The Sugar Frosted Nutsack: A Novel [Kindle Edition]

Reading Mark Leyner's latest novel is truly a literary road-trip through the author's fertile imagination. Leyner has written the wildest, funniest, creation-myth of a novel that I've ever encountered, playing fast and loose with literary conventions associated with the novel and memoir. Is it a straightforward fictional account of the protagonists, the GODS and one luckless modern day mortal, unemployed New Jersey butcher Ike Karton? Is it a memoir of their exploits across the vast gulf of fourteen billion years? No, it's a bit of both, with ample references to everything from current day American sports and entertainment celebrities to brief historical lessons on the origin of World War I. It's a hysterically funny example of meta-fiction, rich in amusing digressions and predictions regarding the probable fates of each of the protagonists, treating them as though they are the potential sources of a new, latter day Olympian mythology. Considering Mark Leyner's past history of bending literary conventions, readers should know that anything is possible from him, and his latest novel is truly a mind-blowing amusement park of a ride that will leave them both astonished and entertained all the way till the very end.

I imagine most people who read this book will either love it or hate it. And if you already know Mark Leyner's work, this book will only make your opinion stronger.

I do love Leyner's books (except the doctor books he co-authored), and after The Tetherballs of Bougainville I wondered what Leyner would do next. For a while it looked like he was done with fiction, that he he devoured his own narrative, and we had fifteen years of (sort of) silence. Fortunately he has returned, as only he can, by amping up the possibilities of the novel (if this must be given that label).

I don't even know how to begin describing it. It is a book about itself, like the universe, filled with qabalistic self-references, repetitions that unblossom and mutate, cut-ups and samples that are equal parts William Burroughs, Wikipedia, YouTube comments, and -- as the book itself describes it -- Detroit techno music. Yeah, I think if you're wondering how this book is different, look at how techno was different from traditional songwriting that came before it. The book's repetitions really do have a musical effect, and if you go along with it, I think you will enjoy it.

I read the last 150 pages in a day and I recommend you read this book in one or two sustained chunks to get the full effect.

Great book, and I hope to hear more from Leyner soon. Like Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce or Picasso, he does things differently. There is no other book quite like this, and I cannot even conceive of the labor involved in writing it. It is a joy to read, and I am sure I will read it again.

I skimmed through the first chapter, thought it was over the top, and paid little attention. The second chapter is titled something like - Why do the Gods get the HOTS for humans? - which duly blew my mind. I re-read the first chapter, and was hopelessly hooked. I have no idea why I have fallen under the spell of this book and I don't care. I am not really reading it. I am immersing myself in it. I find some authors immpossible to read, e.g. Thomas Pynchon, but Mark Leyner is emminently readable. Thank you for the gift of this book Mr. Leyner. I have asked the Gods to make sure you get laid twice as much as the rest of us. Enjoy!

I purchased this novel after a glowing New York Times book review and because the title is just that eye-catching. The NYTimes reviewer lauded Mark Leyner's narrative style as possibly heralding a new era of non-linear, less structured novels. I found it grating after a while.

The premise is promising, starting off with the idea that the gods, similar to the ancient gods of Greece, are more often out for their own interests than the modern conception of a benevolent unitary God who looks out for the human race. These guys are a bunch of infighting, labidinous and amoral louts. So far so good. And the central figure of the novel is a seemingly innocuous human whose death (self-murder by Mossad or the FBI or someone) is foretold from the very beginning, and repeatedly brought up in the context of blind, chanting monks who have told his story over milennia, even before his birth. Also so far so good.

But it gets old after a while. The repetition; the stringing together of obscure and more widely known cultural references; the foul language. I got bored and didn't care about half-way through the novel and skimmed the last quarter just to get to the end. This novel is a flash in the pan and I doubt it will have much salience for readers in a few years, let alone a decade or more from now (not that that is the only basis on which to judge a novel).

The problem with writing a story about a repetitive, redundant, cyclical, recursive, self-referencing, self-flagellating piece of word-porn nonsense is that unless you are Samuel Beckett, summoning the Gods or Godots, you run the risk of your story becoming a repetitive, redundant, cyclical, recursive, self-referencing, self-flagellating piece of word-porn nonsense.

Granted, Leyner and the book itself acknowledges this repeatedly, but that doesn't really make it all better. And don't try to argue that I missed the point, I get it. It's a piece of absurdist art, but IMHO not a very good piece.

I've been a fan of Leyner's absurdist style ever since My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, but this Sack of _ _ _ _ was painful to read. I kept waiting for it to get better, but of course it could only be more of the same from the get go due to the stylistic constraints. Aside from the occasional chuckle, titillation, or spark of genius it was a waste of time. I pushed through to the bitter end mostly because I wanted the pain to end.