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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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Oct 26, 2012 B0nnie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to B0nnie by: Nathan "N.R." Gaddis

The Cover:

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

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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

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Nov 13, 2012 Mike Puma rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, ugh

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:

...more

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—serious]) to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with its props, shouting, throwing things, etc. We made the drive numerous times, week after week, taking the country roads rather than the highway so that we could best indulge our profoundly illegal proclivities. Following a summer and fall of relatively nice weather, as happens most places, it started getting colder as we manned the admission lines, waiting to get in to the midnight shows. Once one of us had the brainstorm that by going to the actual evening feature we would be able to remain inside the theatre rather than braving the cold waiting for the later admission. Would have been a great idea had the feature not been a ten episode Three Stooges extravaganza which has saturated my interest to this day. Overkill. Big time.

So does this matter? Of course not, but it does speak to the same sort of overkill I felt while reading The Tetherballs of Bougainville—a relentless absurdity that seemed as though would never end. There’s good reason why comedians don’t do Springsteen-like, four-hour concerts—too much of a good thing is not good, it’s overwhelming.

I’ll let Leyner sum it up for himself:

Through its furious incomprehensibility, The Tetherballs of Bougainville radiates a white light. It attains a white opacity toward which sloughed molecules of our own autobiographies float.

Before going on to say:

Leyner’s attention-deficit style of editing gives scant opportunity to ponder any of this.

And that’s rather how I felt after reading this: too much brain matter sloughed off on a text that was clever, funny, interesting in form, but seemed endless to the point of tedium. Fast readers might very well love this one. I hope they do. Fans of writing over plot might love this one—I thought I was one of those readers. I come away stuck/struck only by the author’s cleverness, and it isn’t enough.

Three stars, inching slightly toward four—for the homework the author did, for making me laugh, for being clever, demerits for not making me give a damn.

(less)

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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

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Sep 24, 2012 Martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary, fiction

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 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 about mother-son and other family relationships. In Tetherballs we get absolutely nothing but the raw cry for attention by an author. Before we've figured this out we've gone through countless litanies of objects, people, places, situations, and anything else you can list or recite.

It's supposed to be funny, and it is for the first fifteen pages or so, but then the constant use of 'clever' metaphors, interlinked symbols, inappropriately yet sophisticated sexual remarks and blatantly in-your-face physicality eventually wears you out. There is a somewhat detectable plot line somewhere and it does seem to involve some of the main characters but it doesn't really matter much. It's not about them, it's about the author. Of course the author himself is clever enough to understand we eventually figure that out. He therefore included a review about his own book/plot in which he explains how self-gratifying his own writing is. Clever, but it doesn't fix much. By then the damage is done.

How does it all work? What I mean by that is, what's the literary device employed here that makes us read this text without wanting to yell at the author? There seems to be a basic rule in public speaking and entertainment that if you want to say something important that people remember, then you have to say it in all seriousness. If on the other hand if you want to say something important and have people pay attention, then you need to say it with humor. In fact if you say anything funny you can make people overlook any offensive content or direct insults you wish to hide. Most stand-up comedians are living proof of this principle. Even though a lot of the content in Tetherballs isn't actually funny, it sounds funny, or we know it should be funny. That keeps our emotional brain busy enough to not see the forest through the trees.

Essentially Mark Leyner is writing about himself. He's writing about all his frustrations, desires, needs and urges. For Leyner it is not enough to weave his own needs into an intricate story with many vivid characters that each evolve and come to grips with the maddening world around them. No, Leyer quite literally screams at us through his words. I find it difficult to label any book or novel offensive because you can always decline to read it. I also find it difficult to call a novel manipulative, because we all know they are and we all willingly participate. So I wouldn't call Tetherballs offensive or manipulative because I willingly read it and I never fell for the surface text. I will call the novel sad though.(less)

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Apr 05, 2007 Victoria rated it 5 of 5 stars

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!

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Nov 07, 2011 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

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

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Nov 16, 2010 Perry rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 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 Mark Leyner who is at a prison waiting for his father to be executed by lethal injection when the warden's phone rings and the father gets pardoned by the New Jersey government, with the stipulation being that he can now be executed any time the New Jersey government wishes. And I guess the second plot under that is that Mark during the death row time gets a phone call saying that he's in the running for this screenplay contest. And then the second part of the book is Mark writing the screen play for this contest which is (the screenplay ) basically just this imaginary account of his encounter with the prison warden, same setting, same event and then the third section is a review of this tentative movie. It was cool, that's a really unique structure and um I feel like I say 'unique structure a lot in all of these reviews.

I found myself laughing out loud at least six times during the novel which is really rare, not just chuckles but a lot of like, HA! And a lot of that has to do again because he knows the limits of prose and uses it to his advantage. Like in one of these scenes, they're trying to pick the soundtrack for his father's first failed execution and they're trying to make a music video for this, the warden and the son because there's a service apparently the prison offers where you can make a music video of the execution. The rabbi suggests that they should use this one symphony as background music and the warden doesn't recognize it and asks, "oh what does it sound like?", then it's a one sentence paragraph that's "The rabbi hums the entire 18 minute composition" and then the next sentence is the warden saying, "nah." Liked it a lot. Leyner knows like language/sentence time and really uses that to his advantage. Wish this guy was still writing.(less)

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Dec 08, 2012 Rachel K rated it 3 of 5 stars

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

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Jan 19, 2008 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2001

"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.

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Jun 28, 2007 Jordan Halsey rated it 5 of 5 stars

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.

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Aug 06, 2007 Adam Sidney rated it 5 of 5 stars

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."

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Apr 22, 2012 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Dec 20, 2008 Randy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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Jul 11, 2007 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-faves, funny-stuff, weird-lit

This may actually be the funniest book I've ever read. Ridiculously inventive and subversive.

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Jan 28, 2010 Nat Niemi rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Jun 14, 2012 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(view spoiler)

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Feb 09, 2008 David rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 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 the screenplay he has written the night before being awarded the best-screenplay award from his high school -- yeah, it's one of those): "This is a movie that consistently subordinates meaning to titillation. And it is a movie that perpetually teeters between puerile perversity and puerile sentimentality. But between the perversity and the sentimentality, like a gleaming sliver of light emerging from between abutting slabs, there is---dare I say it---an element of /grace/."

Except there isn't (and simply uttering "this book has an element of grace" doesn't actually it endow it with said element). I mean there are some laugh out loud funny moments, but more often than not, I was fucking bored as shit and in parts I felt kind of embarassed for Leyner. Like when the main character and his monkey, who is really his incognito father, write a number of best-selling novels under pseudonyms like "Michael Chabon", "Donna Tartt", "Douglas Coupland", "Jennifer Belle"---and yes, you get the idea, but no, the fucking list goes on and on because Leyner has to drag every thing out until you want to puke blood---"Colin Harrison", "Tibor Fischer", "Jeffrey Eugenides", "Jonathan Franzen", "Junot Diaz", "Martin Amis", "Bret Easton Ellis", "Mona Simpson", "Peter Hoeg", "David Foster Wallace", and more. I suppose this passes for delight in the same way that reading the phone book does. There's some really funny shit in here, but a) that's not enough to make a book good and b) Leyner seems to do everything he can to drown what's good in the book under this overwhelming, self-referencing / -consuming / -defecating absurdity.(less)

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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 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 and back again. There's no reason why one can't read it in like manner.

I do really like several parts of the book - like the story of Len Gutman, signage copywriter, the pamphlet explaining NJSDE - New Jersey State Discretionary Execution, the struggle to pick a soundtrack for the video of Mark's dad's botched execution, the review of script writing software called SkriptMentor (the detail Leyner provides makes him worthy of being a first-rate usability expert), the movie review written before the script was even written, which is Leyner poking fun at his own book and his contemporaries, the title of a fictional Wu Tang Clan's remake of fictional Chinese Cultural Revolution songs, and the dictator of Bougainville gushing over how avuncular Fred Thompson is because that's how his movies have made him seem.

At first some of the displays of obscure knowledge turned me off - like the scene where a succession of vehicles bear license plates displaying the last six chess moves of one of the players in the 1927 world championship. It made the movie reviewer in the book giddy when he understood what it meant. I rolled my eyes at first, but thinking about it now, I think Leyner's just making fun of people's tendency to get giddy when they get an obscure reference. I'm often guilty of that myself.

I should re-read this in bits and pieces later. I do like post-modern humor - Tetherballs isn't all that different from the Family Guy, it's just that the Family Guy is only about 22 minutes long. I don't think I could watch a marathon of it.(less)

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Aug 13, 2012 Constance Kwinn rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Jun 15, 2011 Matt Piechocinski rated it 4 of 5 stars

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.

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Aug 05, 2009 Maya rated it 5 of 5 stars

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.

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Apr 28, 2009 Charles Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

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.

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Jul 17, 2012 Katherine Snedden rated it 5 of 5 stars

"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

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Apr 06, 2011 Angela Alcorn marked it as to-read

Shelves: ange-browse-not-owned-or-wished, humour, fiction, weird

Apparently this is one WEIRD book.

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Feb 20, 2009 Glenn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: humorous-novels

Twisted and bizarre concept. Leyner has a great imagination and a quirky sense of humor, and he definitely has a great vocabulary.

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Jul 05, 2012 Kelly Neal rated it 1 of 5 stars

Wretched. Desperately wants to be funny and fails. Reminds me of a really bad copy of David Sedaris , and I hate Sedaris.

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Dec 17, 2009 Casey rated it 4 of 5 stars

"I usually just put him in what I wear to junior high every day--no shirt, Versace leather pants, and Di Fabrizio boots."

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Aug 13, 2012 Wendy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Definitely a wild ride... Very funny, sexually explicit, and best suited to readers with strong vocabularies and moderate-severe ADHD.

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Apr 10, 2012 Mike Polizzi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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About Mark Leyner

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

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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

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