Rating: 
Summary: Never, EVER ask this man what he's doing for a follow up
Review: "Et Tu, Babe" is, in essence, a sequel to a book (Leyner's brilliantly bizarre "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist") which wasn't actually a coherant novel. Critics embraced the former, but what was Leyner going to do for an encore.... Whoo boy. What he did was write a 1000 mph masterpiece about a megalomaniac author named Mark Leyner who wrote a masterpiece called "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist", steals Lincoln's Morning Breath, performs his own internal organ surgeries, gets a set of bodygaurds who fulfill his every paranoic whim, and is sentenced to having one item permanently removed from his household every month by the FBI. Of course, there's more, but no review could possibly get to it. A little more accessible than "Gastroenterologist", but no less insane. Hysterically perfect.
Rating: 
Summary: Et Tu, Bah
Review: Having read, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, I had high hopes for Et Tu, Babe. However, other than a few hilarious venues(the "everything" sandwich, visceral tattoos, and the Schwarzeneggerization of America), this was a disappointment. I wound up skimming through too much tedium. I suspect Leyner had personal problems midway (the Arlene Scene) as the 2nd half of the book d r a g s. Nun thee less, Leyner when he's on is one of the funniest orgasmic writers around.
Rating: 
Summary: It was great.
Review: I had never read any of Mark Leyner before this, but I saw "Et Tu Babe" in the store, and out of curiousity, I picked it up. From the first paragraph, Leyner had me engrossed. There was never a dull moment; every sentence seemed to "shock" or at least somewhat amuse me. It took me only 2 days to read the book. I would have to say that the book's weakness was that it really didn't have a plot, but still it was great and I look forward to reading another of Leyner's I would definitely recommend this book for anyone who likes bizarre-type stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Not my thing really, but still interesting
Review: I sort of enjoyed this book. It is really a disjointed series of vignettes, basically a kind of post-modern stream of consciousness style of writing. The book has it's funny parts, the main one being the vial of Lincoln's morning breath, which is probably the funniest section in the book. Another reviewer here said that Leyner is funnier than Chris Moore. Well, there is no way Leyner is funnier, but he is certainly stranger than Moore, and that is saying something. I would go so far as to say he is even unique in his own way, and I give him points for being able to come up with such a sustained montage of weird topics to write about. I would probably think more of Leyner as a writer if it weren't for the fact that I could do a pretty good facsimile of this sort of writing myself, except that this was 30 years ago before anyone had heard of Leyner. Anyway, this book does have its moments. Entertaining in it own wacked out sort of way.
Rating:
Summary: Beware
Review: If the Drew Carey show is your type of sitcom, don't get this book. If the Capitol Steps is your type of humor, don't get this book. If you don't consider yourself to be a creative or adaptible person, don't get this book. If you wear sensible shoes and most of your wardrobe comes from JC Penny, then don't buy this book. Generally, if you are a socially conservative person with no sense of humor, this is not your book. Stick with a Garfield collection. However, if you ever hung a poster of Che Guevera upside down outside the cafeteria in college, if you watch any show on TV that has Awesome and Attack in the title, if you listen to Jimi Hendrix and Radiohead at the same time, if you've ever insulted sour cream, if your computer wallpaper is Elvis on a cross, in short, if you've ever been prescribed any medicine described as anti-psychotic or mood-stabilizing, you should definitely by this book.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerously strange, babe
Review: Is Mark Leyner a genius or an egotist? In Et Tu, Babe, some might say he is making blood sacrifices at the Hunter S. Thompson Shrine of Self-Involvement. The Mark Leyner of Et Tu, Babe would then simply clock them in the chops with a pool cue and satirize them into submission. Leyner manages to capture the fever dreams of Burroughs, the sci-fi sarcasm of Vonnegut, and yes, the megalomania of Thompson in one novel. It all works startlingly well. Enter with gusto and submit to the exquisiteness of this shockingly funny book, babe.
Rating:
Summary: Et Tu, Bah
Review: It's a Mark Leyner book. That's about as much of a compliment as I can think of. Really a uniquely disturbing individual. But a brilliant, innovative writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible
Review: Leyner is comparable to only one other author: Vonnegut. The near-goofy speed, the social commentary, and the absolute silliness with teeth is a dangerous tool, and I can think of no other author who could have pulled this book off. Hilarious and marvelously pointless, this is a book that simply cannot be missed.
Rating:
Summary: Worst book I've read in 20 years
Review: Leyner makes David Sedaris look deep, Fox prime-time sitcoms seem funny, and Hunter Thompson appear grounded in reality. I kept reading on, thinking surely Vintage didn't publish such nonsense without a purpose - surely there must be something towards the end that makes this horrifically cliched book worth reading. Nope. Maybe this book is funny stoned or drunk, but absent that its a tremendous waste of time. If books came with a money-back satisfaction guarantee I don't think Vintage would publish much more of Leyner's work. It'd be too expensive for them. Don't believe the jacket blurbs - this is literary potpourri at best, a crime against trees more likely. Stick to newsletters like alt.crafts.needlepoint - there's better stuff to read there.
Rating:
Summary: Resides someplace between Middlemarch and MTV
Review: Mark Leyner should consider himself extremely fortunate. Few writers have been able to write completely self-indulgent anecdotal quasi-fiction which draws equally from their own lives and from the pop culture universe of celebrities and the media, swirl it all together in a dizzying and fragmented amalgam of anti-linear narrative vignettes and-here's where Leyner is unique, and damn lucky-actually sell books. I have no doubt there are plenty of writers out there who have done all of the above, with the possible exception of actually making a name for themselves in the commercial publishing world, as Leyner has.
Reading Et Tu, Babe, I was almost instantly reminded of two other writers: Richard Brautigan and, oddly enough, humor columnist Dave Barry. Indeed, Leyner's work often reads like a humorous essay, segmented into brief two- or three-page chapters and averaging about three or more punchlines per paragraph. Leyner has likened his readings to stand-up comedy and feels the skills and goals of his readings are the same as those of a stand-up performance. Perhaps even more notable than his frenetic storytelling style is his dissolution of whatever boundaries might exist between so-called fiction and his-or our-reality.
Leyner makes no effort to distinguish his autobiographical reality from the fictional surreality he creates in Et Tu, Babe. For Leyner, the motive behind appearing in his own story is the story itself: this is a book about celebrity and megalomania, and so Leyner really has no choice but to cast himself as the book's protagonist. He's not about to sit down with the reader and help him or her figure out where real life ends and fiction begins. In fact, he doesn't really seem to care where that boundary lies, if it exists at all. In one interview, Leyner says, "I've always been fascinated by ... the way the creation of public figures has hybridized fact and fiction. Or the way we promote idealized images of ourselves to acquaintances in our intimate life. The whole business of fact and fiction is never as clear as people make it. It's quite fuzzy." By casting himself as a superhuman demigod in Et Tu, Babe, Leyner is exaggerating many of his actual traits, and adding quite a few extra ones. He is exploring his own fantasized identity, the idealized image of himself that he'd like to present to people every day. We all have idealized versions of ourselves we'd like to wow our friends with-but most of us don't get to write books about these versions. Leyner asks himself what he'd do if he were omnipotent. We ask ourselves this question too-although perhaps not as often in our adult lives as we did when we were younger. What would we do if we were above the law? What would we buy if money were no object? Which celebrities would we befriend? Which enemies would we eliminate?
When Leyner answers such questions, a tumult of chimeral hyperbolas blossom and crowd the 170 pages of Et Tu, Babe. But for all of the book's escapist fantasy, Leyner acknowledges that fiction doesn't always have to be quite so unbelievable, aggrandized, or fantastic as his novels might be. In fact-how do we even separate fact from fiction? The authenticity of "real-life" events-and their distinction from fiction-is often far more artificial than we'd like to think. Leyner's style is often quick, fragmented, and extraordinarily heterogeneous. His writing is often compared to television and the short attention span to which it caters. Readers will probably be simultaneously annoyed and exhilarated by this rough and jumpy style Leyner has cultivated. He offers some enlightening reasons for developing such a style: "I think I really started coming up with these ideas when I was a sophomore or junior in college. When you'd read a long book like George Eliot's Middlemarch, for example, where if you're in a rush you can skip entire sections. If somebody visits a country home, there will be 25 pages describing the front lawn that the reader has to cross to get to the front door. If there's a test the next day, by all means get to the door. ... I didn't want to write books that include transitional passages which merely serve to move characters from room to room. I want every sentence to be unskippable, very intense and charged." To hear Leyner explain it, this style does seem more legitimate than simply writing fiction that reads like television views. But his writing is nothing if not entertaining, and I feel he deserves more credit than simply being considered the creator of literary MTV. For a (slightly) more cohesive plot, try Leyner's The Tetherballs Of Bougainville, which in my opinion is even funnier than Et Tu, Babe.
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