Choke

Choke
By Chuck Palahniuk


Product Description
Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve.


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Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #651 in Books
Published on: 2002-06-11
Released on: 2002-06-11
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
304 pages

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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout who's taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.

"Art never comes from happiness." So says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just barely. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better.... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels

From Publishers Weekly
While it's always interesting to hear authors read their own work, this production is not likely to prompt a narrating career for Palahniuk (Fight Club) on par with his literary accomplishments. That's not to say, however, that his style doesn't work with this offbeat story of a sex-addicted medical school dropout whose gift is pretending to choke in restaurants and reaping the sympathy checks of the people who "save" him in order to pay for the care of his sick mother. Palahniuk reads with a husky, occasionally whiny voice that's rushed and intense. At times it seems like he's not reading at all, but reciting the novel from memory as he paces the floor with a cup of coffee in one hand and the fingers of the other pressed to his forehead while a cigarette smolders away in the ashtray. He brings a unique sensibility and opts for inflections that other narrators probably would not. After the book implores listeners to turn away and go no further in Chapter 1, for instance, Palahniuk reads the words "Chapter 2" in a tone of voice that says, "OK, you asked for it." That's a fitting sentiment for those who choose to listen, as this bizarre story is by turns hilarious and depressing, read in an idiosyncratic manner by an idiosyncratic author.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In the course of his three novels (e.g., Fight Club), Palahniuk has become a master of depicting the dark and depraved underbelly of our society through the voices of mordantly existential protagonists. Choke is no exception. This time around, readers are ushered into a world of sexaholics, historical theme parks, and other bizarre matters by Victor Mancini, a medical school dropout who has resorted to fake choking in restaurants in order to pay the hospital expenses for his elderly mother, Ida. Ida also happens to be an anarchist whose social terror campaigns made Victor's childhood less than stable. Such is the universe of Palahniuk, who calls the norms of our society into question by presenting us with a parallel world where most of what we hold to be true is exposed as hallow or insane. His writing is as good and as funny as ever, and like many other Palahniuk characters, Victor is quite memorable. Some readers may be shocked and even repulsed by much of the subject matter here. Still, it is recommended for most public and academic libraries.
- Heath Madom, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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Customer Reviews
Choke goes down smoothly
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR EVERYONE
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR EVERYONE
WARNING: THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR EVERYONE

if you cannot read graphic depictions of sex and immoral behavior, do not read this book. If you can handle it, read it. here is a description of what this book is about (does not contain spoilers)

this storie is about victor, the protagonist, who is a sex addict. He finds 'unusual' ways of finding sexual partners and in messed up places. The story transitions from victor's past and present with his mother who is in a hospital. To pay for bills and stuff, Victor scams people by acting as if he was choking at restaurants. That is a very narrowed down discription but i am trying to not have spoilers.

Preposterous and boring
I read this because I really enjoyed Fight Club and was hoping for something equally thought-provoking and edgy. Unfortunately, it seemed what works for one book does not necessarily work for another. Choke is preposterous to the point that it's difficult for the reader to suspend disbelief, and I just couldn't get past the smug vibe that permeated the book. Nor could I get past the shallow, ridiculous, pitiful characters. I wanted to kick each one in the backside and tell them to get a life. I get that the reader is probably not supposed to have much, if any, empathy for the protagonist, but that sure makes a book hard to read. However, with the clumsy, boring characters, self-impressed style, and childish-sex-fantasy coincidence of one of the characters being a sex addict, I suspect that this and other shortcomings of the book were not necessarily 100% intentional. This book left me suspecting that Palahniuk may be a one-trick pony, and it left me bereft of the urge to read more of his books in an attempt to disprove that.

Disturbing, but ultimately boring
Maybe I just don't ger Chuck Palahniuk, but after reading two of his books (this one and "Lullaby") I find his style to be boring. Yes, he peppers his stories with unrelentingly disturbing imagery, and he manages to pull together interesing stories that start out well... but in both of these books things tend to peter out toward the end. When you become apathetic (not disgusted or distressed) about the lead character by the middle of the book, something is wrong. I know he carries a ravenous fan base, but frankly I just don't get it.