The Tetherballs of Bougainville

by Mark Leyner

Book Overview

From his cult classic, I Smell Esther Williams, to his wildly popular and insightful column "Wild Kingdom" appearing in Esquire magazine every month, Mark Leyner has been giving us up close and personal encounters of the most hilarious kind for over a decade.

Now, in his new novel The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Leyner shares with us, long last, the quintessential coming of age story that every writer, at some point, is compelled to tell...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 067976349X
• ISBN13: 9780679763499
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Leyner writes a plot driven story

"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.

Tether-balls of Fun

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.

You'll Never Look at Media the Same Way Again

Marvelously funny satire/parody of the interactive media state. It's like a whole world wide web unto itself. This novel now looks like an outlandishly funny exaggeration; 20 years fron now it might just be everyday reality (whatever that is.)

You just don't get it here, do you?!

It's funny, Mark Leyner's writing has not only rekindled my interest in the English language, but has led me to re-assess my existence in "po-mo" America and to embrace the detritus of our prepackaged culture with somehing resembling a 4-year-old's joyful abandon during sandbox shenanigans. Before I discovered Leyner, I was one of those whiny cynics who pretended to pine for the "old days" (whatever that means!) and dreamt of a Walden-like existence in the woods of Colorado, free from the Internet and MTV and crystal meth. But now I am a proud, card-carrying member of the pop-culture metropolis. Leyner writes for OUR world, and if his writing is too "pointless" or "discontinous" or "discursive" for you, then I suggest you check out of life right now because THAT IS THE MODERN WORLD in a nutshell. I mean, what's the pont of the Taco Bell chihuahua? Are we to honestly believe that this Mexican canine is some sort of culinary authority? Surely not. Why are today's cinematic masterpieces rarely delivered in a linear narrative style (Resevoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)? WHY? Because fast-cut, short-attention-span art is THE art of the late twentieth century--it perfectly parallels the society which we have created--the info-ridden, megawatt global community we've constructed from satellite signals and cyberspacial girders.Now, maybe you hate the modern world. Fine, but don't blame Leyner--he didn't build it. He's merely it's voice. And what a voice! Leyner's writing manages to embrace and mock the rapid pace of our technological age simultaneously, and this duality is what makes his work interesting and inspiring. He can recognize the absurdity of a Starbuck-owned, drive-through-bred culture without becoming a hardened cynic, and thanks to his writing, so can I.My advice: LET GO of narrative restrictions and give up traditional LIMITATIONS. You just might discover that there is beauty and significance in Leyner's work. And if you don't laugh out loud at this stuff, you should seek therapy.fnord! -Evan-

Leyner's most fully conceptualized work to date:

Readers unfamiliar with Mr. Leyner's ouvre may not fully appreciate the unflinching honesty with which this work is composed. In this "fictional" volume, Leyner returns to the town of his birth, Independence, Missouri, which he left at the age of 15 in a fit of teenage rage. Mark has not seen his parents in almost forty years.Tetherballs is an unflincingly honest look at the stresses faced by small-town American families, and uses the metaphor of the backyard tetherball of his childhood to express the constant tides of love which can still flow through even the most alienated family, if someone just has the courage to start it swinging.Of his early work, Ayn Rand once said: "Leyner's regard for his fellow-man is commendable in one of his station, but let us see how he functions when he enters the uber-class." Mark has now made that journey, and if readers cannot perceive his humanity, perhaps that is because his star now burns so very bright. Bravo, Mark Leyner; you have made us know love again.