The New York Times Book Review - Charlie Jane Anders
Gone With the Mind is a blindingly weird novel: a book-length stand-up routine in which a man free-associates about his life to a mostly empty room, mixing the philosophical and the scatological with abandon. At times, it seems to be an argument against autobiography, as well as a lament about the impossibility of actually communicating with an audience. But after Leyner gets done slicing the fictionalized version of his life into small and disconnected fragments, the slivers turn out to draw blood…If you learn to roll with the Tristram-Shandy-on-nondrowsy-cough-syrup circumlocution, Gone With the Mind may worm into your brain. Leyner makes the case fairly late in the book for a kind of meaning through randomness: In the same way that tarot cards, taken in a group, signify something, a burst of vivid, unconnected images can leave a powerful impression.
Publishers Weekly
01/11/2016
Leyner (The Sugar Frosted Nutsack) applies his trademark brand of absurd, postmodern metafiction to this interesting autobiographical novel. The fictional Mark Leyner in this book is giving a reading of his new autobiography in the food court of a mall. His mom introduces him, occupying the first 40 pages of the book with a few random stories of his childhood, before letting him speak. The audience, made up of a Panda Express worker and a Sbarro employee on their break, doesn’t pay attention at all. Leyner proceeds to explain how the concept of his autobiography evolved from a first-person shooter video game to its current form, with the help of an imaginary intern. The intern serves at points as both his collaborator and his interlocutor in imagined conversations, urging him to work on the autobiography. Throughout his philosophical musings and nonlinear childhood stories, he never really gets around to a traditional autobiography, but he does paint a loving portrait of his mother and recounts a wrenching battle with prostate cancer. The q&a session after the reading is a transcript of a conversation with his mother in a bathroom stall at the mall. Though it’s whimsical and unconventional, this is probably Leyner’s most mature work. There is plenty of sincere storytelling throughout, and Leyner’s masterly ability to interlace humor with existential dilemmas makes for a compelling novel, autobiographical or not. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
"This is Mark Leyner's best book, and that's saying something. He's always been the benchmark when it comes to comic brilliance and anarcho-absurdist zeal, and this book is as charged and hilarious as anything he's written. But Gone With The Mind dazzles in even stranger and more incisive ways, and, as the smoke clears from the stunning fireworks of Leyner's prose, a moving portrait of a mother and son emerges. Mark Leyner has finally bared his post-human heart."—Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask and The Fun Parts
"Truly absurd and absurdly true."—Charlie Jane Anders, New York Times
"Dazzling, hilarious, heartfelt and entirely-mind-blowingly-original, Mark Leyner's fictional memoir, Gone With The Mind, confirms the author's status as one of the most singular, wild-ass and brilliantly fearless voices in American literature. In prose that is equal parts Roth, Joyce, Scientific American and the Marx Brothers, Gone With The Mind delineates the deep soul and life story of man staring down the barrel of mortality-in the food court of a New Jersey mall. There isn't a convention Mark Leyner does not shatter, nor an aspect of 21st century culture-from robot rape to first person shooter games-he does not reexamine and render fresh. Quite possibly the first literary work of genius-comic and otherwise-of the new millennium."—Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
"It's almost impossible to write something that's this out-and-out hilarious and this touching, this moving. But Leyner's done it. The guy has a mother of a mind. Don't know quite how it gets him to the grocery store and back, but it's given birth to this astonishing, completely openhearted, completely unprecedented book."—Amy Heckerling, writer, director, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless
"So utterly blown away by this book! If your average autobiography has a writer painting a self-portrait with oils or watercolors, Gone With The Mind sees Mark Leyner gleefully vivisecting himself. You will know Mark Leyner-biblically, medically, metaphysically, and otherwise-when you do yourself the mitzvah of reading it. I envision other authors' memoirs shuffling off shelves into trashcans when Leyner's book is placed alongside them. It's going to knock your socks off."—Rob Delaney, co-writer and star of Catastrophe
"A novel that is, by turns, autobiographical, fictional, touching and just flat-out insane.... I loved the thing."—Jason Sheehan, NPR
"Did you ever wonder who birthed the current crop of post-modern darlings? Look no further then Mark Leyner. Leyner is the original charged particle, formally inventive, hilariously funny, completely original. His newest work, Gone With The Mind, both satirizes the non-fiction novel and infuses it with his signature surreal pathos. Think Beckett on acid. Read this book."—Darcey Steinke, author of Sister Golden Hair
"There's a sweet story to be had [here] for those who appreciate the author's singularly outlandish wit.... Buy the ticket and take the ride."—Kirkus
"Absurd and profound."—The Millions
"Whimsical and unconventional, this is probably Leyner's most mature work. There is plenty of sincere storytelling throughout, and Leyner's masterly ability to interlace humor with existential dilemmas makes for a compelling novel, autobiographical or not."—Publishers Weekly
"Every bit as self-referential and genre-bending as his previous fiction.... An exercise in deferred gratification that is itself immensely entertaining and surprisingly gratifying."—Kathleen Rooney, Chicago Tribune
"Electrifying and theatrical.... You never know what Mark is going on about, but you can't stop listening."—Kenneth Champeon, BookPage
"[A] high-spirited satiric romp."—Jonathan Dee, Harper's
"Totally wild, dark, zany, and fun."—Josie Adams, Bon Appétit
"Trippy, hilarious."—New York Magazine
"Structurally daring, stylistically innovative.... Gone With The Mind provides a welcome kick to the autobiography genre."—Ryan Vlastelica, A.V. Club
"Exhilarating.... One of the most refreshing pieces of psychoanalytic fiction we've come across."—Paolo Vergara, ZYZZYVA
"Compulsively readable.... Gone with the Mind isn't the first novel that fictionalizes its author, and it won't be the last, but it is absolutely one of the most inventive displays of this delicate sort of fictional act."—Steven Petite, The Millions
"Aesthetically radical, but poignantly human - in the way the best stand-up comedy is.... It's wholly provocative, confrontational, unsettling and insightfully funny. And smart. Did I mention smart? This is the voice of an OG polymath spitting epistemology, Japanese otaku culture, post-humanism, manga, zoology, Hollywood, post-structuralism, brutalist architecture, media studies, sports trivia, lexicography, 1,000 years of literature and a million other things like Kendrick Lamar, but all for a purpose and seamlessly and with total control: it's a beautiful thing to watch."—Ed Taylor, Buffalo News
"A wicked and weird trip through the absurdly funny author's life and psyche."—Jim Kiest, San Antonio Express-News
Kirkus Reviews
2015-12-22
Things have been positively normal around here for a while; it must be time for another dose of Leyner (The Sugar Frosted Nutsack, 2012, etc.). "Before I start, I'd like to say: Fuck everyone who said I was too paradoxical a hybrid of arrogant narcissism and vulnerable naïveté to succeed in life (even though they were right)" writes Leyner to set the stage. So begins the alleged autobiography of the author Kirkus once dubbed "the poet laureate of the MTV generation." If The Tetherballs of Bougainville (1997) was about Leyner's father, this is an affectionate if honest love letter to his mother, Muriel. Not that the gravity of family drama stops Leyner from going full-on meta with a nesting-doll scenario of such surreal dimensions that there's no doubt it's really him. First of all, it's not even a straight-up autobiography. It's a novel about Leyner performing a reading of his autobiography in the food court of the Woodcreek Plaza Mall along with his mother, a few fast-food drones—and absolutely no other audience. After an introduction by his mother, Leyner explains the origin of Gone with the Mind, which started as an autobiography in the form of a first-person shooter that begins when the author is assassinated or commits suicide. His ghost must then travel backward in time undoing the events of his life. "The, uh…the goal of the game is to successfully reach my mother's womb, in which I attempt to unravel or unzip my father's and mother's DNA in the zygote, which will free me of having to eternally repeat this life." His mother's reaction? "It almost seems like overkill to me." Despite the hyperstylized self-satire at work here, there's a sweet story to be had for those who appreciate the author's singularly outlandish wit. It's pointless trying to classify or summarize Leyner's work. By now readers who get it are prepared to buy the ticket and take the ride.
