pygmy - first three chapters, things to come.

for the record, i used a sports reference in mockery of the other sports references. also, i'm giving chuck the benefit of the doubt that he's just trying to find a new voice and these past few mediocre books are just the transition to that new voice. he has one more chance.

lol! Ass patting is not discouraged! Discouragement of anti-ass-patting, however, is.

big S, the sport-reference critique was mostly aimed at general sarcasm...

And to be honest with you, I don't think there are any "secrets" to writing. I think the same writing that worked for Shakespeare, the same core-writing-fundamentals, are what Chuck and other minimalist writers have broken down to a system and made awesome stuff with in their best works. I think if Chucks stylistic expeditions will lead to anything great, they will be leading him back towards Survivor.

I don't feel like Chuck is an one-trick pony. In my opinion Fight Club, Survivor, Lullaby and Choke are each sublime in their own right. Just like Hamlet, Julius Caesar and Macbeth are each sublime in their own right.

Just with those four novels he has, in my book, already established himself in history. Everything from here on is just a huge bonus.

Hi there i just thought i'd let the board know that i happened to stumble across pygmy today while in Indigo at Yonge and Eglinton(Toronto). I am almost done and so far its quite good. It takes just the first few chapters to really adapt to the broken english. Also it is just as funny as all of his previous works. You guys will not be disapointed!!

I haven't been too active here on the boards but I'm been a member of the Cult for a few years now. Honestly, I like it. I'm only a few pages in and I think it's something different. I wasn't a big fan of 'Haunted' or 'Snuff' but I wouldn't say I hated them and I think, if anything, 'Pygmy' will fall into that category of Chuck for me. Not what I was expecting, but not a bad book.

Maybe he just doesn't want to be pigeonholed as one type of writer.

Hmm, don't literary agents and publishers make decisions on much less than three chapters GC? We know they do. I think anyone who has read these three chapters fully is more than qualified to say whether they like it or not, or, if it sucks, or not.
It is the writers job to keep us interested isn't it?
Entertained....etc etc etc
If I'd dragged this down from the shelf in a book shop and had read the first two pages I'd have put it back.

We're in the position of having only three chapters to judge....I think that this, sadly, may put a few off purchasing this little gem from the stable of Chuck.
Now if I could just get this bullet out of my foot..........

I didn't have any problem understanding it, but I have to listen to people speak broken English every day, so that might help.

I... am a little disappointed, I have to say. When I heard about the storyline for Pygmy, I was expecting something great. Now, I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot and say that I hate it, because there is a (very) small chance that I might read the whole thing and fall in love with it. But as for the first 30 pages, I was expecting a little more.

It could be the broken English that weirds me out. It's really hard to get used to, and seems almost cliched, in a way. I know, cliched seems a bad way to put it, but really. I don't know if that's exactly how our Pygmy would sound. Would he really constantly be thinking of how to kill every person he comes across? I'm liking the thoughts about American culture, and the derogatory mentions of God and it's "place" in American society, though. Pygmy, to me, sounds like what we (in our terrified-of-"evil-terrorists" crazy racist mindsets) think that he sounds like, and less of what he would actually probably sound like. Making sense? I don't know. I just had to put it out there.

I'm definitely going to buy it and read it, because I did it with Rant and Snuff. I'm just praying that maybe Pygmy's English gets better over his time in the U.S. and the broken English gets a little less broken. It might make reading a bit more enjoyable... I can see the elements of Chuck and his incredible beliefs, but the words are all mixed up.

i am taking the hard copy to my hammock now

I wouldnt go that far. Doesn't a onetrick pony only have, uh, ONE trick? Lullaby, Survivor, Fight Club, Choke. That's more than one trick. And those are only the ones Ive read.

But yeah, just from the first two pages, im not a huge fan of this new book. I'll definitely buy and read it though. But yeah, all grammar is gone. I liked it better when he had at least some...

And not to judge books by their synopsis, but Snuff looks/sounds terrible too...
But when you've written so many books, you're allowed to get lazy every few years.
Who knows, maybe the plot will make up for it, as usual.

I agree, but on a less ...rude scale.

I think it's hilarious! Maybe, like someone mentioned, it is easier to understand if you listen to broken English all the time anyway. As for the terrorists "thinking the way we think they would" and that being a bad thing -- this is satire, so isn't that sort of the point, poking fun at the way some people look at the world?

Some of the most brilliant things I've read have been hard to understand at first, whether the issue was lack of standard punctuation and formatting, phonetic spelling, vernacular I'm unfamiliar with, or whatever else. So far, the descriptions alone are worth sticking with Pygmy. For me, anyway.

first page: hated it
2nd page: started getting it
3rd page cursing chuck for making me change my reading style
4th page: understanding that chuck is pushing boundaries like he always does in different ways
rest of it: really excited to see where this goes and want to analyze every inch of it.