Et Tu, Babe

by Mark Leyner

Book Overview

In this fiendishly original new novel, Mark Leyner is a leather-blazer-wearing, Piranha 793-driving, narcotic-guzzling monster who has potential rivals eliminated by his bionically enhanced bodyguards, has his internal organs tattooed, and eavesdrops on the erotic fantasies of Victoria's Secret models -- which naturally revolve around him. Leyner's jet-propelled roller derby through the cultures of celebrity, cyberpunk, and rabid egotism is exhilaratingly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679745068
• ISBN13: 9780679745068
• Release Date: August 1993
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

If I were trapped on a desert island...

Okay, so one day I was mulling over the question "If you were trapped on a desert island and could have only one movie, one album and one book, what would they be?" Without much thought I declared, "Movie: 'Pee-Wee's Big Adventure.' Album 'The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to The Ketchup and Mustard Man' by the Billy Nayer Show. Book: 'Et Tu Babe' by Mark Leyner. Then I'd spend the rest of my life chuckling maniacally and eating coconuts." It took me about 8 years to find this book. Sometime back in my adolescence, I ran across the "Visceral tattooing" portion of "Et Tu Babe" excerpted in "Harpers." Thinking it was pretty funny, I clipped it out and thought I should buy the book. Being the spacy teen that I was, I lost the clipping and promptly forgot the name of the book and the author. Fast forward eight years and someone sends me Leyner's "Tooth Imprints on a Corndog." My immediate reaction was to jump up onto my sofa and shout "This is the guy! THE GUY!!!" I promptly bought everything he ever wrote. Words cannot express the love. After the first time I read "Et Tu Babe," I couldn't stop going back and rereading portions of it. I was pulling it back off my shelf every day. People would call me on the phone and I'd say "Wait a sec...let me read you something." and then I'd become unintelligable with laughter attempting to read them some excerpt. Finally I lent my copy to a friend and found myself lost--tortured!--without it. So I bought another copy. I lent that one out. Then I bought another copy... I now have a STACK of copies of "Et Tu Babe" so that I can do my part to "seed the world with Team Leyner thought." Sure, Leyners verbose, tangential absurdism is not for everyone (all you Chris Moore fans can just run back home to Mommy, alright?) but if you want GENUINELY laugh-out-loud comedy that doesn't pull any punches, run (don't walk!) and buy this book.

One of the defining moments of my life.

I was fourteen. I went to the library to do research for a biology paper. I noticed an discarded copy of this book on sale for 25 cents. Since I liked the cover, I bought it. Well, I ended up with an F on the paper, but the book ended up being quite influential. Thanks to Mark Leyner I slowly lost my mind and had to find it, bit by bit, and reassemble it like some patchwork quilt. Everyone's teenage years should be so fruitful...

Surfing Lava while Flexing My Muscles

A novel written while needing to pee very badly. Wacky, fast-paced, very short. Like a squash ball bounced of his oiled pectorals, Leyner's novel of narcissism and nudity carooms around the inside of your skull, leaving little untouched. Pick it up on a flight to Los Angeles, and look at the beautiful people in a whole new way.

Never, EVER ask this man what he's doing for a follow up

"Et Tu, Babe" is, in essence, a sequel to a book (Leyner's brilliantly bizarre "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist") which wasn't actually a coherant novel. Critics embraced the former, but what was Leyner going to do for an encore.... Whoo boy. What he did was write a 1000 mph masterpiece about a megalomaniac author named Mark Leyner who wrote a masterpiece called "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist", steals Lincoln's Morning Breath, performs his own internal organ surgeries, gets a set of bodygaurds who fulfill his every paranoic whim, and is sentenced to having one item permanently removed from his household every month by the FBI. Of course, there's more, but no review could possibly get to it. A little more accessible than "Gastroenterologist", but no less insane. Hysterically perfect.

Mark Leyner has Lost His Mind

"Can I help you?" "Yes," she said. "There's a new album out, I'm not sure what the name of it is... but it's the sound of two men lifting tremendous weights. I wish I could remember the name of it... oh, I was just talking to someone about it." --from "Et Tu, Babe" If you were insulted by this paragraph, Mark Leyner isn't for you. If you sat there going, "what is going on here?"... Mark Leyner isn't for you. If you wondered whether the weights are Nautilus or barbell, Mark Leyner is for you. The premise of the book is essentially that Mark Leyner has gone completely insane after the sales of his last, resoundingly popular volume. He's assembled a crack marketing team (1-900-T-Leyner) to promote his heavily-armed book tours. He practices self surgery. He has a book of nude photographs of himself, taken with a defense spy sattelite. And he gets a tatoo in radioactive ink on his internal organs to impress xray technicians. If it is to be said that this book has a plot, the plot is this: Mark Leyner is avoiding the FBI after stealing a vial of Abraham Lincoln's morning breath. You now know all you need to buy this book. In fact, you probably already know whether it'll be dog-eared and read fanatically to your friends (mine is) or put it on the 'eventually pile. (c) 1996 Danyel Fishe