Snuff - Chuck Palahniuk

A pornstar hosting a 600-man gang bang to the death, an incredible amount of incest, and some child molestation. Novelist Chuck Palahniuk really puts us right there in the porn industry with Snuff, sticky floor and all. Probably not going to win too many readers. This is about a shocking of a read as you're going to find. Needless to say, it has some triggers. 

Palahniuk loves to shock—nearly 100 people (according to Palahniuk) fainted during public readings of his short story “Guts.” I sort of feel that is point with some of his stuff. That's why most people I know love his better stuff and loathe books like this. 

The gist of Snuff is that aged porn actress Cassie Wright, seeks to culminate her film career by breaking the world record for on-camera sexual partners in a 600-man gang bang in what amounts to suicide by sex. The story is told through the four distinctive perspectives. The narrators are referred to as Mr. 72 (a young perv), Mr. 137 (a mainstream actor whose career is finished after it came out that he did male on male many years before), Mr. 600 (exactly the kind of guy you'd imagine a pornstar to be), and Sheila (Cassie's personal assistant). Cassie’s perspective is almost completely missing from the novel. Everyone in this novel is incredibly unlikable. 

Thing I probably enjoyed the most were the “true facts” that Cassie tells porn wrangler Sheila about bygone Hollywood stars. Example: Lon Chaney put an egg membrane in his eye for The Phantom of the Opera to give him a fake cataract. Bacteria developed and he lost sight in the eye. “True fact.” There are lots of these little tidbits, some of which I know to be true. 

Much is made of the many, many porn titles sprinkled in: “Beat Me in St. Louis,” “Chitty Chitty Gang Bang,” “The Da Vinci Load,” “Gropes of Wrath,” “To Drill a Mockingbird,” so forth. It's never funny and happens on nearly every page. I'd say that these were the things I liked the least, and there were things I did not care care for. 

Definitely at the bottom of his that I've read. Of his 19 novels, this was my ninth. Of those, I'd put put this at around eighth or ninth, depending on the day. Down there with Doomed and Pygmy. The others, in ranked order, are Lullaby, Fight Club, Damned, Choke, Haunted, and Tell-All.

As hinted previously, this book on the edge of what I am willing to read from a fucked up perspective. Multiple times whilst reading this book I nearly quit. But I, ugh, pushed through. Palahniuk has done this a few times with his fiction, yet I keep reading him. Those good ones though. They are worth it.