Sure, Fight Club was groundbreaking. Survivor was essential. Invisible Monsters was...different. And Pigmy was awful. Tell-All just came out and i'm thirty pages in and wondering if i already made a mistake. When i think essential Chuck Palahnuik, Choke always comes to mind for me. For about the span of a week, i took this book fucking everywhere with me. While you can never judge a book by it's cover, many people saw the interesting anatomy, and frequently asked "Oh, whats that book about?" And where to begin. Perhaps talk of how the title only tells provides a small taste of exactly how sick the protagonist, Victor Mancini truly is. Besides being abducted from foster home after foster home by his scheming and manically psychotic mother, he is a promising med student. That is until, he has to drop out to help his dying mother and work a blue collar job as an actor in a colonel theme park all while settling into a life of mediocrity and having to resort to casual addictive sex with stranger, while thinking he's saving himself and others because he just may be the second coming of Jesus Christ. But all in a classic Palahnuik way we can understand and love. The most thing i got out of it, was that life is a waste of time. There is no meaning. As much as we would like to think it, we are not shiny gods. So we must fill the space with nothingness. When Victor's best friend Denny, gives up his sexual addiction to masturbation (15 snaps a day ohmuhgawd) he begins to just merely collect large rocks. To mark each day of his abstinence. What he's going to do with them? He doesn't even know. "Instead of focusing on just not doing something bad, i want to focus on doing something good. This is about process." I believe that right there should be the AA prayer as opposed to the whole Lord grant me this and do that. Go do it yourself. Or just sit around and Choke. Reading this book was like a religious experience. It was my new and old testament, my Koran, my Torah. This is my favorite book from one of my favorite fiction authors and you must read. And hell if your the short-spanned hamster type, go rent the movie. It's just as essential as the book, sadly it doesnt go into as much depth and isn't as long as i would have liked.
Palahniuk truly is a god among pen. Here are some Choke Quotes that had me re-reading over and over again.
"I don't want to accept the world as given."
"The slogan for America is not fast enough, not good enough, or not big enough."
"Art never comes from happiness."
"Even if the shoe doesn't fit, you'll shrink into it."
"We've taken the world apart, but we have no idea what to do with the pieces."
"Nobody is going to trick me into feeling Christlike."
"Sunshine is your enemy, stay off the sunny side of the street."
"Please..just show me one thing in the world that is what you'd think."
"Anything you acquire is only another thing you'll lose."
"After i fill the gas tank, i find traffic and get in line. Just to feel like i'm part of something.
"The only thing that separates us from the animals is we have pornography."
"Just keep asking yourself..what would Jesus not do?"
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