Rating: 
Summary: Leyner writes a plot driven story
Review: "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.
Rating: 
Summary: This one will sell
Review: Aaron Ostrovsky Book Review- The Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner The bulk of post-modern literature seems to going the route of more ephemeral media. That is, make it clever, make it user friendly and, for God's sake, make it sell. In his latest novel, Leyner, ironically, parodies America's tendency towards collections of sound bytes using exactly this formula. In a combination of autobiography, screen play, and movie review , Leyner takes on the usavory duty of providing social criticism of an America that has become a prepackaged and flash pastuerized version of itself. And to up the ante, he makes it an intensly personal journey. It is no accident that the main character of the novel, a precocious thirteen year old boy whose favorite outfit is Versace leather pants and no shirt, is named, guess what, Mark Leyner. Leyner, the author, is making a statement. This is you, this is me, this is everyone. While watching his father being executed by leathal injection, young Mark, the character, is notified by cellular phone by his agent that he has just won the "Vincent and Lenore DiGiacomo/ Oshimitsu Polymers America Award" for young screen writers even though he has not yet written a screenplay. "The advantage of having a powerful agent," is Mark's reply. Due to his heavy abuse of drugs through the years, Mark's father proves immune to the lethal injection, merely uttering "I feel shitty," after recieving an injection of 15cc of potassium chloride. Mark's father is released from prison, contingent on his understanding that agents of the New Jeresy penal system may randomly assasinate him at any time. Mark stays at the prison and, with the aid of the beautiful and busty prison warder, engages in an afternoon of rampant drug use (the drugs being liberated from the prison's confiscation storage area) and hedonistic love making. I am not making this up. Perturbed that he will not have time to properly plagarize a screenplay in time to win the screenwriting award, Mark decides to make a screen play of the events that occured while he was in the warden's quarters. The rest of the novel is that very screen play, featruing such gems as a three , a one hour scene in which the audience watches paint dry and culminating in the death of Mark and the warden by falling speakers. The book presents so many frames that one cannot help but be quixotically impressed. Besides the fact that within the actual plot there is a screen play featuring a review of itself being written as it is lived, there is the notion that Leyner is spoofing a society's techniques and tendencies using those very ones. It is art using itself as a spoof for art that is just like it. Confused? What eventually keeps the story from degrading into preachy rhtoric or a cheap literary parlour trick is Leyner's playful sense of irony and his willingness to push sensitive issues not merely to the edge but well over and far down the other side. It's easy to accuse Leyner of being a tad sensationalistic in his treatment of the work. At times, the almost paragraph long names he creates for faux consumer goods and the too wacky episodes his characters find themselves in give Leyner's prose an overindulgent and heavy handed feel. What Leyner lacks in subtle graces, he makes up for in his ability to make unadulterated and savagly insightful observations about the post-modern condition. For those who appreciate seeing their society get a good roasting and enjoy social commentary, Leyner's latest is a must read. Even those who simply cant pay attention to any novel long enough to finsih it will enjoy The Tetherballs of Bougainville On this latest creation Leyner has covered his bases. Regardless of where the reader's backround lies, this one will sell.
Rating:
Summary: Prose Insanity
Review: Briefly, this book, which I love and often quote to friends, could only have been written by an author who is at once in tune with and disgusted by our topsy-turvy, value the value-less, egotistic, it's-not-real-until-it-appears-on-TV culture. By following the flow of Leyner's insanity, you recognize, somewhat to your dismay, that you are just as much of a sucker for all things sticky-sweet-and-flashy-American as the next schmuck. Leyner entertains the hell out of you while rubbing your face in this revelation. This is a very clever, very enjoyable book.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing like it
Review: Ha! You'll love this book, as long as you love to think. Trust me--pick it up and see if you can put it down!
Rating:
Summary: He must be on drugs...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Mental Illness
Review: If you've ever wondered what it's like to be on the manic end of manic depression, this is the book for you. A stream of consciousness on crack, moving much faster than any sane speed limit. If somebody was able to talk like this with the unending, seemingly random and bizarre twists and turns with imagery not found anywhere else, you would laugh at what he had to say and then burn him for witchcraft or dope him up with some powerful anti-psychotic drugs. Reading Mark Leyner is like watching Jimi Hendrix. The show is going to be loud, wild, crude, dissonant, and totally unlike anything you'll ever see again.
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Summary: The Last Genius
Review: In this heartbreaking, nauseating, exhilirating, and pulsating novel from word-punk Mark Leyner, the author recounts his last day with his father, with daydreams and surreal digression within digression within... Et cetera. Leyner picks narrative apart like a rusty, fetid scab, leaving behind in the reader's mind a saturated milkdud of effervescent feeling and dilapidated cogitation. It truly is a unique spectacle, building and feeding upon itself (and the fiction of other authors) like few other humans can do. My only regret is Leyner's recent absence in the book scene. I love his stuff and drink it straight (like Jolt), but I breeze through it--curious, since he has an enormous vocabulary and doesn't let you forget it. But I want more! More! 5 years is a big gap, and I want a big novel to make up for lost time. Team Leyner, come home.
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Summary: He does it again!!!
Review: Mr. Leyner again writes some of the funniest over the top material you'll find anywhere!! I've loved almost everything he's written. And simply can't wait for the next installment. Quite unlike almost anything you are liable to read. Absolutely one of my favorite authors! Worth every cent!
Rating:
Summary: Tether-balls of Fun
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Tether-balls of Fun
Review: 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.
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