One month ago today, Chuck Palahniuk released his 10th novel entitled Pygmy.
It's doing pretty well, too. It debuted as number 3 on the New York Times Best Seller List.
For his latest novel, he kept his book tour brief. He toured only 6 or 7 cities, none of which were in the Midwest. It's unfortunate, but he did tour twice last year, once for his 9th novel "Snuff" and for "Choke", the film adaption of his 4th novel. I caught his "Snuff" tour last year: http://theschlock.com/blog/?p=452.
Much like last year, he announced his next novel. Next year, Chuck will release his 11th novel entitled "Tell All". He also mentioned that while caring for his mother last year, he wrote 3 novels, so there's still plenty Chuck down the pipeline. You can read more about it at The Cult.
Even though, I missed him touring, I did purchase a signed first edition of Pygmy from St. Helens Book Shop.
St. Helens Book Shop is Chuck Palahniuk's local book store near Portland, Oregon. Whenever he's back in town he'll stop by and sign copies of most of his books that they have in stock. For Pygmy, if you pre-ordered the book through them, Chuck would be in the store the weekend before the book shipped and sign all of their Pre-order editions. So, that's what I did. It also has a bunch of tour stamps on it, too.
This isn't limited to Pygmy or new releases. You can get any Chuck Palahniuk book they have in stock signed or even personalized if you wish. Which is great, since Chuck Palahniuk tours have attracted some large crowds and no longer has the time to sign everyone's books because of the demand.
If you're interested check out St. Helens Book Shop. ^_^
Anyways, I just finished reading Pygmy this afternoon on the bus ride home.
Pygmy is about a foreign exchange student living in America whose actually an undercover terrorist. He and his fellow foreign classmates have been tasked to carry out Operation Havoc. To take down and destroy our lazy American country. It's a comedy and a romance!
The number one thing I love about Chuck Palahniuk's writing is how easy they are to read. It's the reason that kept me reading after Fight Club. Unfortunately, this book was not an easy read for me. Pygmy is written from the perspective of the foreign exchange student, so it's ALL broken English.
That's a feat of its own. Writing and consistently writing broken English must've driven him insane. It's daunting at times to read it, but I couldn't imagine writing like this.
The text itself is pretty funny. And conveying how odd our society is to a more traditional culture is also pretty hilarious. But it is exhausting to read. I finished the book today, and I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of some the characters were. The broken English is really a crutch that keeps me from enjoying the book at times.
But I can hardly condemn the writing style because it's really an adventurous experiment and brings a new dimension to understanding the main character. Pygmy himself tries to understand America and communication intentions, but they fall flat amongst the American characters in the book. He brings the misunderstanding back into his own text as he accounts what happened that day.
Pygmy is incredibly unique. I'd say it's Chuck's most unique novel yet. Since Diary, he's really been experimenting with different ways of telling and developing his stories. Diary was written from the point of someone in a Coma throughout the book. Haunted contained short stories written by each character involved in a murder scheme. Rant was from all points of view except the main character. Snuff focused on 4 main characters who had there own views on the 5th main character.
His first 5 novels were so similar in style. It's incredibly interesting to see just how far away from that he's willing to go. Pygmy is really his first novel since then that was completely written from the main character's perspective and half the time you don't even know what's going on!
I'd definitely recommend Pygmy if you're interested in reading something you aren't used to. Even though the writing is a bit different for Chuck, there are still plenty of themes and events that scream his story writing style. ^_^