Review by Booklist Review
In Esquire columnist Leyner's latest twisted comic tale, his 13-year-old alter ego, aptly named Mark Leyner, attends his father's execution at a New Jersey penitentiary clad in his typical junior-high wear--Versace leather pants, no shirt. Of course, the warden herself is decked out in a decolleteevening gown. As Mark goes to great pains to explain, his father is a really sweet person; he just can't do PCP socially. When Dad, a fastidious grammarian, is dusted, the mere sight of a nonrestrictive modifier with no commas is enough to send him into a homicidal rage. When the execution proves to be a bust--Dad has an unusually high tolerance for lethal drugs--Mark turns the whole nightmarish experience into a screenplay, complete with an "achingly beautiful" three-hour cunnilingus scene. From this semblance of a plot, Leyner spins his wild riffs on a whole host of disparate subjects, all the while sending up various writing styles, including the inappropriately enthusiastic tone of insurance brochures and the all-knowing language of film critics. Combining vitriolic humor with a heightened sense of the absurd (kind of like Dave Barry on steroids), Leyner turns in his funniest, most inventive novel yet. --Joanne Wilkinson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Once again the superhero of his own Rabelaisian Chants of Maldoror, jaw-slackeningly inventive Esquire columnist Leyner (My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist; Et Tu Babe)here a bare-chested 13-year-old in Versace leather jeanshas just won a $250,000-a-year-for-life prize for "best screenplay written by a student at Maplewood Junior High." That's the good news. The bad news is that he hasn't written the screenplay yet (he credits "a powerful agent")and it's due tomorrow. Luckily, Leyner's dad is about to survive execution by lethal injection (years of PCP use and low gamma ray tolerance have built up his resistance to FDA-approved toxins), qualifying him for the innovative, Damoclean "New Jersey State Discretionary Execution" program, and the warden ("an absolutely stunning woman in a décolleté evening gown") seems to be responding positively to young Leyner's sexual overtures. Clearly, there's a story in here somewhere, and Leyner milks it for all it's worth. Leyner the character's marketing skills prop up a brutal South Seas dictator ("It's Heart of Darkness, and Mark is Kurtz. But it's Kurtz as Maurice Saatchi"); Leyner père and fils crank out a few dozen popular novels under such noms de plume as Donna Tartt, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and A.M. Homes. By novel's end, the indefatigable idol of disaffected culture workers everywhere has given us a new TV show ("America's Funniest Violations of Psychiatrist/Patient Confidentiality"), an "achingly beautiful" three-hour cunnilingus scene and the rock 'n' roll apotheosis of crossover Bougainvillean tetherball star Offramp Tavanipupu. And these are just the highlights. Leyner is one of our most talented comic writers. In his "first 100% BONA FIDE NOVELstory, characters, everything!" he is at his horny, hip, encyclopedic best. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this day in the life of his 13-year-old self, Leyner (Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog, LJ 3/15/95) swings zanily from good news to bad, expertly satirizing pop culture and skewering some of his contemporaries along the way. Waiting to see his father executed in prison, young Mark learns he's won a prestigious screenplay contest (for which he has yet to write the screenplay). When Dad's lethal injection fails, he's sentenced to New Jersey State Discretionary Execution (NJSDE)under which he can be killed anytime, anywhere, in any wayand Mark postpones a trip to the library to dally with the attractive female warden. Even readers who might take offense at the overlay of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll may find passages to admire (such as the glossy NJSDE brochure) in this impressively researched satire. Fans of this quirky cult author will love it. Recommended, but an optional purchase.Michele Leber, Fairfax P.L., Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The poet laureate of the MTV generation (Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog, 1995, etc.) tries to spread his wings wider with his ``first 100 percent BONA FIDE NOVEL--story, characters, everything!'' How well he succeeds is a question that depends on where the reader falls on the postmodern scale. Our narrator is 13-year-old Mark Leyner, who has a heavy cloud hanging over him from the start. No, not his imprisoned father's impending execution, which he's about to witness, but an overdue paper (or, rather, screenplay) that he hasn't even started writing. It seems that Mark is in the running for the Vincent and Lenore DiGiacomo/Oshimitsu Polymers America Award, which is bestowed every year at Maplewood Junior High School and provides an annual stipend of $250,000 for life. Naturally, Mark finds it hard to concentrate on his father's impending demise, which is just as well, really, since after receiving three massive lethal injections Mr. Leyner remains perfectly alive and subsequently is resentenced to New Jersey State Discretionary Execution (don't ask) and released on Mark's recognizance. At this point Mark decides to pull an all- nighter to complete the screenplay, although the nymphomaniac female warden distracts him long enough to make him rethink the whole concept, which was never terribly clear in his head to begin with. While Leyner tries to fit his usual wild ramblings (``My mom's buttocks were tattooed with an illustration of an 1,800-pound Red Brindle bull crashing through the front window of a Starbuck's coffee bar and charging a guy who's sitting there sipping a cappuccino and reading M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled'') into something resembling a story, the effect is the same comic collage that made him his name in earlier work--and no one who loved or hated him then will feel much different now. Classic Leyner insanity, a delight for his fans but unlikely to win any new ones. (Author tour)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
