BEST -AUTHOR- BEST : MARK LEYNER [2]

.-  You've described your work as '' animated by a spirit of unhinged generosity,'' is that hard to maintain as you age?

Actually not. I was telling Rick Kisonak that a possible interpretation of the title '' The Mark Leyner Reader '' is that there's only one reader left [ a little joke about my mass appeal].

But even that wouldn't matter much. I'm like one of those deranged soldiers they find on some remote island still fighting a war that's ended decades ago.

I am supremely stubborn dude and, honestly, doing this work has never given me a greater sense of jubilation, and I suspect, that feeling suffuses the work itself.

.-  Do you have a No. 1 fan? Tell me about him or her.

There's a marvelous musician by the name of Jonny Polonsky. And when this Jonny Polansky was in high school, back in the early 90s, and he was reading my book :

'' My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist,'' he ran across my phone number, which I'd perhaps inadvisably, incorporated in the book, and he called it. We've developed a close, abiding friendship.

.-  You were one of a trio of young writers famously interviewed by Charlie Rose In 1996. Have you and Jonathan Franzen ever compared notes about it?

We haven't had the opportunity. But let me run down my two most vivid memories.

First of all, I was supporting this horrible, ridiculous goatee, like Jack Cassidy in an old '' Love, American Style '' episode, which made it impossible for me to watch even a minute of it.

Second, David Foster Wallace and Jonathan hadn't, I'm fairly sure, done any TV at that point, and they seemed pretty nervous. I'd done quite a bit, including some night network shows.

As we waited to start taping, David was getting especially jittery, and he asked me I'd go down to the street and smoke a cigarette with him. While we were there on the sidewalk smoking, not saying much, out of nowhere he very solemnly apologized for having called me the AntiChrist in an interview.

I assured him that there was absolutely nothing to apologize for. Anyone who knows me at all would know that being called the AntiChrist is just the sort of thing that makes me giddy with delight.

I'll always remember that exchange beyond what actually transpired during the interview itself [ which I can't recall at all, to tell you the truth].

.-  You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

The great proto-surrealist Alfred Jarry, the writer and diarist Anais Nin and the impossible R.W. Fassbinder. I"m thinking Korean fried chicken and loads of soju and beer.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.