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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Choke/ Palahniuk Article

Ellis

18:16 / 03.07.01

I get my copy in a few days, yay...

Has anyone read it yet?
What did ye think?
Did it sufferby being too similar to his previous work?
Do you think he is a one trick pony?

Also, found a great and pretty inspiring article Poets & Writers Interview:

Fight Club was written in a stark style and an urgent voice. "What Tyler says about being the crap and the slaves of history," says the narrator, "that's how I felt. I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have." It was a breakneck race for a "near-life experience," and a wicked satire on a dark side of the zeitgeist. For a young generation of readers, it was like holding up a mirror to their lives for the first time. It started selling by word of mouth, and soon became an underground success.

"What I did," he says, "was the first thing most people do--plug in the TV so they have some noise while they unpack. And there was no TV reception at all." Nothing came in, not even the local channels. Palahniuk felt complete, blind panic. He wanted to move out as fast as possible. But he didn't, and eventually he settled into a new rhythm.

Unwittingly Palahniuk had stepped outside of the electronic sphere of consciousness that surrounds the globe, the sphere that naturalist David Quammen advised people to step out of so they could think their own thoughts. And that is exactly what Palahniuk did.

"Writing a book requires focusing your attention for so long to get so much of a narrative in your head," he says. "And you can't do that with TV constantly bombarding you with dozens of narratives. We really have to make a conscious effort to step out of the culture in order to write anything new that reflects the culture."

Ellis

18:51 / 10.07.01

Nice prose but where's the plot?
It has all the things you expect from a Palahniuk book, repeated phrases ("See: Tanya"), lots of nice aphorisms ("Criticism is fake participation"), minimal cast of fuck ups, sparse writing and a few aphorisms about Jesus and his death.
Nothing new. Well apart from the fact that it doesnt start at the end.
In 292 pages nothing happens, the narrator works at a 17th Century theme park, visits his mother at a mental hospital, has flashbacks to his childhood and hangs around with his friend who is a sex addict (like Palahniuk's father)collects rocks, and sometimes has sex while trying to figure out whether he is the son of God.
The first couple of pages are interesting, and the last three are quite exciting, but inbetween? Pah.
This was supposed to be a collection of short stories linked by sex but instead it reads as an uneven mess.

You don't know where it's heading but to be honestyou don't really care- whether this is intentional on the part odf the author or just sloppy writing I am not quite sure.

Bored the hell out of me. Very disappointing.

[That said, I will probably love it after the second reading]

[ 10-07-2001: Message edited by: Ellis ]

Ronald Thomas Clontle

19:39 / 10.07.01

quote:Originally posted by Ellis:
The first couple of pages are interesting, and the last three are quite exciting, but inbetween? Pah.
]

Ah, nice tip. I'll remember that the next time I want to kill time reading books I have no intentions of purchasing at Barnes & Noble.

Any chance this book would translate to film well, Ellis? I really love the Fight Club movie, a lot.

Pin

20:04 / 10.07.01

Mmm... no plot, so I doubt it would make a good film, but still... do you actually need aplot? Palahniuk (how do you pronouce that?) can write really fucking well (should you be in doubt) and I'm not sure if his stuff really needs a plot. But can I ask... do all his books (other then Choke, obviously, as it has no plot) have twists like Fight Club's?

Ellis

20:30 / 10.07.01

Well gee Pin, if we told u there was a twist you would expect it... But no, there are no twists. Of course I could be lying or not to not spoil the endings, or not.

09:58 / 11.07.01

oh yeah, i actually bought that issue of POETS & WRITERS. and what would be tucked inside it right now but another interview of Palahniuk from playboy.com (sorry i don't have the address handy, but if you go to chuck-palahnuik.net or whatever it is it'll point you to tons of interviews, etc) and in this very interview it says and i quote, "pronounced Paula-nick"

Shocked? i certainly was. Well, i guess that's another mystery solved.

09:58 / 11.07.01

well, haven't read choke yet, but having just finished survivor i felt i had to chime in. it seems to me that palahniuk's subjects revolve verrry closely around one another. ok smartasses, i know most writers have a certain place to look down from as they write, but palahniuk's characters & themes seem to be almost funhouse mirror images of each other. that's cool, i'm not bashing the chuck-meister, but considering the subject matter, putting his books together creates quite an unsettling picture of our culture, succeeding where other writers who attempt to "switch things up" between each novel fail. anybody agree/disagree? am i nuts or just talking out of my ass? also, i always thought that palahniuk's strength was in his stories, not his prose. his actual writing seems a bit...spacious, or mebbe the way it's printed just lends to that roomy/vacant feeling. seriously, i often check for lines of text between the visible ones on the page. it just seems like...there should be more.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:58 / 11.07.01

Having read and enjoyed Fight Club, I found the next two novels to be great in initial concept but fairly crappy in execution. Pin, I'd certainly disagree that he can write "really fucking well" - he has one voice and one style. Although some authors can make this work across a few novels with only slight variations, in Palahniuk's case the fact that his subsequent narrators are superficially so different yet all talk exactly the same way gets increasingly obvious and annoying. It's a fairly awkward and clumsy voice at that, which I'd thought was part of the idiosyncratic skill of Fight Club, but which I now suspect is the author's natural voice and symptomatic of his limitations.

All of which is very frsutrating and disappointing, because the basic themes of both Survivor and Invisible Monsters are ones which I'd really like to see explored at least competently.

06:01 / 17.07.01

I went to see a reading by Chuck last night. He read chapters 7 and 27 which both seem to be independent short stories. He was telling us how he attends a writers group every Tuesday and every week they bring along something they have wrote. I got the impression that he would write a short story and bigger ideas would emerge from there.
Chuck has really big biceps and obviously lifts weights. I don't know why I found this suprising.
To break the ice he told as an anecdote about a waiter in London, met at a book signing, who had admitted messing with the food of the famous long before Fight Club came out. Most notably Margaret Thatcher.
The most interesting part for me was when someone a question along the lines of " Do you feel your boks encourage the destruction of society?". He sidestepped the question and went on for a bit about how he knows that people splice porn into family films anyway.

Rollo Kim, on location

07:34 / 17.07.01

When he can pick up up on beautiful little fragments like that - who needs a plot?!

08:23 / 17.07.01

I've read his first three books so far, and I have to say he does seem to be playing a gimick. Everyone always seems to be related to one and other by the end of the book. Shocking is cool and all, but after awhile he seems to be falling into the same conventional trap he's trying to avoid. Survivor was the biggest disappointment. Gotta say I loved Invisible Monsters though. My fave of the three. Had a hard on through half the book.

Ellis

08:23 / 17.07.01

With Choke, I get the feeling that he wrote quite a few chapters with the idea of them being short stories and just linked them together with a plot, which is why the book doesn't flow well.

Survivor was originally a short story which he extended.

17:15 / 20.07.01

The most interesting bit about the reading I attended was when he chatted about the nature of his work. Romantic comedy was the actual word used. Any thoughts of rebellion or revolution were quickly quashed.
How do people read Chuck? As romantic comedy? As cult literature which takes sly swipes at mainstream life?

02:09 / 18.07.02

I just saw him do a reading tonight. First thing I noticed about him was what Buk already mentioned--the man must work out. If I didn't know any better I'd think he was a fireman or something that requires some degree of athleticism. The second thing I noticed was that the guy's done this sort of things numerous times. It didn't come off as a schtick, but you could tell that he'd rehearsed everything he was going to say. Told some funny anecdotes about growing up w/ pixies that were spies for Santa Claus, the guy he knew who'd cut porn into Disney movies, his buddies that raided the medicine cabinets at open houses and palming M&M's at Sexaholics Anonymous meetings. I haven't read any of his books, but I think the argument could me be made that he's more of a compiler of stories rather than a writer who makes complete fabrications.

He eluded to the fact that the main theme in his books is being a con-man to sate the character's emotional needs rather than their financial ones. Reminded me of the bit in Mamet's "House of Games" where Mantegna explains to the psychiatrist that a con man is not a con(fidence) man because he posseses confidence, but rather because he gives confidence to the mark. Something to think about anyways....

13:23 / 25.07.02

I've read everything so far, and am looking forward to the one coming out in september (there's this poem in a book of african nursery rhymes that makes babies die, and this collection of oddballs goes on a mission to steal every copy out of every libray in the country).

I think Chuck is all about authorial voice. If you love the voice (as I do) you can read him writing about anything. Sometimes the meandering of Choke got to me a little, but there were also twenty moments where I was laughing my head off uncontrollably and reading passages to strangers. The part about the monkey and the chestnuts comes immediately to mind. But again, it's all voice and perspective. If you're not so crazy about the way his books sound, you're going to bored stiff by most of his novels. They're not exactly plot heavy. He would probably happyily rehash one moment out over the course of each novel.

14:38 / 21.08.02

I haven't read Choke yet, but from this thread I suspect it will leave me with the same vague sense of disappointment that Survivor and Invisible Monsters did. While both books covered themes that got my attention, and while Palahniuk's prose style appeals to me, they felt like like retreads of Fight Club. Well, variations on a formula might be a better description. I kept hoping for them to develop differently than they did, but all the while I knew they wouldn't.

20:25 / 21.08.02

wow, Giant Robot, you didn't like Invisible Monsters? If that was too much like Fight Club, you should definitely stay well clear of Choke.

The new one coming out in september might break him out of his rut, if only because it has more than one main character. He should really try a book in the third person. I bet it'd challenge the hell out of his brain and make for an interesting experiment.

13:44 / 23.08.02

I thought Choke was utterly horrible. Survivor, on the otherhand, I fancied to be one of the best books of the past few years. He has a new book called Lullaby coming out soon.

16:57 / 31.08.02

loved fight club, loved survivor even more, choke - so far, it's not grabbing me like the others. typical palahnuik though, addiction, hard luck, someone taking advantage of someone else, i'll keep reading.

20:38 / 31.08.02

I've read Choke, but nothing else (obviously I've seen the film of Fight Club, which I love, but that doesn't really count.)

Even considering that, I found a lot of the themes very familiar; perhaps that's because I've read a lot of Coupland. Darker than Coupland, certainly, but there's the same sense of a writer with a certain amount of themes, exploring them in different ways but essentially saying the same thing over and over again. I quite like the way he says them but the fact that I could read the whole thing very, very quickly indicates that there wasn't really anything really challenging about the ideas.

I'd be cautious about recommending Choke if you're already familiar with that scene, but if you're not then it's definitely worth reading, and if you're familiar but you like the style and themes anyway then it's still a good example.

20:48 / 03.09.02

i just finished choke, and totally loved it. i agree with the impulse mentioned above about wanting to read passages to other people all the time... it definately makes you want to "share." i don't get this universal criticism above that there's no plot... i was actually surprised by the amount of forward motion and narrative drive in the story... Vincent goes through quite a lot of changes throughout the story, and Denny in a subplot goes through even more. Strange events pile on top of each other to increase the pressure on Vincent and he digs himself further and further into an emotional and social hellhole... every chapter, he making worse and worse choices; he's certainly not the same person in every chapter nor is his situation static... so i'm not really sure what everyone means by saying it meanders and has no plot... anyone?

12:45 / 06.09.02

There's "no plot" because it's primarily a psychological novel. Choke, that is.

That said, it smacks of Fight Club. But I still liked it. The "twists" in the last few chapters fully redeemed it from the vague disappointment I was feeling as I approached the end.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:20 / 06.09.02

Just bought "Lullaby"... am expecting great things. "Fight Club"- amazing. "Survivor"- more so. "Invisible Monsters"- not quite as good but still rocked a snow-leopard's ass. "Choke"- half-genius, half treading water. All worth reading, however.