Pygmy
The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park—Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club.
“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.”
Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.
It’s a comedy. And a romance.
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Comments
I cannnot wait to read PYGMY!
Surprisingly, its really not hard to follow at all. Its in fact, for me at least, very easy to read. Just relax, loosen up a bit and stop being so bloody Prussian and you'll realized that all you need are keywords. We're starting to speak in keywords as dialect today.....who the fuck uses articles and conjunctions? Articles and conjunctions..........gay!
reading the grammar is like reading Don Quixote translated from original spanish to german. Then annotated, translated back to Spanish, narrated and reduced to dialect, then translated to English. SO much fun.
so basically you're only getting 1/3 (maybe less) of a book because you're only getting keywords? again, sloppy. i don't speak in keywords, it reminds me of something.
Pygmy has electrolytes!!1!!
IT HAS WHAT SPACEMONKEY CRAVES!
I finished it last night and really enjoyed it, once I got over the inital "wtf" about the broken-English narrative. It's not my favorite novel of CP's, by any means, but it's not at the bottom either.
I took my final in Anglo-Saxon poetry today and thought of Pygmy the whole time. Chuck's latest reads like a roughly translated A-S poem.... but it's a good thing. :]
So. Then. Don't. Read. It.
He also explains the back story and why he wrote the book like this at the signings.