The Sugar Frosted Nutsack

December 19, 2011
Sporting an even more eye-catching title than his previous books My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and the #1 New York Times bestseller Why Do Men Have Nipples? Leyner’s latest is, insomuch as it is about anything, a tale of the gods. Gods like Mogul Magoo, “God of the Breast Implant and God of the Nut Sack”; Fast-Cooking Ali, whose masterpiece is the creation of “Woman’s Ass”; Koji Mizokami, who fashioned the composer Béla Bartók out of his own testicular growth; and the sadistic XOXO, god of Concussions, Dementia, and Alcoholic Blackouts. Their champion is one Ike Karton of Jersey City, N.J., a 48-year-old unemployed butcher, borderline anti-Semite, and favorite of La Felina, the oft-stoned goddess of Humility, despite his constant refrain of “Ike Always Keeps It Simple and Sexy” and his certainty that most women are Mossad agents (“If you’re a married man and you’re reading this, your wife is probably a Mossad agent!”). The story of Ike—his composition and performance of the anthemic “That’s Me (Ike’s Song),” his seduction at the hands of La Felina, and inevitable suicide-by-cop—has been recited by blind bards and feral twins throughout history, and known variously as Ike’s Agony, the Sugar Frosted Nutsack, and another, unprintable, epigram. Only this time, the wicked XOXO has hacked into the book and, in an effort to make it too confusing to read, attempts to contaminate the myth with random offensive outbursts, wearying cliché, and pointless references to the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Robespierre, and Alan Greenspan. But the real question is whether XOXO can possibly make Leyner’s “novel” any weirder than it already is. Every sentence reads like a DMT-induced hallucination, adding up to an anarchic masterpiece of vulgarity, total pandemonium, and cartoonish free association; it may indeed be the craziest book ever written and adventurous readers in search of a seriously batty, one-of-a-kind work of unhinged imagination need look no further. Leyner and Ike Karton are heroes befitting our overloaded age, blurry yesterdays, and fungible times ahead. Agent: Amanda Urban, ICM.

January 15, 2012
Whom the gods would destroy, they would not only make mad but also molest, punish and celebrate, all in a day's work. The latest from Leyner (The Tetherballs of Bougainville, 2008, etc.) concerns itself with the lives, resentments, obsessions and childish rapprochements of the Gods. No, not That One, but a motley collection of drunken deities ensconced in the world's tallest buildings, tapping mortal beauties and mainlining a drug called Gravy. Leyner immediately launches into a long introduction punctuated with asides like "Why Do Gods Like Having Sex With Humans So Much?" This stream-of-consciousness-laden gospel gradually reveals that the book itself is the eternal story of Ike Karton, a 48-year-old, anti-Semitic everyman from New Jersey ("Ike always keeps it simple and sexy," echo the drug-addled bards who serve as the book's Greek chorus). The story has been passed down and modified throughout history in a celebrity-riddled oral tradition that falls somewhere on the narrative scale between The Odyssey and TMZ. Alternately called "Ike's Agony" and "T.G.I.F." (not what you think), the story relates Ike's travails and the mischief delivered upon him by the gods. The worst may well be El Cucho, largely called XOXO here, who is revealed to be "trying to ruin it by making it too confusing, by creating insoluble contradictions and conundrums, by essentially tying the shoelaces of the book together." You, the reader, can help preserve the narrative's integrity by chanting "Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike, Ike," in the manner of either Popeye laughing or Billy Joel's "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)." Yes, really. There's nothing quite like Leyner on a roll. Anyone who's still with us by now should embrace this earnest exploitation of the myths of the new world, complete with celebrity cameos.

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