Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I don’t often look at books here on the site. I love reading, but there have been very few novels I’ve sought out early.
I didn’t exactly seek out Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel, SNUFF, but I got it early and got a chance to read it before its release last Tuesday.
I interviewed Chuck Palahniuk at Sundance in a big group with Clark Gregg, Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston for CHOKE, a flick I really dug. After the interview I ended up talking to him, excusing my ignorance to his work. I have a few of his books that I bought and put on the “to read” stack, but hadn’t gotten to them yet.
He asked for my address, said he wanted to send me some of his short work, so I scribbled it down on a piece of legal yellow notepad, thinking it’d get lost in the full Sundance shuffle.
A month later I got a package. Not an envelope, but a package. Wrapped in gold paper. In the box were chocolates, trick handcuffs, CDs with Palahniuk reading his short stories, a blow-up doll (autographed to me) and an advance reading copy of SNUFF, also signed.
Apparently, Palahniuk is known for sending packages to his fans. My little brother is a fan of his work and I gave Chuck his address as well and Chuck made him a necklace out of rocks and beads.
Anyway, I got the book right before an oversees trip, so I ended up reading it in one shot on the plane and I probably annoyed those sitting around me because there are more than a handful of moments where I busted out laughing.
SNUFF is told from many different points of views, all centered around the record breaking 600 man gang-bang that’ll make aging porn star Cassie Wright a legend.
Each person is given a number. All sorts of types show up. Some are volunteers from the fan community wanting to be in this record making video, some are genuinely in love with Cassie Wright, some are porn stars wanting a piece of the spotlight and some are just perverts.
The numbers are called at random and men are taken up in small groups.
Palahniuk jumps from perspective to perspective. We’re introduced to our eyes, but we know them by their numbers. Each chapter is called Mr. 137, Mr. 600, Mr. 72, etc based on who we’re seeing through. There’s also a young woman, Cassie’s assistant, who gives us a fresh point of view.
Mr. 72 is a young man who comes bearing flowers and seems deeply in love with Ms. Wright. Mr. 600 is a male porn star who co-starred with Cassie in many films. He’s a shady, shallow, vain guy. He’s none too bright, either.
Mr. 137 is one of my favorite characters of the book. He’s an ex-TV superstar who fell from grace after a big homosexual scandal. He’s desperate to prove his heterosexuality and daydreams about Cassie falling in love with him, accepting his proposal and starting a reality show about their marriage.
What’s great about the story is we stay firmly in the waiting room, drenched in fake tanning, sweat and desperation. We see groups go up to the set as the gang bang happens, but we never go inside until the very end. As the crowd thins our main POVs begin running into each other and this is where Palahniuk really has fun playing with different perceptions.
Of course the ending is so out of left field fuckin’ crazy bizarre that I had to re-read it three times to make sure I read what I read.
The book is a quick read, a fun read. It is my first experience with Palahniuk, so I can’t tell you how it holds up to his past work, but I can say that it was everything I expected from the man. It’s hilarious, but somehow sweet at the same time. It’s hard to explain the balance that Palahniuk strikes, but in my view he succeeds.
If you haven’t gotten to check it out, he has a series of Cassie Wright porno trailers that he’s created. The book is filled with fantastic porn film names as Cassie Wright’s many films play on TVs in the waiting room. They took three of them and made these promos for the book. Enjoy Wizard of Ass, Twilight Bone and Chitty Chitty Gang Bang!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
