Harmony Books
New York -- ©1995 -- 216pp
ISBN: 0-517-59384-X
A collection of short stories/essays.
"to merci pinto leyner"
"young bergdorf goodman brown"
"hulk couture"
"just happy to see you, chula"
"bassinet mattress day"
"immoral allure"
"the mary poppins kidnapping"
"the (illustrated) body politic"
"great pretenders"
"the good seed"
"dreams girls usa"
"the making of "tooth imprints on a corn dog""
"thoughts while listening to mahler in the afternoon"
"dangerous dads"
"eat at cosmo's"
"oh, brother"
"mi di"
Mostly the works seemed extremely pretentious. "the good seed" had me laugh out loud, and I was amused by pieces of "eat at cosmo's" and "the making of ...", but the amusement was much to rare in coming and not worth the trip. Here's a random sample of Mr. Leyner's writing (truly, I opened the book and this is the first sentence I read):
"The exemplary dad was an intermittent figure -- a Heroic Evanescence -- disappearing every morning into a mythic world of commerce, leaving behind a vestigial nimbus of aftershave, that ghostly olfactory proxy of the ever-departing father. But no longer. Proportional caretaking and quality time are the rules du jour."
Leyner's prose weighs heavily on the tongue. My university creative writing teachers probably would have written on my paper (if I had written such sentences on an assignment): "Interesting images. Over-written."
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