A Shimmering, Serrated Monster!: The Mark Leyner Reader - Paperback

by Mark Leyner (Author), Rick Kisonak (Editor), Sam Lipsyte (Foreword by)

An all-access ticket to the celebrated and wholly original mind of Mark Leyner, "one of the smartest and funniest humans since Aristophanes" (Jay McInerney)

Praised as "chaotic and vibrant" (Charles Yu), "visionary" (Sam Lipsyte), and "supremely original" (John Cusack), the work of Mark Leyner has inspired a generation of contemporary novelists and has long deserved its place of recognition among the literary superstars of the seismic postmodernism-influenced movement of the early 21st century. A Shimmering, Serrated Monster!: The Mark Leyner Reader samples the staggering highlights from Leyner's extraordinary career in all of its bizarre and infatuating glory, with excerpts spanning from his groundbreaking early novels My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990) and Et Tu, Babe (1992) to his modern masterpieces The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack (2012) and The Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit (2021). Appreciations from modern masters introduce each novel and the book includes original pieces in Leyner's irrepressible voice, including a timeline ("The Story So Far") and a new Afterword ("The Highlighted Passages"). This comprehensive volume is the perfect entry point for readers attracted to mind-expanding prose, and a bouquet of delights for those who have loved any of his past works.

Author Biography

Mark Leyner is the author of the novels and collections I Smell Esther Williams and Other Stories (1983); My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist (1990); Et Tu, Babe (1992); Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog (1996); The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1998); The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack (2012); Gone With the Mind (2016); and The Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit (2021). His nonfiction includes the #1 New York Times bestseller Why Do Men Have Nipples?, and he cowrote the movie War, Inc.