Chuck Palahniuk

Hey guess what? I've actually been reading lately. Reading BOOKS. And not those berserk manga, which are pretty dumb by the way. I've been reading more of Chuck Palahniuk's books. Today, I finally finished Invisible Monsters, which i started back last year but got too bored with to finish. blah blah..

Anyways, I need stuff to do during lunch at work, so since last year i started reading. I started with Palahniuk's most recent novel, at the time, Choke, which was quite fun and very Fight Club esq. Then, I ventured to Survivor, which i liked a bit better. It felt more epic, more adventurous.

After reading those two, I attempted Invisible Monsters, but I got quite bored of it, so I quit. The rest of last summer I spent sleeping in my car during the lunch period. Then during Christmas I played Sword of Mana during lunch, and then for Spring Break, I started reading Palahniuk's Lullaby. I had bought it a while ago because it was hard to find. I got about halfway through and after getting back to Minneapolis from college, I finished it, and now I've finished Invisible Monsters, too.. blah blah blah blah..

Anywho, I don't think I gave Choke the credit it deserved. One thing i love about Chuck's books is that the narrator is the main character. So, since the whole book is set up like the main character is writing about what happened, it stands to reason that the climax of the story is a huge change in the character's life. It's not just something that happens, but something that happens to the main character.

I was trying to figure out why I thought Survivor was better than Choke, when Choke basically has the same recipe as Fight Club, and Fight Club works beautifully. There's no epic adventure in Fight Club. But really, what's so epic about Survivor? The only real adventure is them returning home. Reading Lullaby and Invisible Monsters, the characters travel around in those books. True in those two books, they don't have an exact meaningful destination, but it's set up and written the same. Plus once branson reaches his destination in Survivor, he changes, but thats not the climax of the book. It's a climax, but not the climax. Survivor is pretty matted though. The character's in Choke have their own style and are more bizarre than you'd think they'd be. In Survivor, i guess you could say, the character's are a little more normal.

Choke is pretty schway though. I'm really interested to see the movie adpatation. I read they begin fliming it this fall. I should probably read it again, and familiarize myself. Once i finish reading Fight Club and Diary, i'll need something to do, anyways.

I love Lullaby, though. I guess you could say it has an epic journey, but also has a couple character stories that move along the story quite well. The whole theme of dark magic kept me interested and reading, unlike Invisible Monsters, where the theme was beauty and modeling and regular 'ol sex, which isn't that moving. It was distracting me from the story ^_^. Invisible Monsters ended quite well, but i couldn't pay attention to the climaxing story. It was hard to keep track of the point in time as well because the flashback bounced around too much. Also, characters in Invisible Monsters didn't really have any strong mental illnesses, there were more physical ailiments than mental.

Last year, I made a little chart filling in the ingredients to Chuck's recipe. So, it's time to fill in the chart with the two books I've entered into my head.

Lullaby Exerpt & Quotes

To justify any crime, you have to make the victim your enemy. .. With every crime, .. , you're more and more alienated from the world. More and more, your imagine the whole world is against you. (page 134)

You ever wonder if Adam and Eve were just puppies God dumped because wouldn't house-train? .. Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet. (page 143)

Do something only for money, and you're less likely to do it for free. (page 147)

No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have your own way. (page 148)

The masochist bullies the sadist into action. The most passive person is actually an aggressor (page 148)

Imagine an idea that occupies your mind the way an army occupies a city (page 157)

For whatever reason, Sodom and Gomorrah come to mind. How God would spare the city if there was even one good person still in it. Here's just the opposite. Thousands killed in order to destroy a few. (page 160)

Every generation wants to be the last. Every generation hates the next trend in music they can't understand. We hate to give up those reins of our culture. To find our own music playing in elevators. The ballad for our revolution, turned into background music for a television commercial. To find our generation's clothes and hair suddently retro (page 160)

I say how maybe God didn't start out by attacking and berating everybody who prayed. I say, maybe it was after years and years of getting the same prayers about unwanted pregnancies, about divorces, about family squabbles. Maybe it was because God's audience grew and more people were making demands. Maybe it was the more praise He got. Maybe power corrupts, but He wasn't always a bastard. (page 173)

.. maybe you don't go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don't do (page 175)

In any salughterhouse operation, the trick is to fool cows into climbing the chute that leads to the killing floor. Cows trucked in from farms, they're confused, scared. After hours or days squeezed into trucks, dehydrated and awake the whole trip, the cows are thrown in with other cows in the feedlot outside the slaughterhouse.
How you get them to climb the chute is you send in the Judas Cow. This is really what this cow is called. It's a cow that lives at the slaughterhouse. It minges with the doomed cows, then leads them up the chute to the killing floor. The scared, spooked cows would never go except for the Judas Cow leading the way.
The last step before the ax or the knife or the steel bolt through the skull, at that last moment, the Judas Cow steps aside. It survives to lead another herd to their death. It does this for its entire life. (page 192)

The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of the audience. (page 216)

So if reality is all a spell, and you don't really want what you think you want.. If you have no free will. You don't really know what you know. You don't really love who you only think you love. What do you have left to live for? (page 231)

Survivor Exerpts & Quotes

When you're twenty-three, you think you can keep up this level of performance forever. (page 231)

We were kept busy learning. We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. (page 193)

If Jesus Christ has died in prison, with no one watching and with no one there to mourn or tortune him, would we be saved? (page 152)

Invisible Monsters Exerpts & Quotes

No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close (page 15)

Beautiful people should never date each other. Together, they just don't generate enough attention. there's a whole shift in the beauty standard when they're together. You can feel this when both of your are beautiful, neither of you is beautiful. Together, as a couple, you're less than the sum of your parts (page 39)

When it's time to reintroduce me to solid foods, their words again, it's pureed chicken and strained carrots. Baby foods. Everything mashed or pulverized or crushed. You are what you eat. (page 48)

Because we're so trained to do life the right way. To not make mistakes. I figure, the bigger the mistake looks, the better chance I'll have to break out and live a real life. Like Christoper Columbus sailing toward disaster at the edge of the world. Our real discoveries come from chaos .. from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish (page 258)