World Famous Comics: My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist: A novel
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist: A novel
By: Mark Leyner Publisher: Vintage Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Vintage Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 160 Publication Date: May 10, 1993 Release Date: May 10, 1995
Product Description: Welcome to Mark Leyner's America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and anabolic steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Here is fiction the brain can dance to, by one of the funniest and most subversive young writers of this, or any other, decade.
One of the funniest books I've ever read I read by the pound and am not easily impressed by the output of most wordsmiths. Leyner is at his hyperactive best here, delivering insanely comic bits peppered with his broad knowledge of culture, tech, medicine and car bombs. I'm on my third copy of this book because I lend it out and it never comes back.
hilarious 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.
Why no love? 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.
Fizz 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.
Not as good as his others I was a little disapointed in this one. Not as good as Et Tu, Babe, and Tooth Imprints on a Corndog. I guess his later work is the best.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tailipoe
Trevor
