Author:Chuck Palahniuk Binding: Paperback Published: 2000-01-04 ISBN: 0385498721 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
"Chuck Does it Again"
"A rollercoaster with few surprises..."
"we're all conformists"
"Grabs You From The Beginning"
Ready to buy?
Price: $11.16
List Price: $13.95 You save: $2.79 (19%)
Editorial Review:
From the author of the cult sensation Fight Club (now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter) comes Survivor. "A turbo-charged, deliciously manic satire of contemporary American life." --Newsday "The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," according to the "been there, done that" wisdom of Tender Branson, last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult. At the opening of Chuck Palahniuk's hilariously unnerving second novel, Tender is cruising on autopilot, 39,000 feet up, dictating the whole of his life story into Flight 2039's "black box" in the final moments before crashing into the vast Australian outback. Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Wickedly incisive and mesmerizing, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak.
Some say that the apocalypse swiftly approacheth, but that simply ain't so according to Chuck Palahniuk. Oh no. It's already here, living in the head of the guy who just crossed the street in front of you, or maybe even closer than that. We saw these possibilities get played out in the author's bloodsporting-anarchist-yuppie shocker of a first novel, Fight Club. Now, in Survivor, his second and newest, the concern is more for the origin of the malaise. Starting at chapter 47 and screaming toward ground zero, Palahniuk hurls the reader back to the beginning in a breathless search for where it all went wrong. This time out, the author's protagonist is self-made, self-ruined mogul-messiah Tender Branson, the sole passenger of a jet moments away from slamming first into the Australian outback and then into oblivion. All that will be left, Branson assures us with a tone bordering on relief, is his life story, from its Amish-on-acid cult beginnings to its televangelist-huckster end. All of this courtesy of the plane's flight recorder.
Speaking of little black boxes, Skinnerians would have a field day with the presenting behavior of the folks who make up Palahniuk's world. They pretend they're suicide hotline operators for fun. They eat lobster before it's quite... done. They dance in morgues. The Cleavers they are not. Scary as they might be, these characters are ultimately more scared of themselves than you are, and that's what makes them so fascinating. In the wee hours and on lonely highways, they exist in a perpetual twilight, caught between the horror of the present and the dread of the unknown. With only two novels under his belt, Chuck Palahniuk is well on his way to becoming an expert at shining a light on these shadowy creatures. --Bob Michaels
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Chuck Does it Again I read this after tearing through "Choke," another masterful novel. Admittedly, I'm not much of a novel reader. I gravitate toward non-fiction, but Palahniuk is a great writer that can really pull me in to his story. After choke, this story took a little longer to get into, but I enjoyed it very much. There is something about his writing that strikes me as very profound: he either writes about what you already know in a way you hadn't been able to express before or convinces you that you think the same... more info
A rollercoaster with few surprises... I've been on this ride before, I think, as I strap myself in and open up to the first page of "Survivor." You'd really think that it would be impossible for a novel by a writer as fiercely original as CP to be formulaic--but write enough of them quickly enough at the pace that today's publishers insist to justify their marketing budgets and make their millions and you end up with Danielle Steel...and now, not quite, but almost, and still a lot more interesting, Chuck Palahniuk. In this one, a... more info
we're all conformists This book deftly shows what the difference is between groups like Jonestown, the Amish and those within the mainstream culture: nothing. We are all fated to be just alike the only difference with groups such as the Amish, etc., is that at least they are aware of their conformity. Brilliant little piece of work.
Grabs You From The Beginning This book is fasicnating in its concept, about the survivor of a cult who is on a death watch as a plane heads into oblivion, and telling the story for those who find what may be left. Though the end is known at the beginning, it is still gripping in its story telling and the satirical stream that flows throughout. I enjoyed the sytle of writing becauses it fits in the context of the story itself as events are chronicled in a limited time frame in the charactors mind.
