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. 

Wise Blood - Flannery O'Connor

While I've read and loved every word of Flannery O'Connor's short fiction, I have yet to tackle either of her novels. About time I changed that. Loved it, but maybe less than her short stories (she is one of my three favorite short story writers with Hemingway and George Saunders). Hard to say as she knocks everything out of the park. Crazy about her work. 

Gist is protagonist Hazel Motes returns home to a fictionalized southern city following World War II with an unspecified war wound that has left him disabled. The grandson of a preacher, he never bought into salvation and has some theories on original sin. An avowed atheist living off his pension, Motes spreads a gospel of anti-religion. His ministry, the product of a life-long crisis of faith and the potential horrors he experienced in war, is based on his knowledge of theological issues. It forms a compelling argument, but dude has no charisma and finds it difficult to convert any would-be disciples. 

Favorite scene is when the character Enoch shakes hands with a “gorilla” to get free entry into the theater. It is obviously a guy in a gorilla suit, but dude thinks it is real and starts talking to him, telling him how he enjoys his monkey business or whatever. Finally, the guy tells him to fuck himself. 

I love O’Connor’s ironic humor and meditations on religion. As a devout catholic, O'Connor isn't afraid to be critical of faith in the South. 

For example, though he is a committed atheist, Motes sees his becoming a traveling preacher like his grandfather as unavoidable, part of his destiny. “There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin,” O'Connor writes. “He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher.”

With his unconventional doctrine, that there is no truth to be found through faith, there is only what can be seen. “'There’s only one truth and that is that there’s no truth,’ he called. ‘No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.'”

However, he uses a conventional religious format to preach against the bullshit that people are “unclean” and can only be redeemed through Jesus. In the end, though, he sees himself as being “unclean” and blinds himself as a type of penance. In my interpretation, this is for giving in to his destiny and being an utter failure, unable to make others see the truth. Worse, the characters Asa Hawks and Hoover Shoats use his religion of truth to grift the people Hazel is trying to reach. His blinding suggests that this is also bullshit. There is no truth. 

Unappreciated when it was published in the 1950s, it definitely deserved its place on The Guardian's list of 100 greatest novels. Should be required reading for students of English lit. It's shameful it never crossed my path as a student. She and Faulkner are the undisputed masters of Southern literature, IMO.

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's first novel from 1926. Meh. Expats living in Paris who go to Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and then later their slaughter. Bullfighting is, of course, the worst “sport” of all time (maybe except for gladiator fighting or American football). 

A modernist staple, I read this in high school. Hated it then. Hate it now. Based on people in Hemingway's "friends" going to Spain in 1925. Recounts their drinking, fighting, fucking. Shallow bullshit. The book is too long for such vapid dick-tickling. 

I vaguely remember talk of the whole point of the book being that these are young people of a "lost generation” not really knowing what to do with their lives. The novel then recounts something of a diversion for these moody, aimless sorts. Having reread it as an adult who has critically read a thousand or so books, I feel that is a cop-out. This was what he knew and fell into. The whole man-coming-home-from-war to a peaceful life with all the shit bubbling under the surface. These themes are better developed in his shorter work, in my opinion. So is his style, for that matter. 

I know the meditations on life and death are extremely moving and thought-provoking to some. However, it didn't move shit for me. "The few unsad young men of this lost generation will have to look for another way of finding themselves than the one indicated here," John Dos Passos said. That was a friend of Hemingway's. I'd rather read Camus, Joyce, or Kafka from that period. 

I find Hemingway to be the idol of masculine males I strongly dislike. Hunting, bullfighting, racist, antisemitic, meat-obsessed, sloppy drunk. What's not to love, am-I-right? Personally, I hate all of those things and anyone who imitates Hemingway in those beliefs. He is an embarrassing cliché of a dead white male firmly on the losing side of history.

All that said, there are things I really dig about Hemingway and his writing. He was a dog and cat lover. He wrote standing up and fucking lived. I believe his short stories are some of the best ever (though I may need to revisit them). “50 Grand” is probably my favorite. About a washed-up boxer who puts everything on his opponent. Gets punched in the balls. If he goes down, he wins the fight but loses everything. Stays up and nails the other guy in the nuts, giving the guy the win. I can think of no more appropriate metaphor for Papa's bullshit than this. It is fantastic. Plus, he is 100% my style icon. 

The most interesting part to me is the relationship between Jake and Brett. She should just be with him and have sex with dudes on the side, letting him perform cunnilingus so they can share some sexual intimacy. But Jake is Hemingway's stand-in, so I'm sure it wouldn't have worked out. 

In addition to the glorification of animal cruelty and what have you, there are a couple other things that make me hate the guy that pop up in the novel. When we read this in high school, I remember one of my classmates saying that Hemingway was obviously racist/antisemitic. Throwing the N-word and the K-word around (but also the treatment of black and Jewish people). Someone asked if that was the way it was back then. The answer is no. Yes, if you were a racist antisemite, yeah, which was more socially acceptable, but this was more than problematic even back then. 

The Robert Cohn character, who, with Bill, is probably the only person in the novel I'd hang out with. Cohn is pretty much always condescendingly called “a Jew,” save for when he's being called a “rich Jew” or “kike”. He is ostracized for being different, and we never forget that he is Jewish. “'Brett's got a bullfighter,'” the character Mike, Brett's fiance, says at one point. “'But her Jew has gone away .... Damned good thing.'” That seems to be the only real problem anyone has with him. They are annoyed by his presence. What is fucked is the character is based on a guy that Hemingway hung out with who thought of himself as Hemingway's friend. A guy named Harold Loeb, also a writer, was Hemingway's rival for the inspiration for Brett – Lady Duff Twysden.

While I'm not a Hemingway fanboy, there is greatness there. However, this is a "first novel" that's meh though it does put forth essential themes that he continues to explore. Come home from the brutality of war and keep on keeping on with your traumatized peeps.