Customer Reviews

The Tetherballs of Bougainville: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's funny, Mark Leyner's writing has not only rekindled my interest in the English language, but has led me to re-assess my existence in "po-mo" America and to embrace the detritus of our prepackaged culture with somehing resembling a 4-year-old's joyful abandon during sandbox shenanigans.

Before I discovered Leyner, I was one of those whiny cynics who pretended to pine for the "old days" (whatever that means!) and dreamt of a Walden-like existence in the woods of Colorado, free from the Internet and MTV and crystal meth. But now I am a proud, card-carrying member of the pop-culture metropolis.

Leyner writes for OUR world, and if his writing is too "pointless" or "discontinous" or "discursive" for you, then I suggest you check out of life right now because THAT IS THE MODERN WORLD in a nutshell. I mean, what's the pont of the Taco Bell chihuahua? Are we to honestly believe that this Mexican canine is some sort of culinary authority? Surely not. Why are today's cinematic masterpieces rarely delivered in a linear narrative style (Resevoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)? WHY? Because fast-cut, short-attention-span art is THE art of the late twentieth century--it perfectly parallels the society which we have created--the info-ridden, megawatt global community we've constructed from satellite signals and cyberspacial girders.

Now, maybe you hate the modern world. Fine, but don't blame Leyner--he didn't build it. He's merely it's voice.

And what a voice! Leyner's writing manages to embrace and mock the rapid pace of our technological age simultaneously, and this duality is what makes his work interesting and inspiring. He can recognize the absurdity of a Starbuck-owned, drive-through-bred culture without becoming a hardened cynic, and thanks to his writing, so can I.

My advice: LET GO of narrative restrictions and give up traditional LIMITATIONS. You just might discover that there is beauty and significance in Leyner's work.

And if you don't laugh out loud at this stuff, you should seek therapy.

fnord! -Evan-

Marvelously funny satire/parody of the interactive media state. It's like a whole world wide web unto itself. This novel now looks like an outlandishly funny exaggeration; 20 years fron now it might just be everyday reality (whatever that is.)

The Tetherballs of Bogainville is an odd book. To say the least! It is a so-called "genre-buster" in that it is one of a new class of novels that strive to be completely unclassifiable. Tetherballs does this fairly successfully.

The protagonist of the novel is Mark, a thirteen-year-old highly precocious boy who strides around in leather pants and no shirt. The entire novel is told from his perspective and it seems to be one bizarre tangent after another! I can't even remember a fraction of them. The humor is sophisticated, but so absurdist that I have found myself breaking out into guffaws at many points!

But because of it's ridiculous nature, tangents, etc., it is sometimes a bit hard to read - you start getting numb to the roller coaster ride that Leyner puts you on. So I have had to limit my exposure and put the book aside for a few days after reading each chapter or two.

This book is not for the weak of stomach or the uptight. However, if you have a good sense of humor and like your humor dry yet absurd, with a ton of references thrown in from the historical to the scientific, and you don't mind mixing your reality with a good deal of fantasy, you will find Tetherballs a fascinating read!

By all means, read "The Tetherballs of Bougainville" by Mark Leyner. It's cynical and spastic and hilarious. Leyner is like David Foster Wallace with his moral compass surgically removed and replaced with the complete works of Monty Python crossed with Thomas Pynchon if he were raised on MTV by rich Eurotrash in New Jersey. And he seems to be getting better; I've enjoyed each of his books more than the previous one, and this one is no exception. (Having read his first book after some of the more recent ones, I believe that it's not that I'm getting to know and/or like his style more, but that he's actually getting better.) This is a book of pyrotechnic linguistic ability, brilliant and incessant cultural references, stunning imagery (my favorite: Buddhist monks paginating toilet tissue, which is tossed off as part of a larger joke about interactive literature), and very little plot, although more than in his previous work. What plot there is is rife with internal inconsistencies, but they're so glaring as to be obviously intentional. (At least with Mark Leyner one can speak of internal inconsistencies so glaring as to be obviously intentional, as opposed to e.g. Philip K. Dick, whose work contains internal inconsistencies so glaring as to be obviously the result of the book having been written in a 48-hour amphetamine-fueled frenzy on deadline.) It is also a book of long, complicated sentences. I like that.

"The Tehterballs of Bougainville" while far from your standard fiction novel is still Mark Leyner's most accessable book and most plot driven.

The narrative is, as usual with Leyner, taut with jackhammer style bursts of narrative. Leyner dispenses with detail and spends his time creating vivid, drug-like situations.

A execution goes wrong and the person to be executed is given a letter explaining he will be killed at a later date of the state's choosing without his knowledge, it may be while he's eating, etc.
The young protagonist gets it on with the female warden in a drug stupored sex scene.
The young protagonist is constantly interrupting procedings to take calls from his agent.

These are Mark Leyner themes. They crop up in all his work but here he manages to keep the narrative together and still deliver on the super-charged writing style that at once reads like a travel poster and a crazed rant.

Read the excerpts to see if this appeals to you. Leyner has some readers that dismiss him as fast food, faux literature. You may be one of these people, or you may appreciate the style which some newer authors have taken note of or have been influenced by.

Read Leyner and then read Chuck Palahniuk. Palahniuk is still a dense, fast read but seems languid compared to Leyner. Intentional or not these authors remind me of one another for their terse prose and cutural obsessions. Leyner tends to stick to seemingly lighter subjects but in fact makes the same points with the use of broader comedy and absurdism.

A fun, quick read that can be enjoyed more than once.

No one writes a brochure on the post death penalty system like Mark Leyner's protagonist, 13-year old Mark Leyner. This book made me not only want to read more by the author, but also ingnited my love of tetherball, which had lain dormant for many years prior to reading Mr. Leyner's book. I put it in my top 5 books of all time.

This book is as funny as his other works. Two features make it better than the others, however. First, most of his books seem to be without structure at any level. This one has a minimal macro-structure that ingeniously twists and turns on itself. It makes for pleasant reading. Second, I am not sure if he is ever trying to make a point in his other books. Here he tries and succeeds on many occassions. The best, so far, of an excellent body of work.

This must be the best of Leyner's books, but it's still a difficult read. It's like drinking down a jug a Frank's Red Hot Sauce, and I don't think I'd wanna meet anyone who read it in one sitting. (Surely you've seen such people on the cop shows.) Getting through the novel was especially difficult for me, as I had placed a large C-clamp on my head while reading, and with each mention of anything morbid or lewd, I'd tighten the clamp a half turn. The purpose of such an exercise was to reshape my cranium to match the Brainiac forehead of Mr. Leyner. Only a dedicated votary of his work would do such a thing, although Caryl Chessman might've done so too had he lived to read Leyner.

I laughed so hard I almost puked--many times. I don't know how else to describe his writing, because I've never encountered anything like it anywhere. It's the best anti-depressant I can think of.

This is one of those books that if you get it, you love it, but if you don't get it you're in for 300 pages of extreme pain. You need some sort of touch on the pulse of pop culture for one thing and you need some sort of touch on the pulse of what it's like to be a young teenage male. With those two tools you are ready for the greatest ride in all of literature.

The jokes actually rarely fall flat, which is amazing considering there are like 25 on every page. The book is hysterical from start to finish, the ending of the book is absolutly perfect. And leyner definalty succeeded in making it seem like I was the main charector. Forget Holden Caufield, I was Mark Leyner.