Customer Reviews

My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist: A novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

In the hyperkinetic style of writing, one Leyner has been doing for well over a decade now you have to take what happens as a fever dream or the author inviting you into his acid flashback world.

Mark Leyner has a gift for prose and uses it along with cultural icons to create smart, if sometimes near-incoherent fiction. I remember reading this to a class of computer music students after class and they were laughing so hard they were near tears.

Perhaps it is a love/hate thing but there is no denying Leyner can conjure up some witty situations and absurdist comedy. It isn't that Leyner is a bad writer, rather it is readers expectations that make "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist" polarizing. Leyner's metaphors are great fun, he does not spend much time with scenic description unless it has significant import to the story. The dialog is crisp and, well weird, but in a droll way. His choices of charaters and their stories are funny and merit re-reading.

If you can check the book out try the first page or two. If you find it funny or engrossing you probably won't be let down. If it makes no sense you might as well put the book down as it's not going to get any easier to deal with.

To the right minded reader this book is a treasure.

Tired of being popular? Want to sharpen your alienation skills? This is the book for you. The weirdos self-help guide and 12 step program. No self-respecting cynic can live without its powers. Guaranteed to contain at least 3 gestalt shifts per book or get your sanity back free.

In a world of hate and war, we must take a look back on this book. "My Cousin" was the first book by Leyner I read.
And, I still read it. This tome of delightful, poetic anarchy is not for everyone; But, if you can be distracted by the rantings of a stick figure in a Jhonen Vasquez comic, then this should definetly be a treat for you.
I recommend "Enter The Squirrel".

I say "Ole`!" to this author. (That's a good thing.) And, I recommend this book to everyone I meet, pass by, or steal from.
My rating?
Two fists up.

As you can see from the assortment of past reviews, people either love Mark Leyner or hate him (I wanted to use "get him" or "don't get him" but then this becomes snooty, and I'm trying to avoid snooty). He's different, what can I tell you? If you're a traditionalist who demands plot, theme and some semblence character development, you'll do better to move on past. However, if you fancy something a bit different, where the words and imagery take precedence over literature style-points, you've got to give Leyner a shot. I've found him to be especially popular with those who enjoy contemporary poetry, if that's more helpful. "My Cousin" was the first Leyner book I ever read and my mouth hung agape the whole way through- I never realized that anyone could get away with writing like that and be so great at it! Anyway, keep in mind, he's not for everyone, but if he's for you, you won't be sorry.

A tangy blend of sex, violence, and everything you should havelearned in Chem but they wouldn't teach you, My Cousin combinessubjects that were always afraid of each other in a way that makes just enough sense to keep you reading. By the middle of the book, you will be enough in tune with Leyner's message to laugh when Yogi Vithaldis's eye lands in the styrofoam coffee cup. In addition to its taboo subject matter, My Cousin covers the seemingly inconsequential with viscious detail, while easily skimming over anything that might become a plot. The dialog is indiffererent and cynical, indicative of the world where Leyner lives, where phone sex happens on the answering machine and a man is a man is an android. This book paints an exiciting and depressing picture of the future, a time when all the priorities will have changed. My advice to the reader: read twice, once to laugh and ask "why the hell..." and once to see "why" and to put it together. Lynne Plettenberg PS: Makes great quotes to throw off your friends in conversation.

Picked up a copy in a gift shop at Chicago O'Hare airport. Laffed my way Albany, via Pittsburgh. Throughly enjoyed the ridiculous and oft times "confusticating" cyber-punk. At first it struck me as the private musings of a terminally bored and out of work english major but indeed impressed me for what it was in the end. A cynical, silly, ridiculous and at times much more serious than you might think collection of short stories. The 4th star was for the cover art. Huzzah.

Very very clever and full of anarchic wordplay. Enjoying the absurdity of the wordplay is enough to give these stories meaning. despite a previous reviewer saying it was infantile - it think in this era of sappy books designed to enlighten people, which hardly seems to be saving society as we know it - a dose of weird and crazed thinking may do more to impact the way people think than a straightforward native with a "moral." Dig it.

I must ask your indulgence for a brief autobiographical anecdote (it is relevant). When I was seventeen-years-old, I was an aspiring author, and this was one of my favorite books, along with Henry Miller's BLACK SPRING. MY COUSIN, MY GASTROENTEROLOGIST, I thought, expanded language to the breaking point. Flash-forward ten years later. I found a jaundiced copy of this book in my parents' basement, along with BLACK SPRING, and re-read both during a week-long visit.

Was I ever THAT young????

My impressions had changed radically. The book now seemed infantile to me: it is nothing more, really, than a frivolous, badly strung-together collection of verbal sound-bites. The book is superficial and hollow at its core. Now, I'm not a fan of transcendental meanings or linear narratives, but, FOR GOD'S SAKE or for the sake of WHOMEVER, even experimental fiction should have at least SOME formal consistency. The surrealists' experiments (one thinks of SOLUBLE FISH or THE MAGNETIC FIELDS) or the work of Alfred Jarry all have an internal logic. This book has none. It is completely meaningless and disjointed.

In fact, the book is a mess: a hastily written, blithe little throwaway of a book.

MY COUSIN, MY GASTROENTEROLOGIST is pure entertainment, nothing more. If that is all you are interested in, so be it. But if that is the case, then you must accept that there is ESSENTIALLY nothing to distinguish this book from an episode of the TV show, FRIENDS, except that the latter is probably more memorable.

This book belongs on the shelf next to BLACK SPRING, a much more "illustrious" book (if only because it was reviewed by Maurice Blanchot), but also one that suffers from a similar disorder.

I've given this book two stars only because to give it one would be to demean my prior self.

Pseudo-hip, pseudo-funny. I thought I would like this novel, because I have liked Leyner's writing for Esquire. I was disappointed. The book tries to be too many things: beatnik, gen-x, hunter s. thompson. Instead, it has no center, and its ideas and humor are so derivative, the prose is almost unreadable.

I used to read Mark Leyner's column in the back of Esquire and laughed out loud every time... funny insightful cutting... So I bought this book... but I just didn't get it. Not only did I not find it funny, I just plain didn't understand it. It was like trying to read Finnegan's wake.