Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
A Book Report
By
Dani Hiller
Upon beginning reading Choke, one thing becomes immediately clear – the author, Chuck Palahniuk, really hates people. The main character, Victor Mancini, who’s not even Italian, is introduced as a child and instantly labeled “that stupid little kid,” among other unflattering titles. His best friend is often described as a pathetic, unlikable person who was fired from his job publicly for not meeting the authenticity standards in a recreated colonial village. Victor spends all of his free time hanging out with sex addicts and patients from a mentally disabled old folks home, and he has nothing nice to say about any of these people.
Victor’s mother raised him to believe that upsetting the balance of other people’s lives is the only way to justify his own existence. Despite this, Victor finds himself bringing peace to the elderly people he antagonizes and allows an unstable doctor to convince him that he is Christ born again and sent to save people, a delusion that is short-lived, like many of the presented philosophies in this book.
The title is inspired by Victor’s scheme of choking himself in public and living off the charity of those who rescue him. Ironically enough, he eventually employs this method in a predictably failed suicide attempt. Naturally the onlookers save him.
Victor presents us with many different tactics for making it through life, at one point instructing us in the correct way to have bathroom and airplane sex. Victor throws an absolute fit at the thought that he might ever be considered a good person, yet during those five minutes that he actually believes he is the Messiah, he does attempt to do the world some good. Unfortunately, this only ends in the accidental murder of his mother and the release of a deranged mental patient. It is ironic then that when Victor gives up all pretensions of ever wanting to help anyone that he actually manages to inspire his own religious movement, centered around rocks.
The humor is somewhat dark and many of the scenarios described are nothing short of unpleasant. Victor himself isn’t really even likable as much as he continuously manages to astound the reader with his lack of character, such as when he yells at his answering machine for leaving him news of his mother’s impending death, or when he lets the air out of a secretary’s tires for the purpose of taking over her desk. Whenever Victor’s childhood is mentioned one can picture a completely different individual and wonder how on earth he could ever have ended up this way, a fact the book obviously blames on his mother. An example of their deteriorating relationship is how Victor must impersonate other people from his mother’s life in order to visit her in the hospital. It is unclear whether Victor’s mother is cited as the cause for the insanity of the story or if she is merely there to amplify it.
Reading this book isn’t going to inspire anyone to be a better person, it isn’t going to restore anyone’s faith in god or the goodness of people and life in general. It isn’t going to help you find a point to your existence. The most one can hope for is a few amusing suggestions on how to waste time until you finally choke.
Book Report: Fluke by Christopher Moore
By Dani Hiller
Upon first beginning Fluke, a book about whales and the people who stalk them for environmental purposes, readers may find themselves worrying that they have accidentally stumbled across something that was written to inform them about our ocean friends and how we can help save them for the better of humanity and other predictable hippy propaganda. However, it isn’t long before author Christopher Moore manages to infuse his usual brand of outrageous comedic antics into this informative guide to marine animals and the practice of studying them scientifically.
The cast of characters includes a youthful marine behavioral biologist who’s past his prime, yet not admitting it, a flirtatious assistant with no documentable past, a psuedo-Rastafarian stoner named Kona, and a large, self-sufficient mess of orange stuff that appropriately calls itself ‘The Goo.’
The story progresses from being funny and slightly improbable to full-blown insanity as the hero, Quinn, travels inside the body of a whale to the underwater/underground dwelling of the Goo and its mysterious inhabitants, the whaley boys.
Moore somehow manages to make us forget that his main character is pushing fifty, and we find ourselves buying the idea that any single organism so ridiculously named could take over the entire earth and simultaneously kill everyone, at least for the sake of moving on to the next laugh. He rarely goes too far in depth on character development, but the dialogue is calculated to make the team of scientific whalers appear funny enough for it not to matter.
Moore also scores creative points when he creates showers out of sphincters, and he creeps us out when he endows half-whale/half-man creatures with retractable penises that probe at will. Moore throws out many story angels that he never really pursues and one begins to get the feeling that he wanted to write a much larger novel, but settled for something short and sweet instead, without all of the in-depth explanations that might have possibly bored his readers into thinking he was no longer funny, a method which might have been better utilized at the beginning of the book. Towards the end I found myself surprised that he could wrap things up so quickly, and Moore also leaves an opening for a sequel that, judging by his previous works, he will likely never write, but hey, it was funny while it lasted.