Cover of I Smell Esther Williams

I Smell Esther Williams

A community theater's production of Special Yearnings triggers a string of underground nuclear explosions from St. Louis to Worcester, Massachusetts. A man frantically swats at the blaze that his girlfriend has ignited in his trousers, while her family tries to figure out whether his agonized sign language means "Under the Volcano" or "No Time for Sergeants." Charo, Marianne Faithfull, and Napoleon's sister swap glittering witticisms and pornographic come-ons with languid aesthetes and unhinged suburbanites.

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Such scenarios are just par for the course in this gloriously disorienting volume by Mark Leyner, author of My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist and Et Tu, Babe, and a writer who plays the English language the way Jimi Hendrix played the guitar: at blinding speed, dangerous volume, and with a perfect mixture of lyricism and sheer menace.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 208 pages

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Liked I Smell Esther Williams? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked I Smell Esther Williams. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. No Free Lunches Shares fiction, humor, short stories
  2. Funny Side Up Shares fiction, humor, short stories
  3. Diary of an Emotional Idiot: A Novel Shares fiction, humor
  4. Jimmy Jazz Shares fiction, short stories, humor

“People who read I Smell Esther Williams tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs
  2. Godspeed
  3. A Child Again
  4. The Everlasting Story of Nory

“If you want more of the same (humor), start with these.”

  1. An Evening at GODs
  2. Pants on Fire: A Collection of Lies
  3. Awaken Your Perfect Self: How to Become Better Than Everybody Else
  4. Food-Free at Last: How I Learned to Eat Air

“If it was the short stories that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Pirate Therapy and Other Cures
  2. An Embarrassing Odour
  3. Your Body Is Changing
  4. Living it Up in Fiddly Falls: A Short Story

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Three Plays: Blithe Spirit / Hay Fever / Private Lives
  2. Mr Bean in Town
  3. Nuclear War
  4. Naked Masks: Five Plays