JLCM Book Club - Choke

[joerules]

Warning! This thread will contain spoilers for the Chuck Palahniuk Book Choke and as of the last week of September for the Clark Gregg movie of the same name. Please read on at your own risk.


As requested Choke is up on the chopping block. There should be more than enough time to obtain and read the book between now and the movie's release. I've not cracked the book open again but I'm eager to. It's been a while and it'll be fun to return to it right before the big release.

Have fun and please refrain from movie spoilers until it is actually released.

Here are some helpful links:
Choke's Official Movie Site

Choke on Amazon - cheap, and you should get it in about 3 days. Plenty of time.

[Jesse]

I am well into it and I have already encountered a few scenes and general themes that I am having a hard time picturing up on the big screen. We did not see a single flashback in the trailer so I am curious to see if they do literal flashbacks or if he just talks in voice overs about his mom and his childhood.

Also, I am just curious how this thread is going to go (I have never participated in any sort of book club before). Are we going to talk about a section of the book at a time or am I trying to assign too much structure to this? :P

[Jesse]

It's a little dirty and from what I remember the hero is one step above dog crap, but it still makes for a fun read.

I know you have not re-read it yet so I take this with a grain of salt but actually, Victor is not one step above dog crap; he just thinks he is. Then at some point he starts to think that maybe there is some weight to the thought that maybe he is not dog crap but eventually regresses back into thinking he is worse than that.

[joerules]

Ah, the dog crap debate. I can't wait to contin ue this after I've finished the book.

[Jesse]

Bring it! :P I will defend Victor's middle nature (as opposed to good or bad) to the death!

[Britomart]

I'm with jsparks on this one! Victor's self-image is a godawful which is why he does what he does. His redemption comes from changing that image.

I was wondering how much they would change the novel to adapt it to the big screen; I didn't mind awfully how the ending of the Fight Club movie was quite different from the book, but then I watched the movie first. The split-second shot of Victor's mother with the chocolate pudding around her mouth makes me think it might not be very different at all.

[EightSlicesOfPie]

I am well into it and I have already encountered a few scenes and general themes that I am having a hard time picturing up on the big screen. We did not see a single flashback in the trailer so I am curious to see if they do literal flashbacks or if he just talks in voice overs about his mom and his childhood.

I saw a clip from the movie on Chuckpalahniuk.net and it was a flashback; took place after Victor's mom took him away from his foster mother in the department store, iirc. It's been over a year since I've read the book. I really want to before I see the movie again, but a friend has it right now.

[Neojanus]

God I just wonder how gritty and F'ed up they can make it without it being cartoony. When it comes to writing the tone is just there, in movies scenery and acting plays so much into it.

I mean I remember a lot of the side parts that can be very cartoony which may not be a bad thing but might end up kind of jarring film timing wise.

I mean the part where Victor helps a chick who has rape fantasies out. It's very cartoony on paper. I mean she has rape fantasies but she's in total control of the situation, that's funny irony. You have to come in at a certain time, no you can't stick it in her, and no you cannot make a mess. What part of that is rape? I can't tell. Although when Victor does make a mess on her curtains it's the funniest thing. Then of course comes the little scenes in the recreation village, all of them. When he loses that anal bead, part of me cracked up literally out loud.

Still very silly in a weird way.

[logosmonkey]

So I've been slogging through this off and on and just haven't really gotten into it. Honestly, I think it's more to do with Palahniuk's writing style than the story. I feel like he's consistently writing for the wrong format. Fight club felt the same way to me. I think as a movie it was great but as a book it was drudgery.
I really do think Choke is an intriguing story, Victor is a great protagonist that I like in spite of himself. The prose, however, not so much. It feels like Palahniuk is constantly trying to be witty and edgy and it hurts the story I think.

[joerules]

I'm having simlar problems. Somethign I didn't encounter the first time through. For some reaosn though, now, I feel like he's daring me not to read the book and I'm struggeling to proceed. I need to clear a night and just muscle through the damn thing.

[logosmonkey]

Yeah I'm really having more difficulty reading this book than I thought I would. I'm just can't get invested. It's not even for reasons that I would generally not get invested; i.e. bad plot, poor characterization etc. I just really feel like Palanhiuk is putting up hurdles for the reader and not for any reason to do with the craft of it but rather out of pretension.
I think the reason I like at least Fight Clubs movie adaptation better is because it drops a lot of that out of necessity for brevity.

[ed2003wrx]

I just finished this one last week. I was surprised by some of the content, because I wasn't sure how they'd pull it off in the movie (the anal bead scene in particular). It seems that they're making it into more of an up-beat comedy than I expected, judging from the trailer. While reading it, I read Victor's lines as more ... monotone isn't the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind. For instance, when I read the scene where he points out the stripper's mole, I thought he was very detached from his environment. but in the trailer, it seems that he's much more interactive, almost peppy. Maybe I misread his entire character. Did anyone else feel like his character was detached, or was it just me?

Also, when reading the See Also lines, I kept hearing Ed Norton's voiceover in my head. "I am Jack's colon". I think that actually helped me get through the book easier.

[logosmonkey]

I consider his character less detached and more oppressed. That is, I think he's keenly attached to his surroundings and situation but he's genuinely oppressed by it. He's a man who feels he's lost the ability to choose in his life, be it because of addiction or responsibility or fate.

[Jesse]

I do agree with you, logos, but he definitely tries to rationalize away his situation. This is obviously not verbatim but there is the line where he tries to say that he respects addicts more because they have taken control of their lives in some way and chosen the way in which they want to meet their end. It is a total bullshit rationalization but he does want to think that way about it.

The book IS comedy, at least to me, but the comedy is not necessarily in what is said or how it is said. It is in the fact that we are reading it at all. Here is what I mean by this: In most of Palahniuk's books we find the oddest of the odd characters, people we maybe think do not actually exist. The comedy of it is that they do; they sit next to us on the bus or at lunch. They play pickup games of basketball with us. You see them in the bookstore. It is irony in that way. Here are these people being shown to us who we find wholly unbelievable but in actuality are the people handing us our latte in the morning. Those are the people about whom Palahniuk writes and he writes it in a way that tries to make us laugh at ourselves for being so naive. To be fair, in Choke and Fight Club he does actually tell us, "Here are people you know but you don't know that they are this way." The maitre d' at your favorite restaurant might get the shit kicked out of him in a basement every Saturday night. The lady scanning your groceries might stick wine bottles up her ass once a week. It is all there under the surface and we choose not to or are unable to see it except when it is on display as a freakshow as it is in Palahniuk's books. That is the overarching goal in books like these two and Rant (Lullaby was not entirely this way and I have not read any others).

As far as Choke goes, we are shown that Victor is still the sniveling little snot that he was when he was a kid being led around by his mother. Now he is still an oppressed slave to women even if he thinks he is the one using them. That is until he meets Paige Marshall who apparently changes him.

What I find the weakest about the story is that there is no reason for Victor to like her more than anyone else or to be saved by her. It seems arbitrary or as though the point of the story is that we all have one magical savior. Maybe that is a strong point; maybe it is a thinly veiled allusion to God (thinly because of the references to Victor being the offspring of Jesus).

[ed2003wrx]

Yeah, logos, in hindsight I see what you mean. I've never been good at seeing the big picture while reading. And after watching the trailer again, Victor isn't as peppy as I first thought either. I think the music and the editing of the trailer caught me off guard initially.

sparks, i think Victor likes her more than anyone else because she is a lot more like him than most women he interacts with. She's a doctor, she's into casual sex, and she can see the good in him. She's able to save him, because he's able to save himself. She just sort of puts that first seed of self-worth in his mind. But he was able to be good all along, helping old ladies get closure for example.