Snuff
by Chuck Palahniuk
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Book Reviews of Snuff
Book Review: Poor... Even for Chuck.
Summary: 1 Stars
If you disliked the ending of Lullaby, Invisible Monsters, or Choke... you will loathe the ending of Snuff. As the book plays out through its 4 narratives, you begin to see that though the writing is excellent; the story telling never goes anywhere. The black humor of the book comes though well, and the conveyor-belt-pornification of America has never been quite so hilariously in your face... this story takes off fast and hard, but completely fizzles with every page from the intros to the end.
Really, for all the great positives of the book; it is completely missing a backbone. The topic of Snuff itself, Cassie Wright, doesn't make an actual `appearance' until the very end. When Cassie finally does actually take part in the near real-time story, she disappoints and goes from unlikeable in the back story, to a despicable screw up that quickly becomes a stranger to the reader, completely alienating us to the point of hoping something bad happens to her. This just leaves no room for any type of audience connection, and it is a shame because until the last couple of chapters, she is the actual topic of this novella. As well as lacking any of the black humor that should have made her a goofy caricature.
I loved the porn descriptions, the satire of how truly stomach churning the sex industry is at its base. Unfortunately, I found it a little ironic that the very idea also parallels this book; it's a nice, pretty, attractive, glossy product... but it's just a shallow and hollow product that ends up as disturbing and unappealing as the world it is trying to satirize.
And at the end of the day, you are left with a few dollars missing from your wallet, and a very poor novel on your bookshelf. I recommend you skip unless you are absolutely the most diehard Chuck fan. Overall I feel that it was a waste of time to read, and truly a shame.
Book Review: Tiresome. Weakest work yet.
Summary: 2 Stars
An open casting call for a six hundred man gangbang on film with aging porn star Cassie Wright brings together the protagonists of "Snuff," the newest novel from Chuck Palahniuk.
Number 137 is a disgraced television actor, number 600 an over-the-hill pornstar hoping for a comeback and number 72 is an grown adoptee who claims to be Cassie's long-lost son. Waiting their turn in front of the camera, they talk about why they're there, who they are and what they hope to accomplish once it's all over. Number 72 wants to rescue the woman he claims to be his mother. Number 600 hopes that she'll die from the physical strain of the stunt so he can be known as "the dick that killed Cassie Wright." Number 137 hopes that starring in the movie will help to minimize the damage caused to his career by a gay scandal.
This very short novel (under 200 pages) feel much longer than it really is. There's very little sex, actually - most of that is behind the narrative curtain - and none of the characters leave the filthy, crowded room where they're waiting for their turn with Cassie. Nothing much really happens. Readers wanting this kind of experience should save their money, drive to the nearest bus station and spend about six hours loitering in the men's room making small talk. Stand around barefoot for the best effect.
"Snuff" serves as ample argument that much of what make Palahniuk's writing so distinctive is starting to wear thin from overuse. His fetish for interjecting obscure and unlikely trivia into the mouths of otherwise prosaic characters has become glaringly obvious, and the lazy emphasis on shock value that was first noticeable in "Choke" has now almost completely replaced solid story construction. Perhaps "Snuff" is a sign that Palahniuk should surrender these crutches to his legions of imitators and move forward in his evolution as a writer.
Book Review: Everything you hate about stage plays - in a novel
Summary: 2 Stars
The thing I hate about stage plays is that the characters pretty much stay in the same location for the entire play. There's no movement. Sure, some plays do work. Those are usually the ones, like the plays of Oscar Wilde, where the dialogue is so good that you don't care that no one's going anywhere. However, if the dialogue isn't very good, then plays can be a bit of an ordeal. Reading "Snuff" is like watching a bad stage play.
Set almost entirely in the one room, "Snuff" tells the story of three of the 600 men who are waiting to appear in "the greatest porno of all time". That's right, a small number of characters and no movement. I actually had to check to make sure this book hadn't started its life as a play, it read so much like one. As I said previously, plays can be tolerable if the dialogue is good, but the three men really don't have anything worthwhile to say. It's not that the writing is terrible, it's actually more like a series of facts about movie stars, rattled off one after the other - interesting, but if I wanted to know these things, I'd be reading non-fiction, not a novel.
Finally, the title and the blurb of the book are very misleading. Given the book is called "Snuff" and we are told that there are 600 people gathered together to make a porno, I thought that at least a couple of hundred of those people would die in a spectacular and highly comical death scene in the final couple of pages. They don't. No one dies! After reading almost 200 pages, anticipating the finale all the way, I felt ripped-off, and was wondering what the purpose of it all was.
Usually Chuck Palahniuk is great writer, and I gave his last book, "Rant", 5 stars in my review. Nevertheless, "Snuff" is incredibly disappointing, the worst of his books to date, and should be avoided by all but the most dedicated of fans.
Book Review: Nihilism Revisited
Summary: 1 Stars
I remember once seeing a review for one of Palahniuk's earlier novels which said something like "He makes nihilsm fun!"
And so he did, once, but now we're beginning to understand just what happens to this "wise" nihilist in the end; this know-it-all who always had a "smart," "shocking," or "in-your-face" comment for the rest of us poor delusional slaves. One day the trivia runs out, the in-your-face commentary isn't shocking or new anymore, and the "surprise endings" don't surprise anyone. Most of us have started to wonder why we ever thought the cheap, gratuitous gore and filth was all that entertaining to begin with. We start to think that whatever "shock value" his earlier work had was just a cheap trick that we're ashamed we fell for. And Palahniuk, the Great Nihilist, is finally revealed for the fraud he always was. He's performed his little trick too many times, and his audience sees that it - and he - have become utterly irrelevant.
All that to say, don't buy this worthless piece of garbage. We could attempt to explain the non-existent plot, or talk about the contrived and transparent attempts at characters, and even give away the "surprise" ending (which, I assure you, will not surprise you), but frankly, it would be a waste of time. There's nothing here to analyze; even tearing it to pieces would be tossing pearls to swine. Suffice to say, if you're one of the simpletons who is impressed by shallow shock-value that everyone else finds transparent or just juvenile and repulsive, like 8th-grade attempts at sex jokes, you might enjoy this book. Otherwise, you'll be wasting money on something that is guaranteed to disappoint you, and the realization that this author isn't (and never really was) all that talented after all may cheapen your enjoyment or pleasant memories of some of his other work.
Book Review: An Acquired Taste
Summary: 3 Stars
I had told myself I wouldn't read another Chuck Palahniuk book after I half-finished Invisible Monsters, which I thought was annoying, not because of the writing style, but because of the transitions from scenes. However, I couldn't resist the plot idea of his latest, Snuff: a novel surrounding the life of Cassie Wright, a porn star, as she tries to beat the world record for the biggest gang bang caught on tape. Through the 197 pages, we come across other characters as well, including Mr. 72, Mr. 137, Mr. 600, and a stage assistant known as Sheila, and it is through these characters that we learn about not only Cassie Wright, a wonderfully depicted and drawn character, but also the other narrating protagonists as well as they speak and observe not only their histories and shortcomings, but their surroundings as well. And it is through this method that Mr. Palahniuk thoroughly succeeds in making sympathetic, three dimensional characters who are not archetypes and stereotypes, but human. Plot-wise, Palahniuk engages the reader with cliff hanger ending chapters, as they stumble through his minimalist prose. I say stumble because it is something you'd have to work through; a stylistic feature before its time the likes of Hemingway or Burroughs; an acquired taste, yet something whole-heartedly revolutionary. However, the story falls short as it climaxes to what turns out to be a twist turned awry that can leave any reader asking the author: "You led me all this way for this?" The characters we meet, though, is worth the price of admission and perhaps giving this author a second chance as his fans wait for his next venture and formerly disgusted readers take another look at his previous works.