The Michigan Daily - Thursday, April 5, 1990 - Page 9 Gone with the mind Mark Leyner creates literature of the absurd by Carolyn Pajor gather the 10,000 americans in ir- reversible comas and book them into rooms at the sheraton center in midtown when clouds in the night sky resemble the x-ray of christ's cheekbone shattered by the split-fingered fastball of the devil the exact date of the atomic armageddon will be written in the cursive script of hairs on a bar of soap With the Mind," by Mark Leyner I would not want to psychoana- lyze Mark Leyner. His latesthnovel, My Cousin, My Gastroenterolo- Sgist, is touted on the back cover as a "postmodern Odyssey, with char- acters who travel through strange lands made out of fragments of the familiar." Douglas Adams, meet William F. Buckley, Jr. Leyner is. a sesquipidalian, cyberpunk James Joyce with an excremental vision. *His first nameless character is an "infinitely hot, dense dot" who picks up his monozygotic replicant in a bar with the shmoozy, "We're all larval psychotics and have been since the age of two..." Her reply? "You have the glibness,; ciality, shallowness, lack superfi- of guilt of Irish or Greek neighborhoods, "there were anorexic neighbor- hoods, manic and compulsive neighborhoods..." Here is a place where cocktails evaporateato the ceiling, condense and drizzle back down into the highball glass. For- tune cookies read, "You will de- velop a pilonial cyst." Shnauzers get pulvarized by buttock-shaped seat-testing machines used by air- lines. And here one can meet Bev, a speech pathologist, and her pa- tient, Bob, who has a type of spon- taneous aphasia and can only speak in stacatto, telegraphic style. Here is Bob driving through a Midwest- ern Interstate: "Corn corn corn corn Stuckey's..." My Cousin, My Gastroen- terologist is a fast and slick glimpse of the world through Mark Leyner's futuristic, frothing eyes. The 21st-century hallucination harkens back to the absurdity of life today. Stream of consciousness has never been so magnetic. MARK LEYNER will be reading at the Le Minotaure Gallery, 115 E. Ann, tonight at 7:30 p.m. Admis- sion is free. RECORDS Continued from page 8 name changes, from Big Politics to Friend to the Poor and even Unti- tled. Unfortunately, Harding's glar- ing indecision comes through loud and clear on Hear Comes the Groom. The music, for the most part, is well-written and brilliantly performed. The fact remains, how- ever, that lyrically, Harding really has very little to say. From the outset, Wes sets the pace with the title cut and "Cathy's New Clown," providing a bebop sound of old with piano, guitar and a lively drum beat. Even so, the re- mainder of the album offers only re- vamped versions of these core tunes, and the listener is left with very lit- tle once the instruments become quiet. Harding does find limited success with a few selections such as the simple, uplifting "When the Sun Comes Out" and "Nothing I'd Rather Do," which has a memorable chorus. Notably, on these cuts Harding em- ploys Joel Peskin, Dave Boruff and Bob Payne a.k.a. The Dalai Lama Horns. The strong brass section helps Harding loosen up and "do his stuff" vocally, which works in his favor. There's no doubt that Harding is still at the experimental stage, and he attempts a number of diverse songs on the album, but the fact that he's managed to write and record 15 tracks is overshadowed by many misplaced metaphors and confused chord progressions. Simply put, Harding fails to make up in quantity what he lacks in quality. "Red Rose and The Briar," an acoustic selection, seems to labor on indefinitely and "Things Snowball" sounds almost like a tribute to Bob Dylan, proving that the only artist who can get away with sounding like Dylan is Dylan himself (OK, and maybe -Tom Petty on a good day). All in all, one- can hardly call Harding's musical ability into ques- tion, for the talent is there, and as soon as Harding finds his niche he's sure to find an audience willing to listen. -Scott Kirkwood " simple. For close to one hundred years, the Michigan Daily has been consistently rated the top daily campus newspaper in Ann Arbor. Join a winning team. Meetings for News, Arts, Sports, and Opinion staff every Sunday at 1 p.m. Gofri Mark Leyner The Residential College Players are currently accepting proposals from students interested in directing productions next fall. Applications are available on the RC Players bulletin board (outside the East Quad auditorium). For more information call David at 747-6423. Auditions and Opportunities runs occasionally in Daily Arts. If you need performers, stage help or anything else for your production, bring any relevant information to Alyssa or Kristin on the second floor of the Student Publications building, 420 Maynard Street. and realistic long-term plans that excite me right now..." Leyner serves up pop culture with a garish twist: his world is one where "psychopathology re- places ethnicity as the critical de- mographic determinant." So instead Save the LP" . Daily Arts 1 E I c= Read Gotta Love It Daily Sports 1 A JOHN WATERS FILM °a I What's A Man To Do When He's Old, Rich And Bored? Marry A Twenty-Year-Old. 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