Pygmy review
From Publisher's Weekly 3.2.09:
Pygmy Chuck Palahniuk. Doubleday, $24.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-385-52634-0
Palahniuk’s 10th novel (after Snuff) is a potent if cartoonish cultural satire that succeeds despite its stridently confounding prose. A gang of adolescent terrorists trained by an unspecified totalitarian state (the boys and girls are guided by quotations attributed to Marx, Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.) infiltrate America as foreign exchange students. Their mission: to bring the nation to its knees through Operation Havoc, an act of mass destruction disguised as a science project. Narrated by skinny 13-year-old Pgymy, the propulsive plot deconstructs American fixtures, among them church (“religion propaganda distribution outlet”), spelling bees (“forced battle to list English alphabet letters”) and TV news reporters (“Horde scavenger feast at overflowing anus of world history”), before moving on to a Columbine-like shooting spree by a closeted kid who has fallen in love with the teenage terrorist who raped him in a shopping mall bathroom. Decoding Palahniuk’s characteristically scathing observations is a challenge, as Pygmy’s narrative voice is unbound by rules of grammar or structure (a typical sentence: “Host father mount altar so stance beside bin empty of water”), but perseverance is its own perverse reward in this singular, comic accomplishment. (May)
yeah, the book is fucked up. palahniuk writes on a desk with his balls resting beside an elbow. big balls made of stone and heavy. they weigh the wood of the desk down and his brain is a treasure, if you can stomach it.
-kabol, j.n.
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play hard, like it's work to be done.
this book is radical.
can not wait.
"My hopes lay shattered like a mirror on the floor
I see myself and I look really scattered
But I lived my broken dreams"
- Daniel Johnston
I am hoping he recaptures some of the voice he wrote with on Invincible Monster. i felt Diary fell short of fucking stupendous. Rant was a better read.
sweet!
nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.