Customer Reviews

I Smell Esther Williams

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Don't misunderstand: everything Leyner's done after this first collection is brilliant writing and mandatory reading. But ESTHER WILLIAMS is the most godawful hodgepodge of literary conceits and pratfalls you may ever be unlucky enough to read. Obviously, some episode of satori marked the time between this and his next book, the now-classic MY COUSIN, MY GASTROENTEROLOGIST. I'm being harsher than I should be, perhaps, considering how great a satirist Leyner has become. But even he probably wishes this book would crawl off his resume. Take a pass on ESTHER and go straight to his other four collections.

If you couldn't get through ten pages of William S. Burroughs the one time you tried, if you stared at Andy Kaufmann and wondered why anybody would think what he was doing was comedy, if The Residents produced what is, to you, an offensively pointless mish-mash of sound, then you will certainly not be able to finish this brilliant book. Move on to Leyner's equally excellent easier stuff.

I like Mark Leyner, but this book (his first) is way below par. It's obviously juvenilia, dressed up by Vintage after Leyner's success, and recovered from the tiny press (the Fiction Collective, Boulder) who took this unformed, trivial, pretentious book on in the first place. There are a few funny lines and some evocative moments in here, but overall it's not worth the time or money. Work your way back to this one from the books published since Leyner learned how to write.

Leyner is more often than not a solid 4-star writer (My Cousin, Et Tu, Tetherballs), but his first book offers little pleasure beyond the fun of its title. A number of years passed between this debut and the much more worthwhile "My Cousin" and it was a healthy period of artistic growth, evidently. There are a few flashes of cleverness here and there, but this is overall a soggy and underdeveloped effort that makes you realize how delicate and precise his unique style is: in later works, it's a marvel of pop culture satire, rapid fire wit, and intriguing arcania. Here, it's a sophomoric dud that too often reads like really bad Barthelme. Or really bad Leyner.

As I was reading (and not at all enjoying or understanding)this, I thought of all the people who probably deem this "brilliant", and would suggest that I just don't "get it". Well, maybe not. But if someone would like to explain to me even one redeeming quality of this, I'm all ears. It's just random nonsense. I actually suspect it's Leyner being subversive, and putting out the worst thing possible and seeing who would be fooled into thinking that its on another level. I have now read three Leyner books, and I know that there is brilliance hidden in there somewhere if I keep looking. It came out in The Tetherballs of Bougainville: A Novel, which I enjoyed very much. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, um...not so much. Based on Tetherballs, I'll keep trying, but so far Leyner is 2/3 pure literary hoax, 1/3 brilliant. I Smell Esther Williams is in that 2/3.

It hurts. It stings. It's just that good, baby. Leyner is the penultimate puppetmaster to the big literary kahuna in der sky. What else can I possibly say except "Buy this Damn Book," and, "Thanks, Mr. Leyner." Just one more reason not to eat glock tomorrow morning. God Bless America. And God bless Mark Leyner.

It's true, he's a hilarious writer. But could we please look up the word "penultimate" in the dictionary before using it again? Thanks Virginia!