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Survivor: A Novel
written by Chuck Palahniuk
Studio : Anchor
by Anchor
Release Date : 2000-01-04
Publisher : Anchor
Released : 2000-01-04
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780385498722
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 383 reviews)
List Price : $13.95
Our Price : $7.45
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Product Description |
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. |
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Americancivilwar.com |
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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 |
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amazing imagination |
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over the top satire. Best I've read since Tom Robbins. It just keeps coming at you. |
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Not as good as excpected but ok |
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I wanted to read a book like Fight club (which I have never read) but I saw that movie so I bought this instead. I do not regret that since this book had some good sections which was entertaining. However I found it slow and not so captivating as lets say Stephen Kings books. Not even close. It was an ok book would not really recommend it, infact at the end I just wanted the book to be finished already..! I would buy Fight club instead I think it would be better but I don't know =). |
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Same thing as Fight Club, different premise |
How disappointed I am to realize only 20 or 30 pages into the book that Survivor is a cookie-cutter version of Fight club with a different premise. Let's look at the basics:
Main character of each, a quirky, nihilistic anti-hero whom you develop an odd sympathy for.
(sort-of) Antagonist -- Tyler Durden/Adam Branson -- character that the protagonist can't live with or without.
"Love" interest - Marla/Fertility, women whose weird personas heavily influence the protagonist's life and the unfolding of events. They, along with the antagonist, force the main character into a strange situation he wouldn't otherwise be in.
In both Fight Club and Survivor, the protagonist spends an awful amount of time explaining facts on how-to's and other trivial matters. This is what annoyed me the most with Survivor -- Chuck, you already did this extensively in Fight Club. I didn't care when I read about how to thread a film projector (though I just went with the flow) and I certainly don't care how to get blood stains out of a carpet.
Any there's plenty of prose style that's similar between the two. It gets old fast. It get annoying fast.
Enough comparison. Let's talk about the story itself. I think the basic idea is great. But then he throws in a half-baked twist every thirty pages. And these things come in out of nowhere. One minute Tender's a pawn cleaning houses, two (short) chapters later he's the most popular man in the country. Things enter the story almost without precedent. Here, you can really see how he is TRYING too hard. And you will not get a real sense of anything beyond him cleaning the house. I found it hard to believe that Tender was a media mongol. I was reading the words, but I couldn't feel them. And the ending was the most arbitrary I've ever read in a novel. You can tell Chuck was running out of steam. I won't spoil anything about it.
Reading Survivor is like watching an ant colony construct a nest. You look at it from far above and you visualize the overall blueprint and result of everything, but it whizzes by so fast and so removed from your point of view, you can see what the ants built but you didn't experience anything.
I've been told by multiple people that all his books are similar, not in basic story premise but in other smaller characteristics, much like I explained above. I, therefore, will probably never read another of his books because, in the parlance of Palahniuk, they read like Survivor reads like Fight Club reads like... I suggest reading Fight Club and stopping there. You're not missing out on anything beyond that. |
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Muahahaha |
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"You won't be able to tell your friends about this book. You'll feel dirty just listening. And in the end it will be one of your favorites ever. Palahniuk's brilliance is his ability to wrap subtlety inside of blinding excess. He's like a guy who punches you in the face to disguise the fact that he's putting $100 in your pocket" I am quoting a review of another Chuck book, 'Choke'. That is pretty much my opinion. It has so many memorable quotes that your head will be spinning, and this guy is a brilliant writer. I actually "read" this as an audiobook, my first, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the voice was just as I had imagined it, indifferent and calm. Great great book, but your friends will judge you for reading it. The last sentence was so brilliantly handled that even if you may have thought it wouldn't work, it does, so much. |
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Great read |
Not to set the bar too high for this book, but I think this is better than Fight Club. This might be because I read Fight Club after seeing the film, so I already knew most of the story, but it's hard to say.
This book is not hard to get into, like Diary was, it pulls you in right from the first page (Diary might have been a good book, but I wasn't able to get past the first 40 pages). As has already been mentioned, this book starts off at the last page and works down, so you know how close the end is, but it doesn't feel rushed or hurried. This is a great book with a great story and characters that Mr. Palahniuk does so well. I don't want to spoil any of it, but you won't be disappointed. It's brutal, funny, and a great commentary on modern superficial culture.
So, see if you like it better than Fight Club. Even if it comes close, that's a pretty good sign it's a great read.
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