A review by daniell
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
2.0
The protagonist in the context of an AA-style 12-step meeting (not addressing anyone, but as a narrative voiceover):
The problem with sex is the same as with any addiction. You're always recovering. You're always backsliding. Acting out. Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against. All these people who say they want a life free from sexual compulsion, I mean forget it. I mean, what could ever be better than sex?
Also, these are repeated throughout the book:
___ isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
And
What WOULDN'T Jesus do?
The story of about Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout who is believed, by himself at least, to be the messiah. He sees it his duty to bear the sins of the world by committing them, becoming more pathetic and desperate as the book goes on. Beyond a simple "don't be like this guy" it's hard to tell what Palahniuk is saying with this beyond sketching an interesting character, though a corresponding theological takeaway is that nobody sins out of duty. Victor's "duty" is a disguised desire to escape from himself, and in the end he finds himself unable to continue escaping because eventually his escapism becomes his identity that requires him to escape from his escaping. He attempts escape, but he never succeeds because his method is fundamentally flawed. Cultural condition, anyone? The moral in the character of Victor is that one must deal with oneself. It's simple disexample, but it's done well enough in its own right.
The problem with this book is that a lot of it didn't supplement this terminus. Towards the end of the book Victor's friend Denny begins building a castle from stones. Eventually he gets noticed and other people start to help him.
The last lines of the book:
"
It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of out time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos.
What it's going to be I don't know.
Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And maybe knowing isn't the point.
Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.
"
I accept this as a both a statement of moral and explanation for this book. What am I writing? I don't know. Why am I doing it? Beats me. Here guys, read my book.
Or is this yet another ironic disexample? As in, whatever is true is definitely not this! If so, it must be realized that to state what's wrong with the world is a shallow, easy task. On the grounds of this book having significance beyond an "oh look, clever notion," I give 2/5.
But, if you abandon hope right at the starting gate for a coherent moral then Choke is good for a few creative-writing-type chuckles, particularly all the times Victor willfully chokes in the company of strangers, baiting them into becoming heroes, tactfully bonding himself to their charity. Or any of the scenes in the Colonial America educational faux-city. I lament the paucity of the faux-city!
The problem with sex is the same as with any addiction. You're always recovering. You're always backsliding. Acting out. Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against. All these people who say they want a life free from sexual compulsion, I mean forget it. I mean, what could ever be better than sex?
Also, these are repeated throughout the book:
___ isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
And
What WOULDN'T Jesus do?
The story of about Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout who is believed, by himself at least, to be the messiah. He sees it his duty to bear the sins of the world by committing them, becoming more pathetic and desperate as the book goes on. Beyond a simple "don't be like this guy" it's hard to tell what Palahniuk is saying with this beyond sketching an interesting character, though a corresponding theological takeaway is that nobody sins out of duty. Victor's "duty" is a disguised desire to escape from himself, and in the end he finds himself unable to continue escaping because eventually his escapism becomes his identity that requires him to escape from his escaping. He attempts escape, but he never succeeds because his method is fundamentally flawed. Cultural condition, anyone? The moral in the character of Victor is that one must deal with oneself. It's simple disexample, but it's done well enough in its own right.
The problem with this book is that a lot of it didn't supplement this terminus. Towards the end of the book Victor's friend Denny begins building a castle from stones. Eventually he gets noticed and other people start to help him.
The last lines of the book:
"
It's creepy, but here we are, the Pilgrims, the crackpots of out time, trying to establish our own alternate reality. To build a world out of rocks and chaos.
What it's going to be I don't know.
Even after all that rushing around, where we've ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And maybe knowing isn't the point.
Where we're standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.
"
I accept this as a both a statement of moral and explanation for this book. What am I writing? I don't know. Why am I doing it? Beats me. Here guys, read my book.
Or is this yet another ironic disexample? As in, whatever is true is definitely not this! If so, it must be realized that to state what's wrong with the world is a shallow, easy task. On the grounds of this book having significance beyond an "oh look, clever notion," I give 2/5.
But, if you abandon hope right at the starting gate for a coherent moral then Choke is good for a few creative-writing-type chuckles, particularly all the times Victor willfully chokes in the company of strangers, baiting them into becoming heroes, tactfully bonding himself to their charity. Or any of the scenes in the Colonial America educational faux-city. I lament the paucity of the faux-city!