As far as what I do, my value as a writer is certainly not to try to recapitulate a 19th century form. Certain styles of narrative don't conform to my style of experiencing the world.
— Mark Leyner
I thought of myself as kind of an anarchist all my whole adult life, from the days when I was 15 or 16.
Sometimes I think my purpose is as a saboteur when I'm working with other people, derailing what they're trying to do or taking things to a ludicrous extremity.
I don't walk around chuckling all the time. My outlook is very bleak. It's worse than bleak, it's apocalyptic.
My relationship with my readers is somewhat theatrical. One of the main things I try to do in my work is delight my readers.
I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.
'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.
I can tell from about 20 yards away when someone has a manuscript for me. I can just tell - they have that look.
When I started, I wanted to be thought of as tortured and seductive, not funny, but humor tends to be a reflexive part of a person's sensibility. It's an almost impossible thing to teach anyone, which leads me to believe that it's intuitive.
The interesting thing about something in the back of your mind is that it can travel pretty far back in your mind.
My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.
People really want to believe that there is no fiction. I think they find it much easier to imagine that novelists are writing memoirs, writing about their lives, because it's difficult to conceive that there's a great imaginary life in which you can participate.
I always thought of my work as being animated by a spirit of unhinged generosity.
