Mark Leyner

Mark Leyner

Mark Leyner (born 1956) is an American postmodernist author.

Leyner employs an intense and unconventional style in his works of fiction. His stories are generally humorous and absurd: In The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark's father survives a lethal injection at the hands of the New Jersey penal system, and so is freed but must live the remainder of his life in fear of being executed, at New Jersey's discretion, in any situation and regardless of collateral damage. They frequently incorporate elements of meta-fiction: In the same novel, an adolescent Mark produces a film adaptation of the story of his father's failed execution, although he reads a newspaper review of the movie to the prison's warden, and then dies, before even leaving the prison. At the sentence level, Leyner uses sprawling imagery and an extravagant vocabulary, bordering on prose poetry.

Leyner has also worked as a columnist for magazines Esquire and George, and as a writer for the MTV program Liquid Television. He also co-wrote and voiced a short-lived series of audio fiction called Wiretap.

Leyner is most famously critiqued (in Foster's essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction") by David Foster Wallace. Despite this and appearances on David Letterman, Leyner remains a cult figure, though this may change as he switches over to the higher profile world of television development. (He has not written any novels for quite some time, presumably in order to devote more time to this new medium.)

Recently Leyner has collaborated with Dr. Billy Goldberg on two books of answers to commonly pondered, though discomforting, medical questions.

He is credited with co-authoring the screenplay of War, Inc.

Books

• Novels
  • Et Tu, Babe (1992)
  • The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1998)
• Short story collections:
  • I Smell Esther Williams (1983)
  • My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990)
  • Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog (1996)
• Non-fiction
  • Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini (2005)
  • Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour (2006)

Further reading

• Phillip Wise (Spring 1996). "Schwarzenegger Imagery in Mark Leyner's Et Tu, Babe". Deep South. 2 (3).

External links

• Author profile at Internet Book List
• The unofficial Mark Leyner page.
• Interview with Salon magazine from 1997.
• AOL Books Interview with Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg (doctor) on the book Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour from 2006.
• Interview on "War, Inc." at IFC.com