6/24/2005: Reads: Choke
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
"If you're going to read this, don't bother. After a couple pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you're still in one piece. Save yourself."
Thus begins Choke, an outstanding book that's unlike any other I've read in a very long time. With a start like that you know you have to read on and find out what the deal is. Chuck Palahniuk has created some highly unique and memorable characters here, and they'll get you thinking about some of life's Big Issues at the same time as they make you smile or feel repulsed. Often simultaneously.
Med school dropout Victor Mancini tells his story in first-person, present-tense (not an easy feat in itself) while he's at a turning point in his life. His mother is on the verge of dying in a high cost convalescent home, and Victor works in 17th century costume at a historical re-enactment theme park for minimum wage. In order to supplement his income and pay for his mom's upkeep he goes out to high class restaurants nightly and proceeds to choke on his food halfway through dinner. Invariably one of his fellow diners rushes to his aid, gives him a Heimlich, and then keeps in touch later, sending cards and checks to Victor.
Victor's mother was something of a social revolutionary and whacko, and while Victor largely resents his upbringing with her (between various stints in foster homes), he has also retained much of what she taught him. He sees the lifesaving heroics of his dinner saviours as being helpful to them by giving them something to feel proud about, something to make their own lives seem worthy. His mom would do things like switching around the color-carrying bottles between hair color boxes on store shelves, to "mess with people's little identity paradigms.. Beauty Industry Terrorism." Like mother, like son.
Although it's one of my favorites movies, I haven't read Fight Club which Palahniuk also wrote, but I now plan to. His tone and phrasing is amazing, jumping from gritty street talk to profoundly beautiful prose to highly-charged sexual raunch without skipping a beat, and back again. As Victor's situation escalates and his self-examination intensifies, he decides to give up trying and just be the most despicable person he can be. He repeats to himself "What would Jesus not do?" and proceeds to do that.
Choke shares a few themes with Fight Club, including another satirical look at 12-step recovery programs (this time it's sex addicts), and there's also a noteworthy sidekick in this one in the character of Denny, Victor's co-worker at the living history park and a fellow sex addict. Denny is a purely existential kind of guy who truly doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks of him; an unsavory yet likeable guy who's also a kind of idiot savant of philosophy. Choke also has an outstanding ending that will have you re-reading the beginning of the book to figure out just how we got there and why.
Choke is gritty, dirty, raunchy, and horrific at times, so be warned.. but it's also one of the most intriguing and thought-provoking books I've come across in ages. It challenges the status quo of reality and memory, and our perceptions of both, and that's always a good thing.
