Stranger Than Fiction

MARK LEYNER

Author of The Tetherballs of Bougainville

In person, Mark Leyner barely resembles the fictional persona of his novels, the Lamborghini-driving, debauched literary superstar whose books can touch off riots in Third World countries. Leyner, a soft-spoken family man from Hoboken, N.J. has built a cult following from his outrageously funny fiction. The protagonist of Mark Leyner's latest novel, The Tetherballs of Bougainville, is a 13-year-old boy named "Mark Leyner" who has won a $250,000 per-year fellowship for a screenplay he hasn't yet written; his father, convicted of murdering a mall guard with a cuisinart, has been placed on "Discretionary Execution" by the State of New Jersey, meaning that he can be killed wherever and whenever the State feels like it.

The Crimson caught up with Leyner in the posh lobby of The Copley Plaza Hotel, where chain smoking Austrian conventioneers and jack-booted bellboys lent a surreal atmosphere of their own.

IHC: How did the idea of writing a show for MTV come to you? Some of your earlier reviewers said that your writing had an "MTV sensibility."

ML: I think that was just a marketing ploy early on. This show is a good show for MTV, because they're trying to do some new kinds of programming. I'm also developing other things that would probably be better for other networks. I think I reached a point about a year ago where the routine, the cadence of the life of a writer, was getting to me a little bit--by which I mean a book every two years or so, going underground and working alone in this unnaturally solitary way, poking your head out in the sunlight and going on a book tour, and then going back to the next book. I just thought I'd like to start doing some new things. I was thinking to myself, "I don't know if I ever signed on to this book thing for life. There may be some other things I'd like to do occasionally"

THC: One of the things I foundparticularly funny about Et Tu, Babe[Leyner's second book], was that it was about awriter who attracts the same kind of celebrity asan actor or rock star...

ML: What's so funny about it is howludicrous a notion it is. Writers, with rareexceptions, are never recognized, and work in thistruly sociopathic, insular world--a world in whichyour emotional life hinges on some adjectivalphrase, whether it's pulled off or not, for weekson end, it may just push you into some horrible ofdepression--that's certainly not the life of atrue celebrity.

THC: When you write prose, are youconscious at all of trying to inject some of thequalities of poetry into it?

ML: Absolutely. I've always wanted thereto be a lyrical quality to my sentences. SometimesI succeed and sometimes not. It's still veryimportant to me that the language be, at best,stunning in some way.

THC: Has TV or movies had a particularlystrong influence on your prose style?

ML: I think in a formal sense,television probably did, particularly the kinds oftelevision I watched when I was a kid--by which Iprobably mean cartoons, animation. I think thegolden age of animation in the '30s and '40s, likethe Fleischer brothers and Tex Avery and BugsBunny, probably had aB-3LEYNE

THC: One of the things I foundparticularly funny about Et Tu, Babe[Leyner's second book], was that it was about awriter who attracts the same kind of celebrity asan actor or rock star...

ML: What's so funny about it is howludicrous a notion it is. Writers, with rareexceptions, are never recognized, and work in thistruly sociopathic, insular world--a world in whichyour emotional life hinges on some adjectivalphrase, whether it's pulled off or not, for weekson end, it may just push you into some horrible ofdepression--that's certainly not the life of atrue celebrity.

THC: When you write prose, are youconscious at all of trying to inject some of thequalities of poetry into it?

ML: Absolutely. I've always wanted thereto be a lyrical quality to my sentences. SometimesI succeed and sometimes not. It's still veryimportant to me that the language be, at best,stunning in some way.

THC: Has TV or movies had a particularlystrong influence on your prose style?

ML: I think in a formal sense,television probably did, particularly the kinds oftelevision I watched when I was a kid--by which Iprobably mean cartoons, animation. I think thegolden age of animation in the '30s and '40s, likethe Fleischer brothers and Tex Avery and BugsBunny, probably had aB-3LEYNE