What Would Jesus NOT Do?

Choke
by Chuck Palahniuk
p. 2001

Choke is the second novel I’ve had the pleasure to read by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, so I sort of knew what I was getting myself into going in. Palahniuk’s quintessential pièce de résistance might have been enough to give the me a starting impression, but now I’m convinced the author has a type: stories about damaged losers who find themselves entrenched in incomprehensible situations of their own design. Like Fight Club, it’s a non-linear first person narrative, but this narrator has a name—Victor Mancini—and his problems are a little more of this world, specifically, of the flesh. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. When he’s not attending sex addiction meetings, he’s usually at work, unenthusiastically reenacting medieval times amongst his coworkers and friends, mostly burnouts and addicts themselves, or he’s having sex with various women (and for such a short, terse narrative, Palahniuk sure doesn’t spare the reader all the lurid details).

But Victor has another addiction, and it’s this one that really sets him up to fail. Victor’s mother—his only familial connection in his 20-odd years on this planet—is wasting away in an asylum that Victor cannot afford on his own, so to make ends meet, Victor has become a con artist. His art? Choking on food in restaurants every night to force complete strangers to save his life. I’ll admit, I had a hard time believing that this sordid hobby would actually yield monetary reward, but according to Victor, having people save his life creates a lifetime bond between the savior and himself as well as giving the stranger a sort of hero complex that makes him or her feel responsible for Victor. He then uses that bond to write to the would-be heroes, and make himself out to be so pathetic that they feel compelled to give him money. I still have a hard time buying this plot point, but I guess I’ll never really know if it will work. In any case, suspension of disbelief is something I came armed with going into a Palahniuk novel.

Our author—and by extension, Victor Mancini himself—wants us to believe that Victor is a terrible person. It is, in fact, the first thing we are told at the beginning of the book, right after being told we’re wasting our time reading it. There is certainly a lot of evidence to support that, and Victor goes to great lengths to convince us and himself of its truth, and yet I just couldn’t buy it. Maybe it’s the natural need to find something sincere or relatable about main characters—a coping mechanism to get through a piece of fiction, a response conditioned into us for the history of the written word until postmodernism came along. Maybe it’s a gut reaction to not believe anything Chuck Palahniuk says. Or maybe Victor Mancini really isn’t such a bad guy after all.

I suppose whether or not you like Victor really just depends on what type of person you are. I could easily see people despising him for all the right reasons. Hell, if I met Victor Mancini in real life, I’d probably not get along with him either, but in character form, I find him more sympathetic. It’s his complicated relationship with his mother that got me. No matter how many times Palahniuk describes the adolescent Victor as a “stupid little ratfink crybaby twerp” or a dickwad or a sucker, my heart went out to him every time he went back to his disturbed mother and took himself away from a healthy life. The kid never stood a chance, and his method of coping as an adult—theatrically risking his life in public to get some any kind of a loving reaction towards him from strangers—is so pathetic and masochistic that I still feel for him, even though I know he’s an adult now and should technically know better. Perhaps I’m just a sucker, another sap that Victor would easily manipulate if he got me in the place he wanted me, but I do find Victor sympathetic. It doesn’t help that the book proceeds to draw some crafty, if far-fetched parallels between him and Jesus Christ himself. That sort of manipulation is less Victor Manicini; but it is all Chuck Palahniuk.

Though Choke follows similar storytelling patterns as Fight Club—a narrator who is a little disturbed, who finds himself launched into bizarre hostile circumstances far out of his control, who tells it like it is, even if it’s not very politically correct—the book, on the whole, ends a much more positive note. I’d be interested to check out more Palahniuk novels next year, to see if my theories about his philosophy are true, or if I just happened to pick two very similarly-styled books.

Bohemian Hipsters, Spiritual Canines, Tolkien House and the Infinite Monkey Theorem

Fool on the Hill
by Matt Ruff
p. 1988

Even though Sewer, Gas & Electric was my first foray into the delightful world of Matt Ruff, I still have Ruff’s debut novel, Fool on the Hill, to credit for the introduction because it was this book, and not the former that a friend recommended years ago. I loved Sewer, Gas, & Electric so much that I convinced myself to save Fool on the Hill for later to, like, savor the goodness or something. I don’t know; clearly I was an idiot, as there is probably no limit to how many times one can enjoy a Matt Ruff novel. There is just so much there to digest and his style is endearingly ADD. I get the feeling that both of these books will be even more enjoyable to me the second time around.

I said in my review of Sewer, Gas, & Electric two years ago that Ruff is fond of massive character rosters and convoluted plots. Just like the former, Fool on the Hill boasts an array of irreverent, liberal characters just bloated enough to require a two-page cast list for reference (and you will use it if you read this book) and a complicated, messy plot that all comes together for a comprehensive final act. In Fool on the Hill, the characters are divided into five main groups: Stephen Titus George and Aurora (the ‘white knight’ and the ‘princess’), the Bohemians (larger than life college students that play around the edges of the plot), Luther and Blackjack (the animals on a spiritual quest), the sprites (invisible to most humans, but affecting the plot nonetheless), and an omniscient otherworldly narrator, Mr. Sunshine. Each of those groups is divided into subgroup consisting of various combinations, with others weaving in and out of the story—a pair of Ithaca cops, some engineering students building a float, Aurora’s impulsive but doting father, a preppy frat boy villain.

Ganted, I—more than most readers—really take to comprehensive ensemble stories, so I am inclined to like Ruff’s style more than others generally would. I did not in the least regret having such a large list to keep track of, but it should be warned that others might. That said, I think it’s worth pointing out that while Ruff’s characters are often of a similar hivemind, and few of them are intensively explored, they all manage to stand out in unique ways. One of the things I kept noticing about Ruff’s characters is that even the smallest one, a character who, in any other story, would be a throwaway, manage to reveal something about themselves that gives them some depth, like Aurora’s long dead brother whose spontaneity and spirit forever changed her interaction with her father, or the Bohemian who joined the group long before our story ever started because he was pursuing a member who dropped out after being assaulted by a rival frat brother. All of these things seem so inconsequential but it is really these types of details that fill in the space between the lines.

The story takes place at Cornell University over the course of a school year and there are a lot of elements guiding the plot, not the least of which is Mr. Sunshine, a ‘Greek original,’ who occasionally sticks his hand in to mold the plot directly but is mostly content to sit back and watch fate play itself out. The sprites were generally my least favorite part of the story, but it is their misguided but well-intentioned actions that release the evil that the human characters have to deal with in the end, so they are crucial, even if they never talk to anyone else. Luther and Blackjack were definitely my favorite parts of the story, though the Bohemians will hold a special place in your heart, just for the sheer ludicrousness of them all. This whole book is a messy but fun mix of adventure, fantasy, romance and humor that just keeps adding layer upon layer.

Fool on the Hill was Ruff’s debut novel, and I didn’t find it quite as riotous as Sewer, Gas & Electric but to be fair, I knew what to expect this time and that changed the way I read it. I’d easily put it on par with the former, in terms of humor, and I am beyond thrilled to see how much more Ruff has in store.

Misadventures With Time Travel

I have no idea why there is an avalanche of naked people on this cover.

The Great Time Machine Hoax
by Keith Laumer
p. 1964

Chester W. Chester IV is an average guy who finds himself the sole heir of his great grandfather’s vast estate, and with it, a massive computer purported to be a time machine. Chester and his friend Case Mulvihill (ringleader and performer in a failing circus owned by Chester’s family) are skeptical but try it out anyway in an attempt to save the circus (and pay for the overwhelming costs of Chester’s inheritance) by creating a new sideshow that gives the impression of time travel to paying customers.

To their surprise, Chester and Case discover that the machine truly is everything it is rumored to be and accidentally send themselves launching through time in an avalanche of misadventures, along with an android-like representation of the machine, who takes the form of a pretty girl named Genie. The trio keep getting entangled in increasingly absurd situations and are eventually separated. Much of the book focuses on Chester after he lands in a strange reality and is taken captive and used in a sort of social experiment. It’s here where the novel starts to get sidetracked as it becomes less of the farcical, snappy, comedy of errors it was before and delves into philosophy and science of time travel. Chester, previously an unremarkable wuss, was unwittingly (and a little disappointingly) transformed into a science fiction hero. I wasn’t expecting this, and I won’t say it wasn’t interesting, but it certainly wasn’t as entertaining as the first quarter of the novel.

Despite the fact that Laumer seemed to not be able to decide what kind of novel this should be, I very much enjoyed the author’s sense of humor and the witty repartee between Case and Chester. Upon finishing this book—my first encounter with Laumer’s writing—I discovered I had more of his novels, and if I enjoy those, I’m sure I’ll be seeking out more of his rather expansive body of work in the future. His view on sixties sci-fi is refreshingly lighthearted and a lot more fun than the post-apocalyptic stuff I’ve been reading.

What Really Matters is What You Like, Not What You Are Like

High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
p. 1995

My first full book of 2014 is Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, the story of Rob, a guy in his mid-thirties who owns a record shop and has just been dumped by his long-term girlfriend, Laura. This latest in a long series of rejections in Rob’s life sends him on an internalized tailspin that eventually leads to contacting his top five exes in a quest to figure out what exactly went wrong in his life.

High Fidelity is my first foray into Nick Hornby’s work and I suspect I will be seeking out more. Hornby has a refreshing style—hilarious and relatable. Rob Fleming is a fantastic protagonist, too, even when I want to strangle him, and I wanted to strangle him a lot. That’s just the thing, Rob is not a perfect person, far from it, but he possesses this strangely pathetic self-loathing that is just too perfectly realized to not be relatable. Sure, maybe we haven’t messed things up as poorly as Rob has done—or maybe we’ve done worse—either way, Rob’s downward spiral, though at times cringe-worthy, is wholly engaging. You want to see Rob’s road to self-realization, you want to see if he’ll actually get there, because if someone as screwed up and self-centered as Rob Fleming can make peace with himself, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

High Fidelity is definitely a dated story. Obviously the idea of owning a profitable record shop in this day and age is laughable, even more so than it was a couple decades ago, but for the more obvious reason that the technology has become obsolete. The resolution—Rob’s reentry into the world of deejaying—also kind of falls flat by today’s standards, though maybe it wasn’t so laughable when it was written. 

More importantly, Rob and his record store cohorts (which he can barely call friends, though they’re probably the best ones he’s got) cram every minute of this novel with pop culture references and being a good two and a half decades younger than Rob and his friends, I understandably failed to comprehend most of them. You can pretty much guess at their meaning based on context, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve missed out on something—like someone is purposefully making references that go over my head while I’m standing in the room.

At the story’s start, Rob is of the mentality that “what really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” This thinking is, of course, erroneous, but not far off from the things that dictate our pop-saturated culture today. It would be interesting to see what Rob would look like if his story were taking place right now, but no doubt he wouldn’t get three pages without being declared the biggest ‘hipster’ alive and the story would get buried unless it took the parody route and played Rob off like a tool. The only reason this story—and Rob as a protagonist—works is because it was written before ‘hipster’ entered the vernacular and thus lost all meaning.

For all the story’s faults, its dialogue was realistic and its style was catchy and you can’t help but feel for Rob in spite of his faults. When Laura’s dad passes away after a long illness and she tearfully calls Rob up (initiating their slow drift back into each other's orbit), Rob’s monologue when receiving the news is one of my favorite bits in the story:

“I think about people dying all the time, but they’re always people connected with me. I’ve thought about how I would feel if Laura died, and how Laura would feel if I died, and how I’d feel if my mum or dad died, but I never thought about Laura’s mum or dad dying. I wouldn’t, would I? And even though he was ill for the entire duration of my relationship with Laura, it never really bothered me: it was more like, my dad’s got a beard, Laura’s dad’s got angina. I never thought it would actually lead to anything. Now he’s gone, of course, I wish... what? What do I wish? That I’d been nicer to him? I was perfectly nice to him, the few times we met. That we’d been closer? He was me common-law father-in-law, and we were very different, and he was sick, and... we were as close as we needed to be. You’re supposed to wish things when people die, to fill yourself full of regrets, to give yourself a hard time for all your mistakes and omissions, and I’m doing all that as best I can. It’s just that I can’t find any mistakes and omissions. He was my ex-girlfriend’s dad, you know? What am I supposed to feel?”

The end of the story implies that Rob has become a better person through the experience of reconnecting with his exes; I’m not certain I agree with that, and the final state of his relationship with Laura feels off to me, but I kind of like that it’s hard to decide if Rob’s really a changed man or not. It gives the story some ambiguity and makes you really think about how you’d have handled it all in his shoes.

I remember seeing the John Cusack film version of this years back and kind of liking it, and in celebration of reading this book, I watched it again, only this time I kind of hated it. I think it was a poor adaptation of this book. They got most of the action right, and Cusack is actually the perfect choice to play Rob, but the whole thing felt a lot less charming than the book. Maybe it’s the conversion trip across the ocean that did it, maybe it was the script or acting, or something else. The book just feels more genuine.

Superstud: Adventures in Embarrassment Empathy

Superstud
Or How I Became a 24-year-old Virgin
by Paul Feig
p. 2005


Here is a term I have just invented to describe my feelings about this book:
Embarrassment Empathy - when you're just so embarrassed for a character on page or screen that you have to hide your face until it's over because it's all too much to bear. (For TV fans, this may also be referred to as The Michael Scott Effect)

Superstud is the follow up to Paul Feig’s first autobiographical novel, Kick Me. Like Kick Me, it revolves around the comically awkward and often cringeworthy aspects of growing up that we all unfortunately experience. Feig, a native of my very own Royal Oak, Michigan, holds a special place in my heart, but I would have read this pair of novels regardless, as Feig’s is a career I have followed my entire adolescence, whether I realized it or not.

Superstud follows a lot of the patterns that its predecessor used, in that each chapter reads like its own anecdotal short story, but may be referenced in later chapters. I still laughed out loud, I still felt appropriately horrified at teenage Paul’s social missteps, and I still resonated with his awkwardness, but on the whole, I wasn’t as impressed with Feig’s sophomore novel as I was with Kick Me. Perhaps it was because Superstud covers the teenage to young adult portion of Feig’s youth as opposed to the earlier years. Watching someone stumble and fail hilariously is a lot easier to handle when they are a kid who probably doesn’t realize what they’re doing; watching that person repeat their mistakes on into young adulthood is so much worse because now you know they probably realize everything they’re doing wrong and still can’t get it together. I found myself cringing and sinking my face into my hands a lot more while reading Superstud than I did reading Kick Me. It just felt too uncomfortably aligned with my own awkward adolescence.

The content was a bit more alienating to me this time around, as nearly a third of the novel focuses on Feig’s misadventures in teenage masturbation and accidental boners, which I understandably lack familiarity with. It was a bit much, and all right up front, as the entire first section of the book is named after it, but I suppose male readers would find the whole ordeal a lot funnier than I would.

There were also some stylistic choices I thought fell a bit flat, namely Feig’s narration of finally losing his virginity, which is written out as if they are biblical passages. I got the intention, but I wasn’t feeling it the way it was written and got a bit tired of it a couple pages in.

That said, Feig’s super awkward comedy of errors that made up his youth would translate really well to the big screen. Someone really ought to snatch these books up and make a comedic film out of them. I’d watch it (even if I had to hide my face to bear the embarrassment empathy) because Feig’s torment is just too relatable, and if you can’t look back on that awkwardness and laugh about it (and Feig certainly has no problem doing this, as evidenced by his bare all attitude) then you’re gonna have a hard time moving forward.