I finished the book "Choke" while visiting Chico, California a few weeks back. Like the other Chuck Palahniuk books I have read, this book contained some really bizarre ideas. Some concepts that were so disturbingly funny I can't help but grin and grimace when I think about them.
The book is both disturbing and obscene. If you liked "Fight Club" there is a pretty good chance you'll like this book. If you are under 18 do me a favor and don't read this book, I don't want to try and explain it to your parents. In fact I'm not even sure I want to try and explain this to anyone.
The book opens with this promising sentence.
"If you're going to read this, don't bother."
That reminds me, I am not suggesting anyone reads this book. If you read it, do not blame me.
The book's main character, Victor, deals with his sexual addictions, his mother dying while experiencing dementia, in the context of his job as a historic re-enactor in something reminiscent of a grimy Williamsburg. To support himself and to spread a certain kind of happiness he goes to restaurants and pretends to choke on foods so strangers can save him. It only gets stranger and more bizarre from there.
Some of my favorite quotes follow.
His friend Denny talks about why he likes to be in the stocks.
"Sometimes," Denny says and sniffs, "it's like I want to be beaten and punished. It's okay if there isn't a God anymore, but I still want to respect something. I don't want to be the center of my own universe."
The main character, Victor Mancina, talks about being needed.
What I want is to be needed.
What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
See also: Paige Marshall.
It's the same way a drug can be something good and something bad.
Victor's thoughts about prayer chains.
On the dining room table, all the new cards pile up. All the checks and best wishes from a lot of stranger who want to believe they're somebody's hero. Who think they're needed. Some women writes about how she's started a prayer chain for me. A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully Him around.
The fine line between praying and nagging.
Like Palahniuk's othere books, this book makes a very sharp critique of life in our post-modern times. Strip away the humor and obscenity and you are left with a kind of social critism that makes you see clearly the hollowness of post-modern life.
