Monday, May 20, 2002
Title: Survivor
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Vintage
No doubt like so many others I came to Chuck's work after seeing the film Fight Club. While it would feel better to be able to say that I was there from the start man, it just isn't true - in this case I have to just admit I read the book after the film. But after Fight Club I kept reading. from there to Invisible Monsters, then timing led to Choke and in turn Lullaby as those two came out. For some reason never quite getting round to going back to Survivor till now.
The first thing the reader will notice on opening there copy of Survivor is that the book is backwards. Presenting a countdown starting with chapter 47, page 278. A gimmick sure, but one which catches the readers attention straight off and works as we follow the account of Tender Branson's life. Tender Branson is 35, one of a dwindling numbers of survivors of a mass suicide by the Creedish Church. Only the first born son of each family stayed within the church district, increasing their lands incrementally while breeding more children. All the other children were sent out brainwashed, destined to clean and do manual work with all the money generated from their actions being sent back to the church. Tender hasn't been home since he was 17, and for the last 10 years he has watched the others in the FBI Survivor Program take their lives to join with rest of the church members in death.
As Tender becomes the last member of his church he gets an agent and becomes a celebrity which is the point where Chuck really cuts loose. His biting detail bridling up until this point then tearing into so many levels of modern American culture in the process. The upward spiral seems to be with every step a downward spiral in reality. Culminating with Tender being on a hijacked plane, counting down as each engine crashes and burns to leave an inevitable conclusion.
I'm not sure whether it is because this is a backwards step for me, having more recently read Choke and Lullaby, but it seems to take me longer to get into Survivor than his other work. But without a doubt Chuck's voice is as clear in Survivor as in any of his novels. An author that always surprises with the amount of detail that he actually works into his text. The result being that sometimes his work is not the most epic but is undoubtedly dense. In each book he comes with a satirical commentary that burns vividly and subversively - little throwaway ideas that act as bombs, the after-shock being what really catches the reader.
RVWR: PTR
May 2002
