I SMELL ESTHER WILLIAMS

by Mark Leyner ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 15, 1982

Leyner's experimental prose is the kind which, after a taste, an adventurous reader will either spit right back up or try to chew on a while longer, expecting that it might possibly begin to make some sort of sense. Much along the lines of the New-York-school poetry of the third-generation (Padgett, Berrigan, Waldman, et al.)--but without the verse-format--it shovels image upon non-sequitur and vice versa: ""You're a real woman, a kind of lusting dionysian midget-wrestler nymphomaniac who leaks like an idling chevy malibu, you're like game fowl, bark gum, venison, buffalo, you're like a beef cannoli. But there's a murderer in your station wagon, and his skull is a ballroom with a chorus girl inside, and his heart is a gnarled bladder, and tonight you will suffocate in the warmth of his yellow impetiginous cheeks, because he loves you, he loves you more than he loved the intoxicating breath of his orthodontist."" And, except for the glimmer of center and focus in one story, ""A Bedtime Story For My Wife,"" all the pieces here offer rhythms, vocabulary, and juxtapositions--but none of the pleasures or interest of prose fiction. For unselective connoisseurs of the literary-outrageous only.

Pub Date: Jan. 15, 1982

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Fiction Collective--dist. by Flatiron (175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010)

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1982

Categories: FICTION