THE SUGAR FROSTED NUTSACK
Mark Leyner
Books for Bigots
This book would not be read by a bigot after the first three sentences:
"There was never nothing. But before the debut of the Gods, about fourteen billion years ago, things happened without any discernible context. There were no recognizable patterns. It was all incoherent."
The book is "incoherent" and reflects a total "incoherence". Toward the end of the book, beginning at page 209 of the First Back Bay Paperback Edition, March 2013 our author tells you what you have read:
". . . with all its excruciating redundancies, heavy-handed, stilted tropes and wearying clichés, its overwrought angst, all its gnomic non sequiturs, all its off-putting adolescent scatology and cringe inducing smuttiness, all the depraved tableaus and orgies of masturbation with all their bulging, spurting shapes, and all the compulsive repetitions about Freuds's repetition compulsion . . . ."
This book is a difficult read and not one many would get through. If this is a picture of the modern world, we are in trouble. It certainly isn't a world I believe I currently live in or wish to; but our author seems determined to convince us that our world, the one we all live in, makes no sense whether we think it does or not.
To the list of categories listed by the author himself, I would add schizophrenia to the top of the list. The world depicted is clearly schizophrenic. I would presume without clear proof, once again, that a bigoted mind has no more likelihood of understanding schizophrenia than it does a cross dresser. Unfortunately, it is my understanding of the current bigotry, that it is firmly religious based; not just Christian mind you but Islam and Hinduism and other religions who have the mindset of "I am right and everybody else is wrong and going to hell or where nonbelievers go these days".
One can read a book for numerous reasons; one of which is to help us understand the world we live in - give us a new perspective and so forth. As I said, I found it difficult to get to the end of this book, but I was determined. There is a conversation at the end between the author and an interlocutor where Mr. Leyner attempts to give us some incite, which to my way of thinking, he fails to do.
I would recommend the book for anyone who wants a real challenge and a wild ride into what gives every appearance of viewing the world through a schizophrenic lens. In my line of work, schizophrenia is a matter of fact occurrence so I'm somewhat familiar with those afflicted. It is an example of schizophrenia plainly. And as the author says in the first three sentences all is without context, recognizable patterns, or coherence.
Richard E H Phelps II
Mingo
