Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Choke-Chuck Palahniuk

I'm writing this assuming you've read the novel, so there are spoilers.


This was the first work by Palahniuk that I've read, and I wasn't terribly impressed.  It wasn't a bad novel, there was just one thing that bothered me from the beginning of the book until the end.  Palahniuk's attempt at making the narrator and other characters speak like a typical twenty-something young adult seemed so artificial and forced that it distracted me from the story.  After only a few chapters, I came across more uses of "for serious" than I have in my entire life.  It may seem like a minor flaw, but for me, it took away from the reading experience.

That's not to say it was a bad piece of literature.  The supporting characters were well developed, especially Victor's mother and Denny.  For me, Victor served as a means to hear about those two characters because I did not find him as interesting.  The reasons behind his sex addiction weren't as interesting to me as the things going on mentally with the mother and Denny.  Mrs. Mancini was obviously suffering from mental problems way before she ever wound up in that nursing home.  I'm no psychologist, but her paranoia was evident from the first memories of her presented to the reader (schizophrenia?).  An interesting question, considering her mentally degraded state by the end of the story, is whether her memory of stealing Victor from another woman is true or not.  Given her problems, it could very well be true.  But then, why go through all the trouble of constantly kidnapping him from his various foster homes.  Again, that could be explained by her mental issues.  Just a thought worth considering.

Denny may have been my favorite character.  It was interesting to see his process of dealing with his addiction.  Just as it seemed he had simply replaced his excessive masturbation with an excessive collection of rocks, he revealed that he planned to build something with all those rocks.  And when, thanks to Victor, it was destroyed, he wasn't even upset.  For him, it truly was all about the process.  Which, from my limited understanding of addiction recovery, seems to be the basis of 12 step programs: a journey, not a destination.

I felt Dr. Marshall was a disappointment.  Having her turn out to be a patient the entire time, for me, is too similar to telling some crazy, unbelievable story and then have the main character wake up and the audience realizes it was just a dream the whole time.  Pretty cliche (for example, Shutter Island did the same thing).

Victor's main function seemed to be talking about other characters in the story.  I didn't find him to be all that interesting on his own.  He struck me as fairly stock, seeking out casual sex to avoid a real relationship and the pain of losing someone.  Furthermore, the whole idea of pretending to choke to extort money from his pseudo-savior was so far-fetched that it also distracted me from the story itself.  Every time it was mentioned in the story, I would stop and think to myself, "Who the hell would actually keep giving money to some moocher who they saved from choking?  Isn't saving someone's life enough?"

All in all, I'll give it a 3 out of 5.

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