26 Books

I think this book has only just been published in the UK in the last few days. I bought it in June at LAX waiting for a flight. I first entered Palahniuk’s twisted, warped, often-appealingly depraved and funny world by reading Survivor and Fight Club. Maybe I’ve been living in the UK too long, but I was too embarrassed to finish this book on the flight or to read it on the tube – I kept thinking someone sitting next to me might look over and catch some of the text in their peripheral vision and think I was a total perv.

As an object in the bookstore, I was drawn to the fleshtone cover of the hardback American version: slightly psychedelic, a hot pink and purple blow-up doll’s mouth contains the book’s title, defined by body parts and featuring a tiny, central silhouette of a gold pin-up (splayed out or in free-fall). The inside binding is covered with a brown-on-brown pattern of tiny figures in various positions and the text is printed in brown ink. I really like the design of the book. Can you tell I’m stalling for time? Not sure how to delve into this book and describe the content…

The text itself is pretty raw and graphic, revolving around porn star Cassie Wright’s attempt to break a world record and told from the perspectives of three of the 600 men, Misters 72, 137 and 600, and Cassie’s handler Sheila. Cassie’s motivations are rooted in a quest for redemption from her dark and troubled past. The glimpses we get of her character are mainly via the morbid facts she’s memorised about Hollywood stars and their self-destructive paths to fame and/or chosen methods of suicide. I don’t know exactly what to make of this book. Of the Palahniuk oeuvre I know, this seems the weakest. The rawness feels mostly overdone, even given the subject matter, and there was something tiresomely adolescent about the author’s laundry list of epithets for the willing men, (e.g. pud-pullers; monkey-milkers) and the featured adult films, (e.g. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nuts; To Drill a Mockingbird; A Midsummer Night’s Ream). I kept thinking ‘Enough: I get it, I get it!’ I’ll spare you the many, many, many, many others.

The classic Palahniuk touches that I loved were the ‘true fact’ trivia cited by the various characters and the brilliantly warped description of Mr. 72’s father customising his model train village to reflect crime-ridden urban blight populated by model whores, gang members and junkies. Warped and fantastic. Equally, Palahniuk excels at sensory overload. You want to take a shower after reading it. The grime, the smells – his power of description makes everything seem filthy and the words cling to you like a sticky film. I’m left with a distinct impression of sweaty men covered in baby oil/ fake tan leaving translucent grease marks on paper napkins smeared with ranch dressing and cheese flavoured powder. Though almost stomach turning, there’s no denying the power of that kind of immersive writing. Had he stuck to the hyper-descriptive allusions of food and the film set, I feel the result would have been more successful than many of the explicit passages that read as the author baldly trying to shock or disgust the reader.

So, as for my overall impression I may be misquoting, but the Stephen Baldwin line from the 90s film Threesome comes to mind: “Sex is kinda like pizza. When it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” I think it’s pretty fitting given the amount of junk food metaphors you’ll find in the book. Snuff isn’t Palahniuk at his best for sure, but it’s still pretty good.

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