Author Mark Leyner playfully manipulates cyberpunk instead of just using it as a genre device in his second book, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist. This quasi-novel's postmodern cast of characters includes Big Squirrel, a children's TV clown and kung-fu mercenary; a father who spends time in his basement centrifuging mouse spleen hybridoma; and a Pan Am Pilot with a lifelong obsession for the kamikaze. Although a coherent storyline is difficult to locate, the reader soon realizes that it was never Leyner's point to have one, and later forgives him and even thanks him for it. More poetry than prose, My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is perversely fascinating, and its images will haunt you forever after.
(M. Frauenfelder)
Glossary:
ACCESS:
My Cousin,
My Gastroenterologist
Mark Leyner
Harmony Books, 1990
Here is the TEXT POPUP for Mindplayers:
While working on My Cousin,
My Gastroenterologist, I
supported myself by doing advertising copywriting. Recently I've written ads for biodegradable incontinence briefs and artificial saliva. No one knows what the future has in
store for me.
- Mark Leyner
- "i was an infinitely hot and dense dot," - Chapter 1
