The Sugar Frosted Nutsack
A Novel
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3.5 • 22 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling and wildly imaginative novelist Mark Leyner, a romp through the excesses and exploits of gods and mortals.
High above the bustling streets of Dubai, in the world's tallest and most luxurious skyscraper, reside the gods and goddesses of the modern world. Since they emerged 14 billion years ago from a bus blaring a tune remarkably similar to the Mister Softee jingle, they've wreaked mischief and havoc on mankind. Unable to control their jealousies, the gods have splintered into several factions, led by the immortal enemies XOXO, Shanice, La Felina, Fast-Cooking Ali, and Mogul Magoo. Ike Karton, an unemployed butcher from New Jersey, is their current obsession.
Ritualistically recited by a cast of drug-addled bards, The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is Ike's epic story. A raucous tale of gods and men confronting lust, ambition, death, and the eternal verities, it is a wildly fun, wickedly fast gambol through the unmapped corridors of the imagination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sporting an even more eye-catching title than his previous books My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and the #1 New York Times bestseller Why Do Men Have Nipples? Leyner's latest is, insomuch as it is about anything, a tale of the gods. Gods like Mogul Magoo, "God of the Breast Implant and God of the Nut Sack"; Fast-Cooking Ali, whose masterpiece is the creation of "Woman's Ass"; Koji Mizokami, who fashioned the composer B la Bart k out of his own testicular growth; and the sadistic XOXO, god of Concussions, Dementia, and Alcoholic Blackouts. Their champion is one Ike Karton of Jersey City, N.J., a 48-year-old unemployed butcher, borderline anti-Semite, and favorite of La Felina, the oft-stoned goddess of Humility, despite his constant refrain of "Ike Always Keeps It Simple and Sexy" and his certainty that most women are Mossad agents ("If you're a married man and you're reading this, your wife is probably a Mossad agent!"). The story of Ike his composition and performance of the anthemic "That's Me (Ike's Song)," his seduction at the hands of La Felina, and inevitable suicide-by-cop has been recited by blind bards and feral twins throughout history, and known variously as Ike's Agony, the Sugar Frosted Nutsack, and another, unprintable, epigram. Only this time, the wicked XOXO has hacked into the book and, in an effort to make it too confusing to read, attempts to contaminate the myth with random offensive outbursts, wearying clich , and pointless references to the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Robespierre, and Alan Greenspan. But the real question is whether XOXO can possibly make Leyner's "novel" any weirder than it already is. Every sentence reads like a DMT-induced hallucination, adding up to an anarchic masterpiece of vulgarity, total pandemonium, and cartoonish free association; it may indeed be the craziest book ever written and adventurous readers in search of a seriously batty, one-of-a-kind work of unhinged imagination need look no further. Leyner and Ike Karton are heroes befitting our overloaded age, blurry yesterdays, and fungible times ahead.
Customer Reviews
Disappointing
I looked forward to this novel for years, having loved his earlier work. While there are some great passages, the whole self-referential theme is poorly executed and, at times, boring. I do appreciate how all the milieu that he espoused years ago has, sadly, come to pass. But instead of moving beyond that, to the "next place" that is coming, Leyner dawdles his moment in a masturbatory fantasy that disappoints.
It is depressing that his vision from his early career has come to pass. There is a similarity to his predicament and that faced by Pynchon when Vineland came out.
I so much wanted Leyner to come out with a masterpiece. If you do, too, don't read this book.