Leyner’s own novel, in its amphetaminic eagerness to wow the reader, marks the far dark frontier of the Fiction of Image—literature’s absorption of not just the icons, techniques, and phenomena of television, but of television’s whole objective. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist’s sole aim is, finally, to wow, to ensure that the reader is pleased and continues to read. The book does this by (1) flattering the reader with appeals to his erudite postmodern weltschmerz and (2) relentlessly reminding the reader that the author is smart and funny.
