The Tetherballs of Bougainville

The Tetherballs of Bougainville

3.75 of 5 stars 3.75  ·  rating details  ·  665 ratings  ·  70 reviews
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...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published September 1st 1998 by Vintage (first published 1997)
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B0nnie
The Cover:

description

The preface: "I want you to feel what it's like to be ten and, while the other kids are frolicking at summer camps, you're immured in the recesses of a mildewed hovel, subsisting on cigarettes and black coffee and spending twenty hours a day shooting a perverse misanthropic video version of Pippi Longstocking using tiny intricate marionettes made of cockroach carapaces, chicken bones, rat vertebrae pried from traps, discarded condoms, foil ketchup packets - whatever you can scavenge f...more
Chris Dahl
Aug 01, 2007 Chris Dahl rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone I have ever met ever
OK. I talk a lot of shit. About everything.

And a lot of times I make dubious recommendations to friends. I am concerned that I have traded most of my credibility with late-night boozy tirades about how good the second Danzig record is, etc.

So hopefully someone out there will forgive me my trespasses, because this is the funniest book that I have ever read and everyone should give it a try.

I am a big Mark Leyner fan. I think that at this point that I have read all but one of his works. It makes m...more
Mike Puma

Before posting this would-be review, I went back to reread B0nnie's much better and more postive review; my advice is read that one. If for some reason you have nothing better to do, mine follows:

Years, and years, and years, and years ago, friends of mine and I would drive from central Illinois where I went to college (Blackburn, if you’re interested) to ST. LOUIS (emphasis added, as it was a big city adventure, a trip, if you will [even if you won’t, as some serious tripping was going on—seriou

...more
Len
May 08, 2008 Len rated it 1 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Mark Layner's parents
The truth is, I picked up this book for one strange reason: it has a character named Len Gutman who is a writer. How could I not read it?

Have you ever googled yourself? Come on, be honest. I do every once in a while and this book kept coming up because of the character with my name. So I finally bought it a few weeks ago.

Sad to say, I gave up about 1/3 of the way through...right after the character Len Gutman was first introduced and a few pages later when the strange story of his death came to...more
Martin
When I first read The Crying of Lot 49 I thought: well at least an author has found a way to dazzle us with language enough that we don't immediately figure out we're dealing with a cry for attention (a lot). Of course then you read Portnoys Complaint and The Tetherballs of Bougainville and you realize this is common practice. Most of the time there is something to be had in such novels that makes the reading worth while. In Lot 49 there is an interesting plot and in Portnoy we learn much more a...more
Victoria
Leyner is a literary hero of mine. It seems like he can often accomplish in one sentence what it takes most writers to say in a few paragraphs. His writing is extremely smart, funny, and satirical--and I admit, I had to read this twice before I even began to understand it. He is very much part of the MTV, self absorbed, masculine-hyped, me generation, but somehow manages to pull it off with humor and derision. LOVE this quirky, zany novel, and wish he would write more fiction!
Ryan
In short, this book is totally insane.

Technically taking place during the course of a single afternoon, The Tetherballs of Bougainville is somehow a sprawling, chaotic, and hilarious journey through the verbose psycho-ramblings of the 13-year old narrator.

The spectacular first portion of the book starts with the botched execution of the main character's father who is then released into the New Jersey Discretionary Execution Program, where he could be instantly killed by the authorities at any ti...more
Perry
I was really into Mark Leyner in 2006 and I guess I still am; he's really funny but has this unique sense of comedy where his sense of humor comes from him knowing the limits of what a story are. I remember this one story about a car bomb from his books of short stories where the power of the comedy came from the reader's expectation of like what an explosion should be? Anyway, that's off topic because that's another book

The Teatherballs of Bougainville is about a 13 year old narrator also named...more
Rachel K
Mark Leyner clearly has a brilliant mind and I plan to check out some more of his work. I read a review that stated this book needs to be read twice before you really get it, so maybe, I'm the one that's deficient.
This book, however clever and well written it may be (and it is extremely so) didn't do it for me. It's pure style, and perhaps in 1997 when it was new, that style wouldn't have felt like a rehashing of post-modern style tropes, many of which I've seen used to more interesting effec...more
Patrick
"My father is not an evil man, he just can't do PCP socially." This is the crowning achievement of American literature. The main character is the author, at junior high age, trying to write a screenplay for a contest at his school. Extremely funny and all over the place.
Jordan Halsey
This book is laugh out loud funny. I can't even begin to summarize it, but I will simply concur with the reviewer that said, "Tetherballs is like Rushmore on cocaine wearing leather chaps waving a scimitar." I think that really does say it best.
Adam Sidney
any a$$hole with a master of social work can put on a turban and start issuing fatwas about whom you can and whom you can't mail meat to, but it takes real balls to turn a brunette without a cranium into a blonde."
David
I wonder if I should be at all concerned for my sanity, because I was actually able to follow Leyner in this one pretty well. Regardless, I loved the book. I actually liked it better than "The Sugar Frosted Nutsack." I could just be learning how to read Leyner better, it this one seemed more organic, more free in the leaps and jumps...and no one makes leaps and jumps like Leyner. Of course, I'm not one of those people that thinks that a novelist's career is a linear process, nor do I think that...more
Randy
Simply awful.

I heard an interview with the author on "Fresh Air" and bought the book. But it was a complete mess.

I recommend it to insomniacs.
Kevin
This may actually be the funniest book I've ever read. Ridiculously inventive and subversive.
Nat Niemi
I haven't read this book in a long time, and I want to come back and discuss it properly after I read it again, but man, this book is nuts. Completely surreal and off-the-wall. From the point-of-view of a thirteen-year-old boy in roles that no thirteen-year-old boy should or would ever find himself in, and expressing thoughts and ideas that would befuddle and startle average minds of those who have lived five times as long. But funny. I remember reading it (twice) with an unfaltering wide-eyed g...more
Nathan "N.R." Gaddis
(view spoiler)[¿You've been reading vampire books and mommy porn but you ain't yet not read Mark Leyner's long-cold off the presses The Tetherballs of Bougainville? You, my friend have not been hip since 1997. And to make matters worse, you read Infinite Jest and disparage Jonathan Franzen for disparaging the most supreme William Gaddis but have yet still not ever yet licked the boots of Mark Leyner. E-fuckin-gads! Even Charlie Rose knows better. (hide spoiler)]
David
I've been trying to track down somebody I like as much as DFW, and Leyner gets thrown in with him occasionally. Like I saw him, DFW, and Jonathan Franzen on an old Charlie Rose show. In it, Leyner says he tries to really "delight" his reader, which he expands on in Tetherballs itself, in which the main character, Mark Leyner, is reading the film review he wrote of his own movie (aptly named The Tetherballs of Bougainville) that he never made, but only reviewed (all of which is taking place in th...more
Kelly
Sep 02, 2007 Kelly rated it 3 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: deconstructionists, post-modernists
If this were a short story, I would like it a lot more. Instead, it's just too ironic and clever for my tastes and I just can't bring myself to finish it.

**Update**

Having skimmed through the book again and finished it, I still feel like this is too much post-modern song and dance for me, but I think I was too hard on it. I upped my rating from 2 to 3 stars. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to read it in one shot. It is post-modern, after-all, and jumps from cultural reference to academic reference a...more
Constance Kwinn
Many's the time I've wished I could read this book again for the first time. Imagery that's still rattling around in my head... How many years ago was this published? Many years ago. Leyner is a twisted fuck. He tears apart narrative cliches like a fox in the henhouse. His writing is not for everyone. If you've read a page and don't like it, the rest of it is more of the same. He writes (I'm paraphrasing him) so that, if the pages of his book papered a room, you could throw a dart anywhere and l...more
Matt Piechocinski
Probably my favorite Leyner book ... I was beginning to think that he wouldn't top Et Tu? Babe ... but Teatherballs did. The pop culture references are priceless, and not really even dated considering it's a little over 10 years old.
Maya
I read this in college sometime and it's one of my favorite books ever. Ridiculous, quirky, crazy, zany, whimsical. I doubt any other book has made me laugh out loud as much as this one. It's not for everyone but it's definitely for me.
Charles Martin
Absurdist writing at its best. Basically series of retellings of an increasingly bizarre tale of an execution of the narrator's father that is just the funniest thing I have ever read in my life.
Katherine Snedden
"The feature we like to stress to releasees is the indeterminacy,' continues the superintendent. 'You're living your life, rowing merrily along, and suddenly one morning you wake up and there's a dwarf ninja crouched on your chest who deftly severs your carotid arteries with two honed throwing stars. Or you're on a flight to Orlando, Florida, giggling to yourself as you read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and meanwhile, 35,000 feet below, a New Jersey state trooper steps out of his car, kne...more
Glenn
Twisted and bizarre concept. Leyner has a great imagination and a quirky sense of humor, and he definitely has a great vocabulary.
Kelly Neal
Wretched. Desperately wants to be funny and fails. Reminds me of a really bad copy of David Sedaris , and I hate Sedaris.
Casey
"I usually just put him in what I wear to junior high every day--no shirt, Versace leather pants, and Di Fabrizio boots."
Wendy
Definitely a wild ride... Very funny, sexually explicit, and best suited to readers with strong vocabularies and moderate-severe ADHD.
Mike Polizzi
Leyner is a non sequitur artist. Hilarious, caustic and endlessly inventive- the voice carries it across the three forms encapsulated in this novel. Jokes return, plot lines return in this narrative of forking dendrites- Leyner's brain is as much on display as the petty to immense concerns of pre-millennial USA. It's hard to think of another book as funny and ruthlessly hewn to its time, but Huysman's Against Nature and DFW's Infinite Jest both came to mind- who knows if future generations will...more
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The Tetherballs of Bougainville (Hardcover)
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The Tetherballs of Bougainville: A Novel (ebook)
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Mark Leyner is an American postmodernist author.

Leyner employs an intense and unconventional style in his works of fiction. His stories are generally humorous and absurd: In The Tetherballs of Bougainville, Mark's father survives a lethal injection at the hands of the New Jersey penal system, and so is freed but must live the remainder of his life in fear of being executed, at New Jersey's discret...more
More about Mark Leyner...
Why Do Men Have Nipples?: Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini Et Tu, Babe My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist Why Do Men Fall Asleep After Sex? More Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Whiskey Sour The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

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“Yo! You’re my dope dealer not my thesis adviser. If I wanted your opinion about my dissertation, I’d have asked for it, Motherfucker!” 9 people liked it
“Do it, my fellow Americans! Do it for every adolescent
anomic skank genius cloistered in his room, getting cranked,
rabidly humping his sampler as he confects some heretical,
monstrous persona for himself and dreams of an orgiastic,
blood-soaked apocalypse. Yes, the /impudence!/ We have
/nothing/ in this life of suffocating obligation but our
own motherfucking impudence! For God's sake, give us this
day our motherfucking big-dick impudence!!”
7 people liked it
More quotes…