‘The Sugar Frosted Nutsack,’ by Mark Leyner
Ann Summa for The New York Times
Mark Leyner
Mark Leyner writes in a genre that could be called Mark Leyner: gun-to-the-head comedy delivered with a stratospheric I.Q. Leyner's fiction isn't narrative so much as a thundering procession of twisted skits, pinging from brainiac literary theory to the latest disgraces of reality TV. Just when it seems that, line by line, there might be no smarter writer on the planet, Leyner indulges in gleefully juvenile sprees of lewdness, asserting the sublime pleasures of the absurd. He is either a genius or a freak, and it may not matter which, because his books are compulsively readable, created by a literary mind that seems to have no precedent.
In his second novel, "Et Tu, Babe," published in 1992 (following his 1990 debut, "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist"), a character named Mark Leyner — a famous writer whose hobby is self-surgery — hides from the F.B.I. after stealing a vial of Abraham Lincoln's morning breath. In Leyner's next novel, "The Tetherballs of Bougainville," published in 1997, Mark Leyner is a teenage screenwriting prodigy, summoned to prison to witness his father's execution by lethal injection. His father survives (with a vicious hangover), only to be told that the State of New Jersey reserves the right to kill him in the future. Anytime. Anywhere.
Antic, crazed, weird, Leyner's prose summons big guns in the inevitable war writers are waging against our damaged attention spans. Leyner's greatest literary fear would seem to be that his reader might look away, so he crowds his pages with everything a rubbernecker could want: a twisted carnage of ideas and cultural objects high and low, as if your smartest professor in college were receiving tabloid transmissions through a filling in his tooth. Leyner wants to capture your gaze, or die trying. He seems mostly indifferent to literary decorum and tradition, which means he doesn't create characters in order to explore their feelings. Indeed very little of traditional fiction seems to have captured his interest. Instead he riffs and jokes and japes, but behind the comedy is something thrilling and intense. If it is difficult to think of Leyner as a novelist, it's because the novel so rarely gets used, and abused, with such grinning lunacy. Which is not to suggest the novel is being debased. If anything, the novel has been slapped awake, reanimated as something lighter and stronger, in terms of sheer entertainment, forfeiting not one drop of originality and ambition. In Leyner's hands, the novel is an underwear-soaking comedy device more refined, and chemically stronger, than pretty much any other method designed to send people to their knees, weeping with laughter.
So what's so funny? Leyner's new novel, "The Sugar Frosted Nutsack," opens with the beginning of the universe. First there is nothing, your typical void. Then a group of gods arrive by van, to the tune of the Mister Softee jingle, outside the tallest building in the world, a hotel in Dubai. They've just come from something called "spring break," where they have apparently "gone wild." Among the gods are Bosco Hifikepunye, god of Fibromyalgia and Chicken Tenders, and the goddess La Felina, "responsible for making ugly women more erotic than beautiful women." Fast-Cooking Ali is the god who invented woman's rump, considered by many to be his masterpiece. He created it after a long, reclusive period in which he binged on the god's drug of choice, Gravy:
"Some have speculated that Gravy is a form of hallucinogenic borscht — a theory endorsed by such scholars as Mircea Eliade, Georges Dumezil and University of Chicago Professor of the History of Religions Wendy Doniger. Today, though, many experts believe that Gravy is a solvent similar to what's found in glue, paint thinner and felt-tip markers. This theory has gained considerable support among a wide range of prominent people, including TMZ's Harvey Levin, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos and professional beach volleyball player Misty May-Treanor. Before the imbibing of Gravy, ritual protocol required the recitation of a sacred oath, and then the guest would clink his golden chalice against that of his divine host and solemnly ask, 'You gonna shoot that or sip it?' There are about 14 Weight Watchers Points in a half-cup serving of the rich hallucinogenic beverage."
Ben Marcus's most recent novel is "The Flame Alphabet."
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