July 19, 2013
I was expecting this book to be strange. How could I expect anything less from the author of Fight Club (haven't read it, but of course I've seen the movie...)? I was intrigued when I read the description for it on my local library's online eBook catalog. Having finished it, the only thing that really surprised me about this book is how the main character eventually becomes a sympathetic figure, how his humanity comes out even as the narrative keeps the same cold, brutally matter-of-fact tone.
This wasn't an easy book to read, at least at the start. See, the narrator is from an unidentified communist country. He could be from South America, Africa, the Middle East...his English, which is missing some determiners and auxiliary verbs, and his not knowing the "proper" names for things (his factually accurate but crude description of flowers as "genitals of plants" is funny) makes the text a little hard to understand at first. But I found that I went along that, as with Shakespeare, my understanding came easier, and in fact, I was able to enjoy the fun that Palahniuk was clearly having with the language. The narrator's strange English, and that of his "comrades," makes me think of a Russian person speaking English with a heavy accent. So where they're from is impossible to determine; the narrator is small and has dark skin, so he is dubbed "Pygmy" by his American host family. That's a pretty offensive nickname, I would say, but the suburban America that Palahniuk depicts in this novel is severely lacking in political correctness.
There are shocks right from the start; in fact, the most shocking seen of the novel (I actually sat in an elementary school library during my summer graduate course, reading this scene with my mouth hanging open in horror while pretending to work on an assignment) is in the second chapter, in which the narrator knocks down and rapes a bully named Trevor in a Wal-Mart bathroom. This kid, who was wearing a T-shirt with "John 3:16" printed on it (the narrator wore one from his host family that read "Property of Jesus"...these people were stereotypical American Christian hypocrites), had been beating up on the narrator's host brother (known only as pig dog brother, or host brother, throughout the narrative; while his sister, with whom the narrator falls in love, is known only as host sister or cat sister, or some variation). Obviously the kid already had psychotic tendencies, but the narrator's attack on him in the Wal-Mart bathroom really turned a screw loose. Which began to complicate the narrator's plans.
Did I forget to mention that the narrator was part of a group of teenage operatives, on a mission to kill millions of American citizens in Washington, D.C. and beyond? Uh, yeah. It's during the chapters in which the narrator recalled scenes from his life in his home country that he became a sympathetic character. At the age of four, he was found to be an exceptionally intelligent child, along with a small group of his peers. These children were taken from their families. They were lied to, told that their parents were all killed in a terrorist attack...by Americans. And so, they must give their lives to serve their "glorious homeland," and to earn their own fates. Their religion was: the "deity" wants to kill people and send them to hell. When an innocent person dies, it angers the deity; when a sinful person dies, it pleases the deity. And so, these terrorist children must earn their deaths. I guess.
The narrator knows that his parents didn't really die. He recalls a particularly horrible scene, during a parade. They are marching in the streets among the military tanks. One of his young comrades is accosted by a couple; they are clearly his parents. They young man is ordered to shoot his own parents dead, and he does so. Then, the narrator thinks he sees his own parents among the crowd, and he prays that they don't come to him or say anything.
It's no surprise when the narrator betrays Operation Havoc at the end of the book. He was clearly becoming cognizant of how brainwashed he'd been all those years, yet he does still seem to view Americans (on the whole) as being wasteful, probably evil creatures. He was right about the Reverend Tony being evil, as he was a pedophile who may have gotten Magda, another young operative, pregnant (although her goal was to get pregnant, after all; in actual fact, the father of her baby was pig dog brother). I didn't understand the whole pregnancy thing, why this little kids (really, like 13 or 14 years old!) were all trying to impregnate someone or get pregnant themselves. "American anchor babies"...that may have only been explained very briefly, when the narrator describes helping the Americans to flourish, so that they'll keep having an enemy to combat...that didn't make any sense to me, and unfortunately it wasn't expanded on. Maybe the narrator's own understanding of it wasn't clear; he was just a brain-washed kid, after all, if very intelligent and super strong. However, if the goal here is to displease the deity, then of course a continuous line of terrorists would need a line of victims. Still, the pregnancy thing didn't make sense, and didn't work, anyway, as the girls who were impregnated by the foreign exchange students (the narrator didn't have sex with any of the girls) all had abortions or took morning after pills, so the only baby born with Magda's.
Okay, so the whole Trevor thing is probably what started to change the narrator's mind, though his affection for his host sister probably had more to do with it. I didn't get that girl. She would sneak out to her father's office, a top-secret government science building, just to steal office supplies, I think? And she did this a lot. It was very weird. Anyway, the deal with Trevor was even stranger, and much more unexpected. See, after the attack, the reader is made to think that Trevor intends to get revenge. He even pulls a gun on the narrator at a school dance, forcing him to go with him to the parking lot. But not to attack him.
Trevor confesses that since the attack, he has fallen in love with the narrator. The narrator very insightfully points out that Trevor is misguided in his feelings, and that it's probably because he suffered some past trauma. He puts him off as gently as he can, as cold as he is. He continues to defend Trevor even after things get out of control. At the Model UN ceremony (apparently unsupervised, as all these teenagers in the school gym are smoking pot from hookahs and eating hash brownies and taking shots of vodka, all while wearing very stereotypical and racist outfits), Trevor opens fire on the other students...it's later revealed that he was trying to get the narrator to kill him, which he does. Of course, being some super spy kid terrorist, the narrator does some maneuver that takes Trevor's head clean off. "Pygmy" is declared a hero, and Trevor is denounced, though the narrator sympathizes with him.
In the end, Trevor and the poisoned Reverend Tony, the pedophile, are the narrator's only victims in the whole scheme. He sabotages the planned released of poisoned dollar bills on Washington D.C., and is adopted by the Cedar family, in spite of the fact that he had gotten the father put into prison, had sabotaged his host sister's project so that his would win and go to D.C., and his having confessed to raping Trevor (since his mother had already gotten the "suicide" note that Trevor left for "Pygmy," though making it sound more like a tryst than a rape). And having confessed to being a terrorist. I don't think he confessed to killing the pedophile reverend, but that doesn't bother me.
The America depicted in the novel is pretty messed up. The kids were drugging the parents so that they could do whatever they wanted! This seemed to be a regular occurrence...freaky! It really makes me not ever want to have kids, if that's supposed to be realistic. But then, Palahniuk can be over-the-top at times. Some of the observations made of America, told through the eyes of little intelligent brainwashed communist "Pygmy," are hilarious and sometimes spot on. Very dark humor, but I can appreciate that. I think that, the humor laced into this brutal and dark story, is what made it most enjoyable for me. I absolutely loved the narrator's description of KFC as some kind of war memorial for Colonel Sanders, and the scenes of the narrator in "Junior Swing Choir," and his descriptions of American "classics" like "Oklahoma!" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" literally made me laugh out loud. In the end, "Pygmy" basically choose the not-so-bad consumerist hell of America over something much much worse in his home country. Everything basically worked out for the best, you could say...a tidy American ending. U-S-A.
I felt like this novel struck a really good balance for me: intriguing story, sympathetic main character, humor. Prior to this book, my only exposure to Palahniuk was through the film version of his best-known work, but at this point I'd say he's batting 2/2 with me. He may be one of the most interesting and important authors of our time, and I will eagerly be adding more of his work to my list.
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This book touched on many hot-button issues in our country in the last few years: terrorism, teen pregnancy, teen sexual activity, violence in schools, and pedophiliac religious leaders. Another one briefly addressed in the narrator's cynical observations: obesity. Look, I'm not in the best of shape myself: I smoke too much, I don't eat as healthy as I should, I drink way too much diet soda. I'm barely in my healthy weight range, and I could stand be far more toned. But on the whole, we are a very very fat country, and I do think that people are starting to realize that it's a problem. There have been so many initiatives launched for the sake of national health...have there been any positive results?
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