Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog

by Mark Leyner

A fiendishly innovative young writer ups the ante on his cult classics Et Tu, Babe and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist with a book so funny that it ought to be a controlled substance. "With his pumped-up prose and steroidal satire . . . You could call him the Quentin Tarantino of cult fiction."--Newsweek.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Humor, Literature, Americana, American

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Mark Leyner is an American postmodernist author known for his surreal, high-energy prose, absurd humor, and densely layered narratives. A graduate of Brandeis University and the University of Colorado, Leyner studied under postmodernist Steve Katz and launched his literary career with the short story collection I Smell Esther Williams (1983). He gained a cult following with My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990) and Et Tu, Babe (1992), and continued to experiment with metafiction in novels like The Tetherballs of Bougainville and The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. His writing is characterized by sprawling imagery, extravagant vocabulary, and a wild mix of pop culture, medicine, and satire. Leyner’s nonfiction collaborations with Dr. Billy Goldberg, including Why Do Men Have Nipples?, became bestsellers that blended comedy and real medical facts. He has also worked as a columnist for Esquire and George, written for MTV’s Liquid Television, and co-authored the screenplay for War, Inc.. A lifelong innovator, Leyner has remained a singular voice in American fiction. His more recent books include Gone with the Mind, Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit, and the 2024 retrospective A Shimmering, Serrated Monster!: The Mark Leyner Reader. He lives in New Jersey and continues to influence readers and writers with his singular, genre-defying style.

Reviews

[Arthur Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

[Ben Loory · Rating 3 out of 5]

halfway through this, i was like, what the hell is this?? it's like they're witty columns for magazines, or something! then i looked it up and it turned out that's exactly what they were... he was writing a column for esquire at the time, and a lot of the pieces are from there, though some also appeared in the new yorker, in shouts and murmurs, and elle and some other places. so, i guess it's stupid to hold what they are against them, but... i seem to be doing that anyway. don't get me wrong, they're funny and everything, but compared to the earlier stuff, they're just so simple and straightforward. lines that would've just whizzed past you before if you weren't paying attention, now he unpacks them for you bit by bit, like any normal human being would do. still, though, there's a lot of good stuff. IT'S JUST NOT LIKE IT WAS BEFORE

As a child, I was absolutely forbidden to express or inwardly harbor self-doubt.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

At its best, this approaches how much I liked Tetherballs. Not every piece is quite as magically delicious with leaps and imagination, perfectly blending the rot in the collective unconscious of modern America, but those that do really do. Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown alone gets this book 5 stars from me. Still, as these are shorter pieces things perhaps don't get rolling on the same kind of scale as Tetherballs. For that reason I still prefer Tetherballs more, though this is pretty close.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was thwarted in obtaining another book by Leyner, so grabbed this instead. He is like a Gary Larson (The Far Side) of short story writing. I liked his shorter pieces mostly, especially "The (Illustrated) Body Politic." These are similar to what you would find in New Yorker Magazine. I didn't love all of them, but there were some chuckles.

[Julie Dill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book for $5 from a remainder table at the B Dalton in St. Clair Square. It's been ten years, and I can still quote sections of it. It is such a wrong book that its wrongness is indelible, scrub your brain as you may. Come for the Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown, stay for the executive tattoos. It's like Martha Stewart Living with more nudity and grisly crime.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it's a collection of Leyner pieces published elsewhere, all (very) loosely organized around the idea of "Mark Leyner" in either the first or third person. One can see the beginnings of ideas he explored more thoroughly (and fruitfully) in his novels since then. As somebody who finds a couple of his later books almost unbearably touching, his early books (even on a re-read as this was) are mostly literary anthropology. But certainly worth investigating for anybody who loves The Tetherballs of Bougainville or The Sugar Frosted Nutsack as much as I do.

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is only the second book by Leyner that I've read. This is a collection of short stories. Some of them very short (two pages) and I think the longest one around 70 pages. The roughly 70 page "Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown" takes a form similar to that of The Tetherballs of Bougainville in that it switches from prose to fictitious screenplay. I happen to love this storytelling device of his. This is an account of him trying to buy a handbag (costing several thousand dollars) for his daughter's "Haute Barbie" at Bergdorf Goodman's and ends up finding himself interrogated by Mossad agents. It's obviously absurdist, but he really makes it work with subtle (and not so subtle) references and allusions to everything from Sudanese politics to Wurthering Heights to Jerry Springer.

There's another story I enjoyed called "My Di" about a fictitious date he goes on with Princess Di.

Some of the stories are merely okay, but the good stories are really good. Leyner is one of the few writers that will actually have me laughing out loud while reading. He's the kind of writer where you find yourself reading passages of it to people over the phone or when someone comes over. Worth reading, but not the place to start with his work probably.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A prime cut of stimulating pieces from one of the best post-modern writers, his style resembling a hybrid of David Sedaris and William Burroughs. In this collection we have some laugh-out-loud moments, such as Leyner's associate whose sole literary recommendation is to use the Mossad as Deus ex Machina, a smooth examination of the relationship between criminality and beauty, and a few surprisingly sweet bits of personal essay. My introduction to Leyner was through "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist" but this will serve newcomers to this kind of writing a little better. As of now I have yet to read any of Leyner's more cohesive works such as "Et tu, Babe", so I'd be interested to hear from more experienced Leynerians how this measures up.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second-favorite Leyner book, really funny random pieces like "Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown."

[Matt Holloway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a funny person.

[shean · Rating 5 out of 5]

really really good, it caught me completely off guard.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leyner is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Skip the Wheaties and steroids. Read yerself some Leyner. It'll be fun onna bun!

[Julia Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shout out to Eric for recommending this! He ain’t even on Goodreads, but I’m thanking him anyways.

It’s hard to rate this book, because it is so uniquely itself. I was wondering why everywhere I looked at info about Leyner and his books, “postmodern” was used to describe everything. Then I read this and was like, “YUP! THIS IS AS POSTMODERN AS IT GETS!”

This book is the embodiment of “yes, and” in an improv set, and not just any improv set. An improv set that has gone so off the rails with the most unhinged performers and no one is telling them their time is up. So, they keep swiping and building, or just doing something completely original when they need more material. But man, does it get tiring sometimes. Oh, and the improv set is taking place on a mound of red jello, cause why not?

4 stars, though I’d be more comfortable putting it at 3.5 stars, because while I wouldn’t put it with other 4 stars I’ve read, it does what it sets out to do incredibly well.

If you want an unexpected, absurdist break from whatever you’ve been reading. This is the book for you.

Also, for clarification, the book isn’t poorly written at all, it is actually written very well. It’s just WILD. Like a “Scary Movie” movie. Not the genre, but the series of parody films.

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no patience for this book at first, while recognizing that if I read it in high school, when it was published, I would have loved it. These are collected pieces for magazines, I believe? So, I think that instinctual rejection is the gut reaction I feel when I watch POSE or probably what would happen if I rewatched the Devil Wears Prada; a gut reaction of embarrassment of how much time and influence New York fashion magazines had with me in my formidable youth even though they had no connection to my real life whatsoever. I didn't read them for the articles! But mostly the articles were terrible. Not all of them! Anyhow, this gut reaction is not Mark Leyner's fault, to be sure.
In any case, "Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown" is exhausting, but if you can survive that, there are some great pieces of satire ("Dangerous Dads", "Eat at Cosmo's", "A Dream Date with Di") and I like how much Merci and Gaby feature in them consistently, and not as foils or caricatures.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leyner by numbers, periodically hilarious, esp. the spoof script ‘Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown’, comparable with the sustained lunacy of later masterwork The Sugar Frosted (sic) Nutsack, along with personal highlights ‘Oh, Brother’, where two teenagers are terrified by their über-tolerant parents, and ‘Immoral Allure’, where the naturally arousing bastardry of men has been suppressed for fear of worldwide anarchy. The bulk of these stories were originally columns from Esquire, The New Yorker, and Elle, meaning Leyner is frequently forced to tether his balls of fanciful insanity to humdrum business such as parenting or being the hippest new postmodern author in town, diluting their whacked factor by two semibreves.

[Steve Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to review a Mark Leyner book. I can say he's the only author that compels me to buckle my seatbelt prior to reading. It's the literary equivalent of driving 90 mph against traffic on a one-way street. I didn't enjoy this as much as Tetherballs or Et tu, though I gormandized this book--even with frequent stops to laugh and/or ask WTF. Mr. Leyner's writing is a three Red Bull breakfast fueled by a mind with a boundless imagination. If you enjoy Mark Leyner, this will not disappoint you.

[Michael Slembrouck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown is the masterpiece of this collection. It’s among the best things he’s written. The rest of the collection is still quite good. Being mostly pieces from magazine, they’re a bit less intense than most everything else he’s written. No less wild, but more casual, an easy reading sort of Leyner, great for introducing him to someone or for relaxed Sunday breezy reading.

[Evan VD · Rating 3 out of 5]

i bought this cuz it looked weird so i guess i got what i wanted

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mostly the works seemed extremely pretentious. "the good seed" had me laugh out loud, and I was amused by pieces of "eat at cosmo's" and "the making of ...", but the amusement was much too rare in coming and not worth the trip. Here's a random sample of Mr. Leyner's writing (truly, I opened the book and this is the first sentence I read):

"The exemplary dad was an intermittent figure -- a Heroic Evanescence -- disappearing every morning into a mythic world of commerce, leaving behind a vestigial nimbus of aftershave, that ghostly olfactory proxy of the ever-departing father. But no longer. Proportional caretaking and quality time are the rules du jour."

Leyner's prose weighs heavily on the tongue. My university creative writing teachers probably would have written on my paper (if I had written such sentences on an assignment): "Interesting images. Over-written."

[Rebekkila]

I moved this book to the top of the heap so that I could release it in Bookczuk's food and wine themed release challenge. I have attempted one of his other books and did not like it, hopefully this one will be different.
Turns out not so different. Parts of the book were funny, but for the most part it was like reading 220 pages of someone Else's Mad Libs. I probably won't read this author again.

[Eileen Brophy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I entirely understand Mark Leyner. I mean, I laugh. Sometimes I commiserate. But for the most part I think he is too flowery for me. People seem to be charmed by this, however I am not.

[Stephen Carradini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucid, evocative, satirical and absurdist, this book is a head-spinner. Be prepared for wild vocabulary, impossible situations, irrational turns and more. If some of the satire wasn't so horrifying (but prescient) and the first section a little shorter, it would have gotten 5 stars from this guy.

[Mike Polizzi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't approach the invention of My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist or the hilarity of The Tetherballs of Bougainville, but still a fun excursion through Leyner's collected articles and semi short stories.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acquired Jun 17, 2003
Powell's City of Books, Portland, OR

[michel · Rating 5 out of 5]

five stars just for the car bomb story.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy books that don't have to make a whole lot of sense, and it's easy when they are written well. Mr. Leyner is an excellent journalist and enjoyable author to boot.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

the dialogue in the beginning of the book is rather boring, but once you get past that....the real laughs come
A great book must read for Mark Leyner Fans

[Evelyn]

I want to delete this and don't know how.

[Azile]

wtf