Choke

Rating:
Summary: funny, quick, kinda sick
Review: This is a very quick read. If you spend more than two days on it, I'd be surprised. The pace of this story makes it easy to consume, and like a thick chocolate milkshake, you'll be loving it while it's going down, then feel maybe a little yucky the next day. The characters are fascinating because you wonder if such people really exist or if they are just semi-monsters created in Palahiuk's mind. One thing about Palahniuk, his characters are consistent, so a creep is a creep throughout. There is a shot at some redemption/healing stuff going on here at the end, with one of the characters, an ex-sex addict who collected a large rock each day he didn't jerk off, that seems perhaps a touch out of place, but is necessary for Palahniuk to tie together the threads of his ideas. Not a "deep" book per se, fun to read and thought-provoking in some respects. Quick and (relatively) painless.

Rating:
Summary: Why Chuck Palahniuk is a popular author
Review: It is now clear.

With the publication of CHOKE, Chuck Palahniuk has established himself as a popular author. He is a popular author in the same sense in which Stephen King could be said to be a popular author, and a populist.

Works of popular culture should be considered in terms of their function. At least it could be said of King's work that it succeeds in fulfilling a function: that of horrifying and disgusting his readership (to his credit, there are a few successful short stories to his name). King would never claim to be an artist, only a showman. Palahniuk, however, seems to have serious pretentions at artistry.

Despite his claims, Palahniuk is, in fact, not a writer at all. His work is not "writing" in the strong sense of the word---it is, rather, recorded speech. He speaks, he does not write. There is no trace of effort or revision in any of his books. With the greatest arrogance, Palahniuk vomits onto the page whatever comes to his mind. The language of these books is reminiscent of a hastily written e-mail. What readers are left with are books full of lazy, sloppy, clumsily composed constructions.

The messiness of this man's writing style is astounding. Each chapter is so badly composed that it would be difficult to believe that the author spent more than an hour manufacturing it. Much of the book, in fact, could have been written over a series of coffee breaks or during a lazy weekend. This inspires his readership with a sense of self-confidence.

Because CHOKE is so badly and effortlessly written, his followers are filled with a sense of self-confidence. They think: "Writing is easy! I could write just like Chuck!" (Most of his followers refer to their leader by his given name.)

To a certain extent, they are right.

Palahniuk's followers are attracted to the novel CHOKE because they see in it a reflection of their own immaturity. People who do not read books, they are enthused by someone who is LIKE THEM.

Palahniuk's popularity is due to the fact that his readers are not challenged or intimidated by him.

Palahniuk's sheep are film-watchers. It is no accident that Palahniuk's first followers were introduced to his work through David Fincher's film version of FIGHT CLUB. They "watch movies"; they are not readers.

The Palahniuk cult has been trained by consumerist culture to regard novels as if they were McDonald's hamburgers. Novels, they think, are there to be devoured, digested, and thrown away.

Palahniuk's worst book to date, CHOKE is very much a McDonald's novel.

Palahniuk's followers are not disappointed by CHOKE because they have no expectations.

CHOKE is an embarrassing book. Passages in this book would make all but Palahniuk's most ardent admirers cringe. The scene in which Victor Mancini is saved from choking to death by two police officers is quite possibly the most embarrassing passage that I have ever read in a work of fiction. And even those who support pornography (and I am one of them) would be disgusted by the way in which women's bodies are described in this book.

Do not misunderstand me: There is nothing else shocking or offensive in this book except for its laughable "writing style." I am opposed to Palahniuk not because of his subject matter, but because he does not know how to write.

I am convinced that Palahniuk's devotees support CHOKE because they feel a strange personal affinity with the author. This means that anything that this man publishes will be welcomed uncritically by his fanatical readership. They do not have a strong reading background and therefore cannot compare Palahniuk's work with that of other authors.

The author of CHOKE is nothing more than a bargain-basement Bret Easton Ellis.

The reason for Chuck Palahniuk's popularity is that he is an author who is in the service of mainstream American culture.

He is not, however, a writer.

His books are so much slop.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, satirical, and funny
Review: Chuck Palahniuk writes an interesting book about the antihero Victor who is a sexaholic. Victor goes to sex addiction clinics, not too try to stop himself but to pick up women. Victor's descriptions of the meetings and the people he meets at them are hilarious. Victor is working on a 12 step program for sex addicts, although not very hard, he is stuck on the 4th step in which he is supposed to list all of the bad things he's done in his life.
As the book progresses he meets a girl he actually likes and this makes him want to try to complete his recovery program. He is writing absolutly everthing down for the forth step and this gets him into trouble neer the end which leeds to some interesting twists.

Rating:
Summary: That's interesting. Now stop it.
Review: Mr. Palahniuk is obviously very intelligent, very witty, and very talented. For me though, morbid fascination is not a substitute for sympathy where character development is concerned and the overtly inelegant way irony, metaphor, and other literary devices are displayed (kind of like prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district), while hyper- or maybe metaliterary, is also pretty tedious after a hundred pages or so. The book did successfully transfer feelings of self-deprecation, emotional masochism, and being unsatisfied from the antagonist to the reader - not through any connection to the character but through the act of reading; I can think of far more efficient ways to evoke those feelings than by reading fiction. (Kudos, though, for the self-fulfilling effect - clever.) This is the first CP I've read and I'll try another, but this one didn't appeal. (What's that? My senses of disinterest and vacuousness are *exactly the point*? So, so clever! See also: self involved. See also: dull.)

Rating:
Summary: Wicked, mordant and liberating
Review: I happened to stumble upon this book by accident... or was it destiny? Anyway, I quickly realized that Palahniuk was the author of Fight Club and instead of getting that book (having seen the movie already), I decided to go for Choke. And what a wonderful choice I had made! I devoured the book in two days and the thing that stroke me the most was how much I related to the book. No, I'm neither a sex-addict nor do I work in Colonial Dunsboro; I was raised by a single mother. I quickly related to Victor in the sense of having to be attached to your mother in more ways than one: you hate her and love her for that very reason. I don't know whether Mr. Palahniuk was raised by a single mother as well (after reading Fight Club & Survivor I could almost say he was) but the way he presents the mother-son relationship is so genuine and honest that anyone raised by both parents can quickly relate to Victor's story. In Choke, Palahniuk reminds us that without a "damsel in distress" there can be no "knight in shinning armour", and that we have the power to choose between both roles. As with Palahniuk's other works, this book discusses several subjects among them hope. Let us never forget that life is what we make of it and that we'll always have the power to change the course of our lives as long as we have hope and the will to change it.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the rest
Review: I liked this book more than many other that I've read recently. Having read Palahniuk's Fight Club, I was not surprised by this book. But that's a good thing. I liked Fight Club and I was hoping I would like this one as well. Which I did. It's a good, quick read. Just don't read it if you're looking to cheer yourself up.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I've read in a while...
Review: If you are a fan of past Chuck Palahniuk novels (Fight Club, Survivor), Choke certainly will not disappoint you. Like his previous books, it is thought provoking, entertaining, easy to read, and above all...filled with the black humor that has become Palahniuk's staple.

Not for those easily offended by descriptions of kinky sexual acts of the most perverted kind. The main character is a non-recovering sex addict, who uses staged choking incidents in various restaurants to get money to pay for his ailing mothers treatment. There isn't anything extremely special about him...or is there? Palahniuk does an amazing job of immersing us in the world of this sex starved nobody with a tendency for mischief, a rock collecting best friend, and mother with some very odd secrets. The two hundred plus pages go by in a flash, and leave you wanting more.

While Fight Club was a bit stronger overall, Choke is easily Palahniuk's second best novel. I highly recommend it to both existing fans of his, and to those who have never read one of his roller coaster ride-like books. Definitely one of the best stories in quite some time.

Rating:
Summary: He really did choke.
Review: Let me start by saying I like Chuck's work. I thought fight club and survivor were very good but this one was substandard. Like alot of his work the characters are one dimensional and that is ok if the action of the plot moves fast enough but sadly this is not the case. None of these characters (except Denny)are sympathetic and I did not connect with any of them. I was struck by how masoginistic our antihero Victor is. As with other of his books chuck uses the protagonist to spout slogans but there were few that we could hold on to. i recomend this book only to those devotees of Chucky P's work who worship him or those who are between the ages of 17-19 They'll like it.

Rating:
Summary: Choke on this
Review: Chuck Palahniuk fabricates an alternative world of delusions and bleakness in Choke. He uses the novel as his canvas to paint shock, black humor, confusion, and irony but at the same time, scattered with gemstones of truth. The development of character and plot flow in one stream of concsiousness toward chaos, therby enforcing his themes.

Chuck Palahniuk takes full advantage of the shock effect and lures his audience of young minds into his eccentric world of dark philosophy. The anarchic escapades of our protagonist, Victor Mancini, serves as a vehicle for the authors satirical take on our society. His works certainly cater to mainstream readers yearning for something different.

The author takes pop culture how it's given to him, digests it, and spits it out in the form of Victor Mancinni, a medical school dropout, and blooming sex addict in a 12 step program. At this point he realized all the virtues his mom had taught him were lies.

Victor dines out in bourgeoise restaurants and deliberately chokes on food waiting to be rescued. In the aftermath, these good semaritans sympathesize and send him birthday cards every week, like he was their own child. He learned this during childhood when he almost died eating a corndog.

His facade for this scenario is that he's staying the underdog to contrast with his saviors superiority, claiming that his saviors do this to save themselves. He secretely likes to think that hes putting adventure into peoples lives full of incompletes. The truth is that hes only doing it for the money.

He had hope, goals, promises of impossible happiness if he worked hard enough, suffered, and tried to help others for this is what his mommie told him.

Another example of Victors christ complex, is when he finds an opportunity to fake a scapegoat and starts admitting to crimes that senile old ladies accused him of doing, when he had not committed any at all. "The Titanic thing, I did that. That Kennedy assasination deal, yeah, that was me. The AIDS bug? Sorry. Me, again." For some reason, this sparks compassion into the old wrecks and creates a more peacful living environment at Saint Anthony's Medical Institute.

In the closing of our tale, Victor crosses the line between delusion and psychosis into believing that he is Jesus Christ and says " I want to become a better person." Ironically, when he actually attempts in helping his institutionalized mother in feeding her a ridiculously excessive amount of pudding, she chokes and dies.

Every one of these scenes are portrayed as being very anti-climactic. As excitement is built up it takes a sudden dive back to nowhere. For him, the only way to make ends meet is to create an alternative reality.

To summarize, the plot and character go well together as they progress into psychosis hand in hand. The book is a study of absurdity; one disallusionment preceeding the other. The message of the novel seems ( I say "seems" because the dialougue is coated with messages upon messages that makes the book totally arbitrary; like the readers own working space) to be that one can get ahead in life, or solve a problem, by changing the way we percieve things. Ergo, truth is relative; you escape pain by constructing your own mental environment in a way that comforts you.

The beautiful way in which Chuck Palahnuk describes setting and actions using every literary device to the last detail counterbalances the negative aspects of his philosophy and makes the book easy to swallow. No pun intended.

Rating:
Summary: Back before the Blue Jay sings
Review: I was completely immersed in this novel by Chuck Palahniuk! I found this to be absolutely hilarious. I often found myself laughing maniacally outloud. Victor Mancini is a dreadful man, but you have to love him. I love Palahniuk's ability to make you not only want to find out what happens to this character, but I was actually worried about him, and rooting for him. "If I had a tumor I would name it Ida" Poor Victor. I thoroughly enjoyed his episodes at the Nursing home with all the patients, those were precious. Each person he came into contact with you didn't know who to feel more sorry for.
The description of Victor job was so clear, I felt like I have been there. Though not as shocking as Fight Club, the plot twist was surprising and it did leave you a little off center.
I loved it, anyone I have recomended it to loved it! You must go out and buy this book, You must read it when you can laugh out loud, and enjoy all the insanity that flows through this novel effortlessly.