Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #565292 in Books
• Published on: 1992-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
A kinetic, humorous novel captures the follies and foibles of the 1990s.

Customer Reviews

Never, EVER ask this man what he's doing for a follow up
"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.

A short excersize in insanity....
Who is this "Mark Leyner", why is he here, who brought him here, when and WHY? These are all questions attempting pathetically to be answered in this book. Luckily, that ends after the blank first page and segues into the total frontal lobotomy that is "Et Tu Babe". Comfortably resting somewhere on the borderline of complete incoherence and an organized encyclopedia of pop colture jokes, "Et Tu Babe" is bibliophied decay, masked as offbeat humor. The beginning paragraph will typefy the whole novel for you, and, if you're at all like me you'll just shrug and say "exactly...where the hell did he get that...anyway?" you'll read on an cease to care. An altogether ingenius book.....a must read.....go buy it...now! Or face the wrath of the little freakish kiddies performing plastic surgery on a peekid girl behind the canned goods section.

Mark Leyner has Lost His Mind
"Can I help you?"
"Yes," she said. "There's a new album out, I'm not sure what the name of it is... but it's the sound of two men lifting tremendous weights. I wish I could remember the name of it... oh, I was just talking to someone about it." --from "Et Tu, Babe"

If you were insulted by this paragraph, Mark Leyner isn't for you. If you sat there going, "what is going on here?"... Mark Leyner isn't for you.

If you wondered whether the weights are Nautilus or barbell, Mark Leyner is for you. The premise of the book is essentially that Mark Leyner has gone completely insane after the sales of his last, resoundingly popular volume. He's assembled a crack marketing team (1-900-T-Leyner) to promote his heavily-armed book tours. He practices self surgery. He has a book of nude photographs of himself, taken with a defense spy sattelite. And he gets a tatoo in radioactive ink on his internal organs to impress xray technicians. If it is to be said that this book has a plot, the plot is this: Mark Leyner is avoiding the FBI after stealing a vial of Abraham Lincoln's morning breath.

You now know all you need to buy this book. In fact, you probably already know whether it'll be dog-eared and read fanatically to your friends (mine is) or put it on the 'eventually pile.

(c) 1996 Danyel Fisher