Et Tu, Babe [Paperback]

Mark Leyner (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 24, 1993

In this fiendishly original new novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed, and eavesdrops on the erotic fantasies of Victoria's Secret models -- which naturally revolve around him.

Leyner's jet-propelled roller derby through the cultures of celebrity, cyberpunk, and rabid egotism is exhilaratingly bizarre, exhaustingly funny -- and you'd better hope it's just fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This uneven but often hilarious satire is based on the premise that the great success of the author's first novel and his irresistible, steroid-enhanced physique have catapulted him to intergalactic stardom. (Sept.) A reissue of Leyner's My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is also due in September from Vintage ($10 *-74579-3 ).
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Leyner's brilliantly discontinuous humor...begs to be read aloud to friends and strangers alike -- if only you could figure out where to stop." -- Village Voice

"Leyner is a twisted wizard, a genre-busting virtuoso, working at the outer edge of narrative convention." -- Jay McInerney

"Leyner is an original and immensely amusing writer as well as a provocative social critic." -- Washington Post Book World

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Later Printing edition (August 24, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679745068
• ISBN-13: 978-0679745068
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #681,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Resides someplace between Middlemarch and MTV September 26, 2001

By Jake Mohan

Format:Paperback

Mark Leyner should consider himself extremely fortunate. Few writers have been able to write completely self-indulgent anecdotal quasi-fiction which draws equally from their own lives and from the pop culture universe of celebrities and the media, swirl it all together in a dizzying and fragmented amalgam of anti-linear narrative vignettes and-here's where Leyner is unique, and damn lucky-actually sell books. I have no doubt there are plenty of writers out there who have done all of the above, with the possible exception of actually making a name for themselves in the commercial publishing world, as Leyner has.

Reading Et Tu, Babe, I was almost instantly reminded of two other writers: Richard Brautigan and, oddly enough, humor columnist Dave Barry. Indeed, Leyner's work often reads like a humorous essay, segmented into brief two- or three-page chapters and averaging about three or more punchlines per paragraph. Leyner has likened his readings to stand-up comedy and feels the skills and goals of his readings are the same as those of a stand-up performance. Perhaps even more notable than his frenetic storytelling style is his dissolution of whatever boundaries might exist between so-called fiction and his-or our-reality.

Leyner makes no effort to distinguish his autobiographical reality from the fictional surreality he creates in Et Tu, Babe. For Leyner, the motive behind appearing in his own story is the story itself: this is a book about celebrity and megalomania, and so Leyner really has no choice but to cast himself as the book's protagonist. He's not about to sit down with the reader and help him or her figure out where real life ends and fiction begins. In fact, he doesn't really seem to care where that boundary lies, if it exists at all.... In one interview, Leyner says, "I've always been fascinated by ... the way the creation of public figures has hybridized fact and fiction. Or the way we promote idealized images of ourselves to acquaintances in our intimate life. The whole business of fact and fiction is never as clear as people make it. It's quite fuzzy."

By casting himself as a superhuman demigod in Et Tu, Babe, Leyner is exaggerating many of his actual traits, and adding quite a few extra ones. He is exploring his own fantasized identity, the idealized image of himself that he'd like to present to people every day. We all have idealized versions of ourselves we'd like to wow our friends with-but most of us don't get to write books about these versions. Leyner asks himself what he'd do if he were omnipotent. We ask ourselves this question too-although perhaps not as often in our adult lives as we did when we were younger. What would we do if we were above the law? What would we buy if money were no object? Which celebrities would we befriend? Which enemies would we eliminate?

When Leyner answers such questions, a tumult of chimeral hyperbolas blossom and crowd the 170 pages of Et Tu, Babe. But for all of the book's escapist fantasy, Leyner acknowledges that fiction doesn't always have to be quite so unbelievable, aggrandized, or fantastic as his novels might be. In fact-how do we even separate fact from fiction? The authenticity of "real-life" events-and their distinction from fiction-is often far more artificial than we'd like to think.

Leyner's style is often quick, fragmented, and extraordinarily heterogeneous. His writing is often compared to television and the short attention span to which it caters. Readers will probably be simultaneously annoyed and exhilarated by this rough and jumpy style Leyner has cultivated. He offers some enlightening reasons for developing such a style: "I think I really started coming up with these ideas when I was a sophomore or junior in college. When you'd read a long book like George Eliot's Middlemarch, for example, where if you're in a rush you can skip entire sections. If somebody visits a country home, there will be 25 pages describing the front lawn that the reader has to cross to get to the front door. If there's a test the next day, by all means get to the door. ... I didn't want to write books that include transitional passages which merely serve to move characters from room to room. I want every sentence to be unskippable, very intense and charged."

To hear Leyner explain it, this style does seem more legitimate than simply writing fiction that reads like television views. But his writing is nothing if not entertaining, and I feel he deserves more credit than simply being considered the creator of literary MTV. For a (slightly) more cohesive plot, try Leyner's The Tetherballs Of Bougainville, which in my opinion is even funnier than Et Tu, Babe. Read more ›

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mark Leyner has Lost His Mind November 12, 1996

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

"Can I help you?"

"Yes," she said. "There's a new album out, I'm not sure what the name of it is... but it's the sound of two men lifting tremendous weights. I wish I could remember the name of it... oh, I was just talking to someone about it."
--from "Et Tu, Babe"

If you were insulted by this paragraph, Mark Leyner isn't for you. If you sat there going, "what is going on here?"... Mark Leyner isn't for you.

If you wondered whether the weights are Nautilus or barbell, Mark Leyner is for you. The premise of the book is essentially that Mark Leyner has gone completely insane after the sales of his last, resoundingly popular volume. He's assembled a crack marketing team (1-900-T-Leyner) to promote his heavily-armed book tours. He practices self surgery. He has a book of nude photographs of himself, taken with a defense spy sattelite. And he gets a tatoo in radioactive ink on his internal organs to impress xray technicians.
If it is to be said that this book has a plot, the plot is this: Mark Leyner is avoiding the FBI after stealing a vial of Abraham Lincoln's morning breath.

You now know all you need to buy this book. In fact, you probably already know whether it'll be dog-eared and read fanatically to your friends (mine is) or put it on the 'eventually pile.

(c) 1996 Danyel Fishe

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not his best December 20, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I first came across Mark Leyner by way of his most recent composition, The Tetherballs of Bougainville. Having devoured it faster than any book I have ever read I craved more. I picked up Et Tu, Babe and had high expectations. Expectations that were mostly rewarded but where Tetherballs flys this one just drives really fast. I found myself getting a little bored with Et Tu in parts. It was relentlessly manic in a way that made it become tiring in parts. Don't get me wrong, this was a very funny book, it's just that while Tetherballs repeatedly extracted convulsive fits somewhere beyond laughter out of my body, Et Tu only made me laugh out loud. I recommend reading this one before Tetherballs for this reason. I plan to read My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist next. (By the way, while it is not very similar in style or content the last most hilarious book I read was Conspiracy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, I highly recommend it for those with a taste for the eccentric and a love of dark humour a la Leyner or Hunter S. Thompson)

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If I were trapped on a desert island... October 27, 1999

By john

Format:Paperback

Okay, so one day I was mulling over the question "If you were trapped on a desert island and could have only one movie, one album and one book, what would they be?" Without much thought I declared, "Movie: 'Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.' Album 'The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to The Ketchup and Mustard Man' by the Billy Nayer Show. Book: 'Et Tu Babe' by Mark Leyner. Then I'd spend the rest of my life chuckling maniacally and eating coconuts." It took me about 8 years to find this book. Sometime back in my adolescence, I ran across the "Visceral tattooing" portion of "Et Tu Babe" excerpted in "Harpers." Thinking it was pretty funny, I clipped it out and thought I should buy the book. Being the spacy teen that I was, I lost the clipping and promptly forgot the name of the book and the author. Fast forward eight years and someone sends me Leyner's "Tooth Imprints on a Corndog." My immediate reaction was to jump up onto my sofa and shout "This is the guy! THE GUY!!!" I promptly bought everything he ever wrote. Words cannot express the love. After the first time I read "Et Tu Babe," I couldn't stop going back and rereading portions of it. I was pulling it back off my shelf every day. People would call me on the phone and I'd say "Wait a sec...let me read you something." and then I'd become unintelligable with laughter attempting to read them some excerpt. Finally I lent my copy to a friend and found myself lost--tortured!--without it. So I bought another copy. I lent that one out. Then I bought another copy... I now have a STACK of copies of "Et Tu Babe" so that I can do my part to "seed the world with Team Leyner thought...." Sure, Leyners verbose, tangential absurdism is not for everyone (all you Chris Moore fans can just run back home to Mommy, alright?) but if you want GENUINELY laugh-out-loud comedy that doesn't pull any punches, run (don't walk!) and buy this book. Read more ›