meaning of it all is whatever happened when you were writing, and then the power of what you made. Those are the things that matter.