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Snuff
From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple-X novel that goes where no work of fiction has gone before.'Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic.''Didn't one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie?'Cassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr 72, Mr 137 and Mr 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?
208 pages, Paperback
First published May 20, 2008
1044 people are currently reading
30567 people want to read
About the author
Chuck Palahniuk
168 books132k followersWritten in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. Chuck’s work has always been infused with personal experience, and his next novel, Lullaby, was no exception. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father. Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released in 2003. While on the road in support of Diary, Chuck began reading a short story entitled 'Guts,' which would eventually become part of the novel Haunted.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
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June 7, 2008Please stop writing, Mr. Palahniuk.
September 1, 2025
Only Chuck Palahniuk could think that dark comedy set in the queue for a 'gangbang' pornographic event would work as the centrepiece of a dark adult comedy, as much a satire on Hollywood as well as the American porn industry. A foster-adopted young man seeks his birth mother, a fading male porn star seeks to reclaim prominence, and a failed male TV star seeking any sort of attention, are just three of the 600(!) men queueing on the set for Cassie Wright's world record 'gangbang' event! Yep you heard that right. On paper and at the start Chuck's delve into the gangbang genre of porn is both interestingly macabre and sad; however Chuck's own story soon takes over as it all becomes one very dark comedy mostly about fading celebrity. Personally I would have preferred more insight on the logistics of the event and the motivations of the people involved; on the plus side this book has one of the most unforeseen and outrageous endings ever! 7 out of 12, firm Three Star read. A book that merits this Seinfeld GIF. :)
2019 and 2025 read
2019 and 2025 read
February 24, 2010
before reading
I'm presuming that this will be enough of a departure from Against the Day that it will help me remember how to read regular books.
(Also noted: the print is really big. Odd.)
after reading
Ok I'm really sorry to say this, but this book blew. I suppose that given the subject matter, that's kind of a double entendre, but fuck it. Actually, you know what? That's about as hard as it seems Palahniuk tried to make this book any good. It was like some college student aping Palahniuk for a second-rate writing class. A pale, pale imitation of the things that I know he can do really well. What a fucking letdown.
I guess you could call this a spoiler, but probably everyone who cares already knows that the plot here is that Cassie Wright is setting a porn world record by getting fucked by 600 guys in a row. The story is told in alternating perspectives by three of the men in line (numbers 72, 137, and 600) and by the "talent wrangler" who set the whole thing up. The multiple narrators — which worked so well in Rant — here are stupid and not believable. All three men talk basically the same, with a few halfhearted token phrases thrown in to differentiate them. (For example, #72 constantly says "I don't know." Oh yeah, Chuck, great.) I was hoping and hoping that the last chapter would be by Cassie herself, in order to possible do something trickerish and clever with a reversal of some kind at the end, but oh no. She basically never talks, and Chuck misses a chance to actually say something, make some kind of statement about the kind of woman who would get banged by 600 guys.
The whole book feels like just an excuse to catalogue three things: gross facts about how movie stars keep themselves beautiful & viable (cutting the heel off one shoe to make your ass grind together sexily, drinking crushed eggshells to get a smoky, husky voice); unfunny names for men who jerk off a lot (monkey-milkers, ham-whammers, sock-soakers); and clever fake porn movie names based on books & movies (To Drill a Mockingbird, Chitty Chitty Gang Bang, Gropes of Wrath, A Midsummer Night's Ream). And look, I love a good porn pun, but that is not enough, Mr. Palahniuk, to use as the backbone of an entire novel.
Sure there's some twists and a smidge of character development, but I'm telling you, the whole thing was just uninspired, insipid, and boring. Fuck.
I'm presuming that this will be enough of a departure from Against the Day that it will help me remember how to read regular books.
(Also noted: the print is really big. Odd.)
after reading
Ok I'm really sorry to say this, but this book blew. I suppose that given the subject matter, that's kind of a double entendre, but fuck it. Actually, you know what? That's about as hard as it seems Palahniuk tried to make this book any good. It was like some college student aping Palahniuk for a second-rate writing class. A pale, pale imitation of the things that I know he can do really well. What a fucking letdown.
I guess you could call this a spoiler, but probably everyone who cares already knows that the plot here is that Cassie Wright is setting a porn world record by getting fucked by 600 guys in a row. The story is told in alternating perspectives by three of the men in line (numbers 72, 137, and 600) and by the "talent wrangler" who set the whole thing up. The multiple narrators — which worked so well in Rant — here are stupid and not believable. All three men talk basically the same, with a few halfhearted token phrases thrown in to differentiate them. (For example, #72 constantly says "I don't know." Oh yeah, Chuck, great.) I was hoping and hoping that the last chapter would be by Cassie herself, in order to possible do something trickerish and clever with a reversal of some kind at the end, but oh no. She basically never talks, and Chuck misses a chance to actually say something, make some kind of statement about the kind of woman who would get banged by 600 guys.
The whole book feels like just an excuse to catalogue three things: gross facts about how movie stars keep themselves beautiful & viable (cutting the heel off one shoe to make your ass grind together sexily, drinking crushed eggshells to get a smoky, husky voice); unfunny names for men who jerk off a lot (monkey-milkers, ham-whammers, sock-soakers); and clever fake porn movie names based on books & movies (To Drill a Mockingbird, Chitty Chitty Gang Bang, Gropes of Wrath, A Midsummer Night's Ream). And look, I love a good porn pun, but that is not enough, Mr. Palahniuk, to use as the backbone of an entire novel.
Sure there's some twists and a smidge of character development, but I'm telling you, the whole thing was just uninspired, insipid, and boring. Fuck.
August 6, 2008
(Today's review is much longer than Goodreads' word-count limit; find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
As I'm sure a certain amount of CCLaP's readers are already aware, there's a new type of pornography that's become more and more popular within the last half-decade now, a type that I'm positive will eventually say more about the Bush Era to future historians than just about any other cultural detritus we leave behind. Known by various names -- including hate porn, gonzo porn, apocalypse porn and Nazi porn -- the videos themselves can sometimes vary widely in actual subject matter, but with all of them sharing a number of common ideological traits: they all feature cartoonishly outrageous sex acts and concepts; and they all revel in the most cruel, cold, inhuman ways that the entire topic of sex can even be looked at in the first place. So in other words, imagine an orgy between a group of Nazi soldiers and a group of Berlin prostitutes at the end of WWII, the night before the Russians are set to invade and slaughter them all; imagine the kind of sex that would take place under such circumstances, and you suddenly have a disturbingly clear picture of the exact type of pornography currently making more money post-9/11 than any other type of porn in existence.
It's a subject that's been practically begging for someone to write a brilliant postmodern novel about, precisely because it brings up so many disturbing issues concerning the human condition, sexism, the long-term mental damage that a fascist society causes all of its citizens, and a lot more; and wouldn't you know, just leave it up to Chuck Freaking Palahniuk to be that first mainstream postmodern novelist to do so. Because ladies and gentlemen, the topic I'm talking about today is exactly the subject of Palahniuk's newest novel, the short and terse sex-horror tale Snuff; and before you read any more of today's essay, before you ever go to add the book to your Amazon wish list, you need to be aware that this is the ugliest book about sex ever published by a mainstream press, and that it has the potential to cause lingering graphic nightmares in anyone not already versed on the subject of apocalypse porn. (Indeed, chapter 25 alone contains what might just be the ugliest story about sex ever written in human history; and oh, believe me, you'll know what I'm talking about when you finally read it yourself.)
Make no mistake, the story has to be this ugly for Palahniuk to make his point -- his point, after all, being to examine why this kind of porn has become so popular during the 2000s, and why certain people in certain societies are attracted to it -- but it's an incredibly disturbing story nonetheless, a story so disturbing that you owe it to yourself to seriously ponder whether or not you actually want to read such a thing. And that, frankly, is probably the most chilling detail of all; that Palahniuk's whole point seems to be that we in America are simply living in a very disturbing society right now, a torture-tolerant, celebrity-obsessed, apocalypse-embracing neocon paradise that is causing more and more mental damage to our collective psyche, something that none of us want to publicly acknowledge which is why the problem is getting worse instead of better. Ultimately, just like most of his other books, Snuff is a cracked funhouse mirror being held up to contemporary society; and just like most of his other books, it's a view that many people will not want to look at whatsoever, or in some cases even have the stomach to stand.
The novel is, in fact, a look at a "gangbang," which for the purposes of this review needs to be explained in a little more detail; because, see, there's a difference in porn terms between a commercial gangbang (something filmed and released all the time in that industry) and, say, a group of drunk frat boys doing something unspeakable to a passed-out undergrad in the middle of the night in their rec-room. Because in the porn world, these gangbangs are mostly publicity stunts, the numbers ratcheted up to impossible levels for the amount of press such things receive (and hence the number of units sold afterwards); 200, 300, 400 people sometimes in a single session, the entire thing very clinical and regulated and ritualized, about as erotic as trying to get several thousand people through a line at a rollercoaster at an amusement park on a Saturday afternoon. This is why such videos are sometimes called "gonzo porn," why I say that it's the concept behind the video that is just as important as the actual content; because the actual sex in these "gangbang" videos barely exists, with many of these events for example allowing each "performer" only 60 seconds apiece with the "star" (timed with a stopwatch and everything), most of them barely able to even achieve penetration itself before suddenly being whisked out the door again. It's the concept of this woman being put into such a submissive position that is the real turn-on for people who like this kind of stuff; it's not the minimalist sex itself that's erotically satisfying, but what it says about humanity that the video even exists in the first place.
Palahniuk's book, then, takes a look at five different characters all involved with one such commercial gangbang video shoot: the aging porn veteran in the middle of it all (think a down-on-her-luck Ginger Lynn); her young radical-feminist alt-dot-sex assistant, also the production manager of the shoot itself; a famous fellow-aging pretty-boy male porn star who will be the 600th and last lay of the event, known for his enormous schlong and rapidly crumbling looks (very obviously a thinly-veiled Peter North); an obsessed teenager who has basically allowed his adopted parents to kick him out of their house in order to attend; and most bizarrely of all, a gay closeted Hollywood actor who was once a popular television cop, until it came out that he himself had been the subject of a gay gangbang video when younger, who is now at this straight video shoot in an attempt to get "outed" as a heterosexual TMZ-syle and jump-start his mainstream career again. Because oh, did I not mention this? Everyone's under the impression that the porn star is going to die during the shoot, originally because of a bizarre medical phenomenon that the producers randomly hear about one day, the very real but rare vaginal embolism that can sometimes occur when a woman has something unusual put inside her, or too many things put inside her too quickly. (Go read about it if you want to know why such a thing actually kills a few hundred women a year in real life; it's too gross to get into here.)
The people behind the shoot start playing this detail up, hoping that it'll drum up more publicity; but the more everyone starts thinking about it, the more they realize just what a goldmine it would be for everyone involved if the woman does actually die during the shoot, not only for all the copies that would eventually be bought online through shady international servers and the like, but also because it would undoubtedly outrage the American public, probably leading to Congress banning the shooting of such videos, making that shoot legally the last gangbang literally in the history of porn. (And besides, what apocalypse-embracing monster doesn't want to go around being able to say, "I own the c-ck that literally killed a porn star?") With dollar signs flashing in all their eyeballs, then, the various hucksters and crazies involved with the shoot start making nefarious plans to make sure all ends as expected; one sneaks a poison capsule into the event, another starts planning a series of spectacularly violent events to end it all.
Yeah, ready to slit your wrists out of sheer depression yet? No? Well, how about if we add the fact that the teenage boy might or might not be the porn star's illegitimate child, given up for adoption at birth? And that he knows this and has obsessively decided to attend the shoot as a performer anyway? Or that part of this novel consists of watching the closeted Hollywood actor slowly overdose on Viagra over the course of 200 pages, with physical results that are painful to even read about? Or that one of the people making secret plans for the porn star's death is the porn star herself, obsessed as she is with celebrity suicide and how history will perceive her? Now are you ready to kill yourself? Because let's make no mistake -- in true Palahniukian style, this novel is about as bleak as a bleak tale gets, a look at a cold and remorseless universe where such concepts as love and intimacy don't even exist. In the world of Snuff, there is no such thing as pleasant sex; all of it is tinged with the disgusting mix of baby oil and male sweat and the dust of Cheetos from the craft-services table a few minutes before, the smells coming from the single toilet all 600 men are forced to share, the blood and saliva of the horned-up almost naked former prisoners getting into nervy fistfights with each other in the green room before their numbers are finally called.
Ugh -- it makes me shudder just recounting the details to you! And that's an important thing for you to understand, a thing I don't think I can emphasize enough; that if even I -- even a guy who when younger used to be an edgy sex columnist himself, even a guy who was already familiar with the details of apocalypse porn before picking up this book -- if even I am creeped out and disgusted by Snuff, for all you normal folks there is a very real chance of...
As I'm sure a certain amount of CCLaP's readers are already aware, there's a new type of pornography that's become more and more popular within the last half-decade now, a type that I'm positive will eventually say more about the Bush Era to future historians than just about any other cultural detritus we leave behind. Known by various names -- including hate porn, gonzo porn, apocalypse porn and Nazi porn -- the videos themselves can sometimes vary widely in actual subject matter, but with all of them sharing a number of common ideological traits: they all feature cartoonishly outrageous sex acts and concepts; and they all revel in the most cruel, cold, inhuman ways that the entire topic of sex can even be looked at in the first place. So in other words, imagine an orgy between a group of Nazi soldiers and a group of Berlin prostitutes at the end of WWII, the night before the Russians are set to invade and slaughter them all; imagine the kind of sex that would take place under such circumstances, and you suddenly have a disturbingly clear picture of the exact type of pornography currently making more money post-9/11 than any other type of porn in existence.
It's a subject that's been practically begging for someone to write a brilliant postmodern novel about, precisely because it brings up so many disturbing issues concerning the human condition, sexism, the long-term mental damage that a fascist society causes all of its citizens, and a lot more; and wouldn't you know, just leave it up to Chuck Freaking Palahniuk to be that first mainstream postmodern novelist to do so. Because ladies and gentlemen, the topic I'm talking about today is exactly the subject of Palahniuk's newest novel, the short and terse sex-horror tale Snuff; and before you read any more of today's essay, before you ever go to add the book to your Amazon wish list, you need to be aware that this is the ugliest book about sex ever published by a mainstream press, and that it has the potential to cause lingering graphic nightmares in anyone not already versed on the subject of apocalypse porn. (Indeed, chapter 25 alone contains what might just be the ugliest story about sex ever written in human history; and oh, believe me, you'll know what I'm talking about when you finally read it yourself.)
Make no mistake, the story has to be this ugly for Palahniuk to make his point -- his point, after all, being to examine why this kind of porn has become so popular during the 2000s, and why certain people in certain societies are attracted to it -- but it's an incredibly disturbing story nonetheless, a story so disturbing that you owe it to yourself to seriously ponder whether or not you actually want to read such a thing. And that, frankly, is probably the most chilling detail of all; that Palahniuk's whole point seems to be that we in America are simply living in a very disturbing society right now, a torture-tolerant, celebrity-obsessed, apocalypse-embracing neocon paradise that is causing more and more mental damage to our collective psyche, something that none of us want to publicly acknowledge which is why the problem is getting worse instead of better. Ultimately, just like most of his other books, Snuff is a cracked funhouse mirror being held up to contemporary society; and just like most of his other books, it's a view that many people will not want to look at whatsoever, or in some cases even have the stomach to stand.
The novel is, in fact, a look at a "gangbang," which for the purposes of this review needs to be explained in a little more detail; because, see, there's a difference in porn terms between a commercial gangbang (something filmed and released all the time in that industry) and, say, a group of drunk frat boys doing something unspeakable to a passed-out undergrad in the middle of the night in their rec-room. Because in the porn world, these gangbangs are mostly publicity stunts, the numbers ratcheted up to impossible levels for the amount of press such things receive (and hence the number of units sold afterwards); 200, 300, 400 people sometimes in a single session, the entire thing very clinical and regulated and ritualized, about as erotic as trying to get several thousand people through a line at a rollercoaster at an amusement park on a Saturday afternoon. This is why such videos are sometimes called "gonzo porn," why I say that it's the concept behind the video that is just as important as the actual content; because the actual sex in these "gangbang" videos barely exists, with many of these events for example allowing each "performer" only 60 seconds apiece with the "star" (timed with a stopwatch and everything), most of them barely able to even achieve penetration itself before suddenly being whisked out the door again. It's the concept of this woman being put into such a submissive position that is the real turn-on for people who like this kind of stuff; it's not the minimalist sex itself that's erotically satisfying, but what it says about humanity that the video even exists in the first place.
Palahniuk's book, then, takes a look at five different characters all involved with one such commercial gangbang video shoot: the aging porn veteran in the middle of it all (think a down-on-her-luck Ginger Lynn); her young radical-feminist alt-dot-sex assistant, also the production manager of the shoot itself; a famous fellow-aging pretty-boy male porn star who will be the 600th and last lay of the event, known for his enormous schlong and rapidly crumbling looks (very obviously a thinly-veiled Peter North); an obsessed teenager who has basically allowed his adopted parents to kick him out of their house in order to attend; and most bizarrely of all, a gay closeted Hollywood actor who was once a popular television cop, until it came out that he himself had been the subject of a gay gangbang video when younger, who is now at this straight video shoot in an attempt to get "outed" as a heterosexual TMZ-syle and jump-start his mainstream career again. Because oh, did I not mention this? Everyone's under the impression that the porn star is going to die during the shoot, originally because of a bizarre medical phenomenon that the producers randomly hear about one day, the very real but rare vaginal embolism that can sometimes occur when a woman has something unusual put inside her, or too many things put inside her too quickly. (Go read about it if you want to know why such a thing actually kills a few hundred women a year in real life; it's too gross to get into here.)
The people behind the shoot start playing this detail up, hoping that it'll drum up more publicity; but the more everyone starts thinking about it, the more they realize just what a goldmine it would be for everyone involved if the woman does actually die during the shoot, not only for all the copies that would eventually be bought online through shady international servers and the like, but also because it would undoubtedly outrage the American public, probably leading to Congress banning the shooting of such videos, making that shoot legally the last gangbang literally in the history of porn. (And besides, what apocalypse-embracing monster doesn't want to go around being able to say, "I own the c-ck that literally killed a porn star?") With dollar signs flashing in all their eyeballs, then, the various hucksters and crazies involved with the shoot start making nefarious plans to make sure all ends as expected; one sneaks a poison capsule into the event, another starts planning a series of spectacularly violent events to end it all.
Yeah, ready to slit your wrists out of sheer depression yet? No? Well, how about if we add the fact that the teenage boy might or might not be the porn star's illegitimate child, given up for adoption at birth? And that he knows this and has obsessively decided to attend the shoot as a performer anyway? Or that part of this novel consists of watching the closeted Hollywood actor slowly overdose on Viagra over the course of 200 pages, with physical results that are painful to even read about? Or that one of the people making secret plans for the porn star's death is the porn star herself, obsessed as she is with celebrity suicide and how history will perceive her? Now are you ready to kill yourself? Because let's make no mistake -- in true Palahniukian style, this novel is about as bleak as a bleak tale gets, a look at a cold and remorseless universe where such concepts as love and intimacy don't even exist. In the world of Snuff, there is no such thing as pleasant sex; all of it is tinged with the disgusting mix of baby oil and male sweat and the dust of Cheetos from the craft-services table a few minutes before, the smells coming from the single toilet all 600 men are forced to share, the blood and saliva of the horned-up almost naked former prisoners getting into nervy fistfights with each other in the green room before their numbers are finally called.
Ugh -- it makes me shudder just recounting the details to you! And that's an important thing for you to understand, a thing I don't think I can emphasize enough; that if even I -- even a guy who when younger used to be an edgy sex columnist himself, even a guy who was already familiar with the details of apocalypse porn before picking up this book -- if even I am creeped out and disgusted by Snuff, for all you normal folks there is a very real chance of...
June 23, 2008
I refuse to spend more time reviewing this book than Palahniuk spent writing it (which couldn't have been very much), so I'll be brief. Snuff takes place entirely in the green room of a porno movie. Cassie Wright is an aging porn star who is trying to set a world record for having sex with 600 dudes in one film, an act that everyone seems to think will kill her. Cassie thinks this too, but that appears to be the whole point. She's hoping that if she dies trying to break the record, then the film will go gangbusters and make a ton of money, money which she will then leave to the child she abandoned eighteen years prior. A whole mess of creepy men answer the casting call to help Cassie make history, and the story is told from the point-of-view of three of those dudes: Mr. 600, a professional porn star and the man who got Cassie started in the business; Mr. 137, a washed-up television star who somehow thinks doing this will resuscitate his failing career; and Mr. 72, who - as messed up as this sounds - believes he is Cassie's son. And if this all sounds like a great big ol' wet, hot mess, then that's because it is.
I'm honestly not really sure what Palahniuk was trying to accomplish with this book. If I were feeling kind, I'd suggest that Snuff was a failed attempt at making some sort of larger critical commentary on the porn industry; however, I'm not feeling kind, so instead I'll suggest that Snuff is the product of a shocking author who has run out of ways to try and shock us. Trouble is, despite the subject matter, it's not particularly shocking at all. Instead, it's lazily written, pointless and boring.
In short, I absolutely hated this book. If it had a face, I would have punched it in it.
I'm honestly not really sure what Palahniuk was trying to accomplish with this book. If I were feeling kind, I'd suggest that Snuff was a failed attempt at making some sort of larger critical commentary on the porn industry; however, I'm not feeling kind, so instead I'll suggest that Snuff is the product of a shocking author who has run out of ways to try and shock us. Trouble is, despite the subject matter, it's not particularly shocking at all. Instead, it's lazily written, pointless and boring.
In short, I absolutely hated this book. If it had a face, I would have punched it in it.
June 23, 2014
I absolutely enjoyed this book. I just came off of reading "Rant" with my Composition 2 students, and I had one student object (quietly, coming to me during office hours to do so) to reading it because it goes against everything she believes in (which is following the word of God and ridding the world of moral filth. Her words, not mine). So of course I respected her position, gave her a new assignment, and kept on trucking with the rest of the class. Her comments did, however, give me pause as I opened up this new Palahniuk delight about an aging pornography queen set to beat the world record for sex acts taped for a movie (600 men/600 sex acts). Was it too "filthy," and should I approach it it with a keener eye for any use of filth-for-filth's-sake? And my response was: hell no.
It was great. Yes, it was totally off its literary rocker, and yes, it was over-the-top sexually graphic. But was it perfect? Very nearly, yes. Given the title and a very early tip from one of our narrators (Palahniuk's at his stylistic wheel of fortune again, this time giving us first person narration from four different characters' p.o.v.'s) I knew that the film Cassie Wright, our porn queen, was making would eventually turn out as a snuff film. Though what kind of guess, I wasn't even close. I guessed one of the twists about half-way through (won't spoil it here), though the other handful hit me like one of Branch Bacardi's toys over the head.
In addition to its super-fun story and really nice, tight writing, it's an ultra quick read. I started it Saturday afternoon and finished it last night (I would have finished it quicker, but we had a Power Family Field Trip to a soccer game at Soldier Field last evening). I stayed up until about one a.m. to finish it, and was thoroughly pleased that I did. Pick it up, be totally aware of the subject matter and don't be shocked to read about sex acts, sex toys, and sex performers in graphic-traffic detail. And then, just have a fantastic time.
It was great. Yes, it was totally off its literary rocker, and yes, it was over-the-top sexually graphic. But was it perfect? Very nearly, yes. Given the title and a very early tip from one of our narrators (Palahniuk's at his stylistic wheel of fortune again, this time giving us first person narration from four different characters' p.o.v.'s) I knew that the film Cassie Wright, our porn queen, was making would eventually turn out as a snuff film. Though what kind of guess, I wasn't even close. I guessed one of the twists about half-way through (won't spoil it here), though the other handful hit me like one of Branch Bacardi's toys over the head.
In addition to its super-fun story and really nice, tight writing, it's an ultra quick read. I started it Saturday afternoon and finished it last night (I would have finished it quicker, but we had a Power Family Field Trip to a soccer game at Soldier Field last evening). I stayed up until about one a.m. to finish it, and was thoroughly pleased that I did. Pick it up, be totally aware of the subject matter and don't be shocked to read about sex acts, sex toys, and sex performers in graphic-traffic detail. And then, just have a fantastic time.
December 5, 2013
Read in an attempt to understand. Wasn't successful.
December 9, 2015
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
“Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic. Didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.”
You’re probably reading a Chuck Palahniuk sex story.
The premise of Snuff is simple enough – a world record is about to broken. This is the story of a day in the life of 600 dudes, including an aging porn star . . .
a boy with a secret . . .
and a bunch of other randos . . .
Each of these shank-shuckers/baby-barfers/tadpole-tossers or whatever you want to call them anxiously awaits their turn at a bang session with the queen of the adult film scene, Cassie Wright. While waiting in the wings the jizz-juicers/sock-soakers/bone-beaters or whatever you want to call them will kill time popping little blue pills, watching some classic films for inspiration such as Sperms of Endearment, Angels with Dirty Places, Lay Misty for Me and the ever-popular The Handmaid’s Tale . . .
It’s okay Kanye. That was funny – and the public flogging you’ll receive by the members of Goodreads for laughing at that will only hurt until the bruises fade. The ceiling-spacklers/weasel-teasers/willy-wankers or whatever you want to call them will also let some skeletons come tumbling out of their respective closets . . . .
No, I mean big secrets . . .
Okay, HUGE secrets . . .
which all leads up to a patented Palahniuk ending.
My sincerest apologies, Chuck, but you really . . .
with this one. It almost makes me want to go raise my rating for Beautiful You. Almost. If you have nothing better to do and want to say you read something by Palahniuk since he’s soooooo edgy, don’t let this review stop you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though. Oh, and if you think I read everything wrong (and spend all day talking about how I’m related to Lucifer and/or trolling), go read Kemper or Ed or Bill’s reviews instead since they all found it to be equally as “meh” as I did.
“Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic. Didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.”
You’re probably reading a Chuck Palahniuk sex story.
The premise of Snuff is simple enough – a world record is about to broken. This is the story of a day in the life of 600 dudes, including an aging porn star . . .
a boy with a secret . . .
and a bunch of other randos . . .
Each of these shank-shuckers/baby-barfers/tadpole-tossers or whatever you want to call them anxiously awaits their turn at a bang session with the queen of the adult film scene, Cassie Wright. While waiting in the wings the jizz-juicers/sock-soakers/bone-beaters or whatever you want to call them will kill time popping little blue pills, watching some classic films for inspiration such as Sperms of Endearment, Angels with Dirty Places, Lay Misty for Me and the ever-popular The Handmaid’s Tale . . .
It’s okay Kanye. That was funny – and the public flogging you’ll receive by the members of Goodreads for laughing at that will only hurt until the bruises fade. The ceiling-spacklers/weasel-teasers/willy-wankers or whatever you want to call them will also let some skeletons come tumbling out of their respective closets . . . .
No, I mean big secrets . . .
Okay, HUGE secrets . . .
which all leads up to a patented Palahniuk ending.
My sincerest apologies, Chuck, but you really . . .
with this one. It almost makes me want to go raise my rating for Beautiful You. Almost. If you have nothing better to do and want to say you read something by Palahniuk since he’s soooooo edgy, don’t let this review stop you. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though. Oh, and if you think I read everything wrong (and spend all day talking about how I’m related to Lucifer and/or trolling), go read Kemper or Ed or Bill’s reviews instead since they all found it to be equally as “meh” as I did.
December 29, 2021
What do we really know about the people who have sex on film? Do we really want to know anything about them? Or are they just 'there' to perform for us - there for us to 'loop' back to the particular act and actor that fufills our desire - then forgotten till the need arises in us again to become intimate with the objectification of our own emptiness. Warning: extreamly graphic adult material.
August 1, 2013
I feel icky.
Chuck Palahniuk's take on the porn industry blows wades of sex euphemisms all over the reader like moneyshots at a gangbang. The language is as base as the subject matter. The characters have all the nuance of a cookie cutter. The plot, slightly more complicated than the old school "I've come to fix the pool" porn of yesteryear, is nonetheless as formulaic as a whodunit mystery. And yes, all this works in the author's favor. He is, after all, writing about porn.
Is this titillation pure and simple, or is this an important truth? To me, it seems filled to the brim with both. Like moths to light, certain kinds of people seem drawn to join the porn industry. In evening news programs like 60 Minutes they've often been depicted as having preexisting "damaged" traits. Palahniuk plays this up to the hilt and then takes it a step further, going into the Hollywood world for examples of actors and actresses drawn to the flame of stardom, some on the cusp of making it only to fall into the necessity of making ends meet. But Palahniuk casts about too far in piling on the shocking examples of movie industry mishaps, which drift so far from the point as to nearly devolve into the sort of sensationalistic headlines found on the cover of gossip mags in the counter aisle.
February 1, 2025
Brings a whole new meaning to the term sloppy seconds!
It's Palahniuk. He is what he is. Writing is nothing to shout about, but it's a preposterous turn-off-your-brain blast of adult fiction nonetheless, and can be grotesquely funny.
Chuck and porn go hand in hand like crabs on a whore's toilet seat.
It's Palahniuk. He is what he is. Writing is nothing to shout about, but it's a preposterous turn-off-your-brain blast of adult fiction nonetheless, and can be grotesquely funny.
Chuck and porn go hand in hand like crabs on a whore's toilet seat.
October 27, 2020
I love Chuck P. But it's clear that his work has been on a steadily downward trajectory. Some think he peaked with Flight Club, arguably his best. I love many of his later works including one of my Favorite books of all time, Survivor, and I adore Choke, Haunted, the original version of Invisible Monsters and Stranger Than Fiction. I didn't enjoy Diary and if I have the chronology right, stopped there.
A GR friend reviewed this and it made me nostalgic for the twisted one (Palahniuk, not the GR friend, though arguably he's twisted too). This had plenty of offensive material, but none as gross as "Guts" in Haunted. The gross-out factor here mostly comes from descriptions of aging male genitalia and who else but Chuck P. can make a normal biological process read like horror.
It's about porn, a silly tale of an iconic porn star who wants to set a record for banging the most men in a film, six hundred to be exact. It's actually based on real porn stars, one who set the current record, another who was thought to but found to have cheated. One of the things I enjoy most about Chuck P. are the facts he includes throughout every book. Here they're mostly about the porn industry but there's one man waiting in the cattle call for his turn at the star in the bed upstairs who has an eye for clothing and there are frequent detailed descriptions of garments, styles, buttons and fabrics, one of Chuck P.'s signatures done better in other books and sprinkled in with info about blowup dolls, body fluids, occasionally feminists and feminist ideologies, and an interlude about Messalina.
There are also "true facts" about the tricks old Hollywood stars used to look sexier or younger. I Googled a lot. Only one turned out to be true, that Marilyn Monroe always had an inch taken off one heel so her derriere would look even more sexy as she walked. But he had me going that Rita Hayworth rubbed strawberry Jello-o powder on her nipples and Lucille Ball -- never mind, it didn't happen.
There's a plot besides the hundreds of naked men downstairs waiting for their number to be called while munching on a buffet of awful snacks, and the porn star busy in the bed upstairs. It involves the child she gave birth to who she gave up for adoption. And I must admit the resolution to that was unexpected and satisfying. If only it had been the very end, which was so bizarre and obscene I won't do that to you.
The most enjoyment I got out of the book was from the names of her films showing on monitors downstairs to keep the men excited (along with their blue pills). Face it, some of you have or still watch porn and others like me (well, I've seen a bit) have landed by accident on the series of cable channels displaying the names of the movies. They're amusing but Chuck P., as is his wont as an author, dials them to eleven and I laughed out loud over and over. So the last paragraph lists some of them and if you're offended, and I get that, or just don't care, it ends for you at the end of this paragraph. You see I gave it three stars and they're for his gift with words, no matter how lame the plot and some of the characters, and for making me laugh...except for this: One beautiful simile (he really can write), a description by a male former porn superstar of the only time he actually made love to a woman as "like our skin was having a conversation." I adore that description. And now leaving the lovely for the lewd...
These are :giggle: some of the X-rated titles Chuck P. has concocted for Snuff: On Golden Blonde, Three Days of the Condom, Sperms of Endearment, The Handmaid's Tail, Moby Dicked, The Ass Menagerie, Lady Windermere's Fanny and A Tale of Two Titties.
A GR friend reviewed this and it made me nostalgic for the twisted one (Palahniuk, not the GR friend, though arguably he's twisted too). This had plenty of offensive material, but none as gross as "Guts" in Haunted. The gross-out factor here mostly comes from descriptions of aging male genitalia and who else but Chuck P. can make a normal biological process read like horror.
It's about porn, a silly tale of an iconic porn star who wants to set a record for banging the most men in a film, six hundred to be exact. It's actually based on real porn stars, one who set the current record, another who was thought to but found to have cheated. One of the things I enjoy most about Chuck P. are the facts he includes throughout every book. Here they're mostly about the porn industry but there's one man waiting in the cattle call for his turn at the star in the bed upstairs who has an eye for clothing and there are frequent detailed descriptions of garments, styles, buttons and fabrics, one of Chuck P.'s signatures done better in other books and sprinkled in with info about blowup dolls, body fluids, occasionally feminists and feminist ideologies, and an interlude about Messalina.
There are also "true facts" about the tricks old Hollywood stars used to look sexier or younger. I Googled a lot. Only one turned out to be true, that Marilyn Monroe always had an inch taken off one heel so her derriere would look even more sexy as she walked. But he had me going that Rita Hayworth rubbed strawberry Jello-o powder on her nipples and Lucille Ball -- never mind, it didn't happen.
There's a plot besides the hundreds of naked men downstairs waiting for their number to be called while munching on a buffet of awful snacks, and the porn star busy in the bed upstairs. It involves the child she gave birth to who she gave up for adoption. And I must admit the resolution to that was unexpected and satisfying. If only it had been the very end, which was so bizarre and obscene I won't do that to you.
The most enjoyment I got out of the book was from the names of her films showing on monitors downstairs to keep the men excited (along with their blue pills). Face it, some of you have or still watch porn and others like me (well, I've seen a bit) have landed by accident on the series of cable channels displaying the names of the movies. They're amusing but Chuck P., as is his wont as an author, dials them to eleven and I laughed out loud over and over. So the last paragraph lists some of them and if you're offended, and I get that, or just don't care, it ends for you at the end of this paragraph. You see I gave it three stars and they're for his gift with words, no matter how lame the plot and some of the characters, and for making me laugh...except for this: One beautiful simile (he really can write), a description by a male former porn superstar of the only time he actually made love to a woman as "like our skin was having a conversation." I adore that description. And now leaving the lovely for the lewd...
These are :giggle: some of the X-rated titles Chuck P. has concocted for Snuff: On Golden Blonde, Three Days of the Condom, Sperms of Endearment, The Handmaid's Tail, Moby Dicked, The Ass Menagerie, Lady Windermere's Fanny and A Tale of Two Titties.
September 14, 2019
Feci derecede sakıncalı bir kitap! Chuck Palahniuk gibi edepsizler, terbiyesizler olmasa aslında hayatımız sütten çıkmış ak kaşık ya da “kaşağı” kıvamında olabilir. Çünkü Kaşağı gibi, Eylül gibi kitaplar anlatıyor aslında yaşadıklarımızı. Bizim kültürümüzde ne porno vardır ne de fetiş.
Ağzımızdan küfür bile çıkmaz aslında. Üstelik biz yılbaşının gelmesini sarışın hatunları okşamak için isteriz. Çünkü onların saçları tam da okşanmak içindir. Yani anlatılanların dışına çıkılıyorsa hep bu Palahniuk yüzünden, hep onu okuyanlar yüzünden. Yoksa dediğim gibi, cillop gibi insanlarız. Üzerimize krema sıkılıp yalanmalıyız, o derece!
Şaka bir yana açılan toplatılma davasının sadece adında “porno” kelimesinin geçmesinden dolayı olduğunu inatla düşünmekteyim. Yoksa adı başka bir şey olsaydı eminim ki sıyrılıp giderdi. Yoksa kitapta bahsedilen ya da en azından kullanılan kelimelerden daha ağırları başka kitaplarda mevcut. Ve işin ilginç yanı dünya üzerinde en iyi yazarlar arasında kabul edilen, kitapları çok satan, yeraltı edebiyatına derin katkıları bulunan Chuck Palahniuk için bu söz konusu. Çünkü burası Türkiye ve burada Palahniuk’a bile dava açılır.
Gerçi ülkemizde sadece kitaplar “ucube” olarak görülmüyor. Heykeller de bundan nasibini alan sanat eserleri arasında.
Ve aslında Palahniuk bize Gösteri Peygamberi’nde bir şeyler demek istiyor:
“Deneme, deneme, bir, iki, üç.
Deneme, deneme, bir, iki, üç.
Bu belki çalışıyordur. Bilmiyorum. Duyabilecek misiniz, bunu da bilmiyorum.
Ama duyabiliyorsanız, dinleyin ve eğer dinliyorsanız, bulduğunuz yolunda gitmeyen her şeyin hikâyesidir.”
Ahlaka aykırı olduğu söyleniyor. Okudum, hiç de ahlaksız bulmadım, ahlakım da bozulmadı, demek ki ben çok terbiyesizim. Kitap akıcı diliyle, bir çırpıda biten cinsten. Üstelik komik. Sayfalar ilerleyince bu komedi biraz daha drama dönüşüyor. Konu ise kimsenin cesaret edemeyeceği cinsten bir rekor denemesini anlatıyor. Porno yıldızı Cassie Wright’ın 600 adamla ilişkiye girme denemesini. Tabii burada anlatılan sadece bir nesneden ibaret. Çünkü asıl anlatılan, hayat hikayeleri. Bay 72, Bay 137, Bay 600 ve Sheila. Bay Numaralar damızlık erkeklerden sadece üçü, Sheila ise elinde kronometre ile gezen ve zamanı geldiğinde numaraları okuyup erkekleri porno kraliçesinin yanına götüren görevli kız. Hepsi birbirinden garip ve biz kitabı onların dilinden, onların gözünden okuyoruz. Hepsinin olayları yorumlayışı farklı, hepsinin sırları ayrı. Palahniuk bize yine pratik bilgiler de vermekten çekinmiyor, sivilceye en iyi gelecek şeyin diş macunu olduğunu öğreniyoruz mesela. Özellikle Sheila’nın anlatıcı olarak geçtiği bölümlerde porno endüstrisinin çağdaş hayatın içindeki muazzam ve bir o kadar da gizli saklı varlığını, yaşananları öğreniyoruz. Kısacası Palahniuk’un zekasıyla yine ondan çok şey öğreniyoruz.
“Bayan Wright, büyüme çağında gittiği dini okulda bütün kızların kulaklarını örtecek şekilde eşarp taktığını söyledi. Kitabı Mukaddes’e göre Kutsal Ruh, Meryem Ana’nın kulağına fısıldadığı anda Meryem Ana hamile kaldı. Ona göre, kulaklar vajinaydı. Tek bir yanlış fikir duyduğunda, masumiyetini yitiriyordu insan. Tek bir detay, çok şey demekti ve insanın hayatı kararıyordu. Bilgi yüzünden insan aşırı dozdan ölüyordu.” Sayfa 57-58.
Kitap, henüz okumayanlar için kendi uyarısını baştan yapmış. Arka kapakta şöyle yazıyor: “Tabularınız varsa ve onları yıkmaktan korkuyorsanız bu romanı okumayın! İnsan cenininin mastürbasyona doğumdan bir ay önce ana rahminde başladığı gerçeğiyle yüzleşmek size ağır gelecekse bu romanı okumayın! Ya da elektrikli vibratörün hayatımıza elektrikli süpürgeden ve ütüden önce girmiş olmasını kabul edilemez buluyorsanız bu romanı okumayın!”
Kitap Ayrıntı Yayınları’nın yeraltı edebiyatı dizisinden çıkmış 191 sayfalık bir roman. Çevirmeni ise Funda Uncu. Çevirmeni sırf çeviri yaptı diye sorguya alınmış, “bu kitabı nasıl çevirirsin, manken misin?” benzeri hakaretler görmüştür. Funda Uncu’nun röportajını şuradaki linkte bulabilirsiniz.
Kitabı ben de üniversite yıllarında Ankara'da okumuştum, henüz okumayanlar için iyi okumalar.
Ağzımızdan küfür bile çıkmaz aslında. Üstelik biz yılbaşının gelmesini sarışın hatunları okşamak için isteriz. Çünkü onların saçları tam da okşanmak içindir. Yani anlatılanların dışına çıkılıyorsa hep bu Palahniuk yüzünden, hep onu okuyanlar yüzünden. Yoksa dediğim gibi, cillop gibi insanlarız. Üzerimize krema sıkılıp yalanmalıyız, o derece!
Şaka bir yana açılan toplatılma davasının sadece adında “porno” kelimesinin geçmesinden dolayı olduğunu inatla düşünmekteyim. Yoksa adı başka bir şey olsaydı eminim ki sıyrılıp giderdi. Yoksa kitapta bahsedilen ya da en azından kullanılan kelimelerden daha ağırları başka kitaplarda mevcut. Ve işin ilginç yanı dünya üzerinde en iyi yazarlar arasında kabul edilen, kitapları çok satan, yeraltı edebiyatına derin katkıları bulunan Chuck Palahniuk için bu söz konusu. Çünkü burası Türkiye ve burada Palahniuk’a bile dava açılır.
Gerçi ülkemizde sadece kitaplar “ucube” olarak görülmüyor. Heykeller de bundan nasibini alan sanat eserleri arasında.
Ve aslında Palahniuk bize Gösteri Peygamberi’nde bir şeyler demek istiyor:
“Deneme, deneme, bir, iki, üç.
Deneme, deneme, bir, iki, üç.
Bu belki çalışıyordur. Bilmiyorum. Duyabilecek misiniz, bunu da bilmiyorum.
Ama duyabiliyorsanız, dinleyin ve eğer dinliyorsanız, bulduğunuz yolunda gitmeyen her şeyin hikâyesidir.”
Ahlaka aykırı olduğu söyleniyor. Okudum, hiç de ahlaksız bulmadım, ahlakım da bozulmadı, demek ki ben çok terbiyesizim. Kitap akıcı diliyle, bir çırpıda biten cinsten. Üstelik komik. Sayfalar ilerleyince bu komedi biraz daha drama dönüşüyor. Konu ise kimsenin cesaret edemeyeceği cinsten bir rekor denemesini anlatıyor. Porno yıldızı Cassie Wright’ın 600 adamla ilişkiye girme denemesini. Tabii burada anlatılan sadece bir nesneden ibaret. Çünkü asıl anlatılan, hayat hikayeleri. Bay 72, Bay 137, Bay 600 ve Sheila. Bay Numaralar damızlık erkeklerden sadece üçü, Sheila ise elinde kronometre ile gezen ve zamanı geldiğinde numaraları okuyup erkekleri porno kraliçesinin yanına götüren görevli kız. Hepsi birbirinden garip ve biz kitabı onların dilinden, onların gözünden okuyoruz. Hepsinin olayları yorumlayışı farklı, hepsinin sırları ayrı. Palahniuk bize yine pratik bilgiler de vermekten çekinmiyor, sivilceye en iyi gelecek şeyin diş macunu olduğunu öğreniyoruz mesela. Özellikle Sheila’nın anlatıcı olarak geçtiği bölümlerde porno endüstrisinin çağdaş hayatın içindeki muazzam ve bir o kadar da gizli saklı varlığını, yaşananları öğreniyoruz. Kısacası Palahniuk’un zekasıyla yine ondan çok şey öğreniyoruz.
“Bayan Wright, büyüme çağında gittiği dini okulda bütün kızların kulaklarını örtecek şekilde eşarp taktığını söyledi. Kitabı Mukaddes’e göre Kutsal Ruh, Meryem Ana’nın kulağına fısıldadığı anda Meryem Ana hamile kaldı. Ona göre, kulaklar vajinaydı. Tek bir yanlış fikir duyduğunda, masumiyetini yitiriyordu insan. Tek bir detay, çok şey demekti ve insanın hayatı kararıyordu. Bilgi yüzünden insan aşırı dozdan ölüyordu.” Sayfa 57-58.
Kitap, henüz okumayanlar için kendi uyarısını baştan yapmış. Arka kapakta şöyle yazıyor: “Tabularınız varsa ve onları yıkmaktan korkuyorsanız bu romanı okumayın! İnsan cenininin mastürbasyona doğumdan bir ay önce ana rahminde başladığı gerçeğiyle yüzleşmek size ağır gelecekse bu romanı okumayın! Ya da elektrikli vibratörün hayatımıza elektrikli süpürgeden ve ütüden önce girmiş olmasını kabul edilemez buluyorsanız bu romanı okumayın!”
Kitap Ayrıntı Yayınları’nın yeraltı edebiyatı dizisinden çıkmış 191 sayfalık bir roman. Çevirmeni ise Funda Uncu. Çevirmeni sırf çeviri yaptı diye sorguya alınmış, “bu kitabı nasıl çevirirsin, manken misin?” benzeri hakaretler görmüştür. Funda Uncu’nun röportajını şuradaki linkte bulabilirsiniz.
Kitabı ben de üniversite yıllarında Ankara'da okumuştum, henüz okumayanlar için iyi okumalar.
June 6, 2023
Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have movie for every discerning collector of things erotic.
Didn't one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.
- From Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
"Let me ask you a question. You ever sit on your arm till it falls asleep and then play with yourself and pretend like somebody else is doing it?"
- Peter Griffin, Family Guy
For a book that has illustrations of sexual positions on the inside and outside of its covers and on its spine, Snuff is an unbelievably boring, sexless book. Its barely-plot revolves around legendary porn actress Cassie Wright as she tries to break a world record by having sex with 600 men in a single porn movie. The entire book takes place in a large basement where these men are all waiting around for their chance to go upstairs and briefly take part in the movie. That's this entire book. A bunch of guys standing around in a basement, waiting, doing basically nothing, eating snacks and talking to each other.
To make the story even remotely interesting, Palahniuk throws in some minor points of intrigue, like that one of the waiting men might be Cassie Wright's son, and yet another of them might be that boy's father. There's an interesting twist near the end that I didn't see coming, but that and the cool 80s cover art and general throwback aesthetic of the book's physical presentation are the only things I really liked about Snuff, in addition to one or two scenes that were pretty funny.
Overall, Snuff is a flaccid, boring, paper-thin story, and the only person who got f*cked here is me, because it "screwed me" out of a week's worth of my reading time. By far the worst Palahniuk book I've read to date.
1.5 stars
Didn't one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.
- From Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk
"Let me ask you a question. You ever sit on your arm till it falls asleep and then play with yourself and pretend like somebody else is doing it?"
- Peter Griffin, Family Guy
For a book that has illustrations of sexual positions on the inside and outside of its covers and on its spine, Snuff is an unbelievably boring, sexless book. Its barely-plot revolves around legendary porn actress Cassie Wright as she tries to break a world record by having sex with 600 men in a single porn movie. The entire book takes place in a large basement where these men are all waiting around for their chance to go upstairs and briefly take part in the movie. That's this entire book. A bunch of guys standing around in a basement, waiting, doing basically nothing, eating snacks and talking to each other.
To make the story even remotely interesting, Palahniuk throws in some minor points of intrigue, like that one of the waiting men might be Cassie Wright's son, and yet another of them might be that boy's father. There's an interesting twist near the end that I didn't see coming, but that and the cool 80s cover art and general throwback aesthetic of the book's physical presentation are the only things I really liked about Snuff, in addition to one or two scenes that were pretty funny.
Overall, Snuff is a flaccid, boring, paper-thin story, and the only person who got f*cked here is me, because it "screwed me" out of a week's worth of my reading time. By far the worst Palahniuk book I've read to date.
1.5 stars
November 20, 2020
Uproarious and absurd, the last time I read Palahniuk was fifteen years ago. Choke was were I stopped. after being obsessed with Fight club in my high school formative years. Then, it seemed to me like there was an influx of never-readers only-reading him. And he's shocking, oftentimes just for the value of that shock. His characters are all second rate, more id than hollow shells. They are radical, and, well, ABSOLUTELY TWO (1?) DIMENSIONAL. If we're lucky.
Yet I was pretty involved with SNUFF. Enthralled, almost. It was stupid to a--may I confess--enjoyable degree. The grotesque of sexuality, only made horrific by the Marquis de Sade eons and eons ago--I hadnt been there in a while.
Yet I was pretty involved with SNUFF. Enthralled, almost. It was stupid to a--may I confess--enjoyable degree. The grotesque of sexuality, only made horrific by the Marquis de Sade eons and eons ago--I hadnt been there in a while.
November 17, 2015
This was too filthy, even by my standards.
But somehow, the copy I have was signed by Chuck Palahniuk so it is a book I will never get rid of.
But somehow, the copy I have was signed by Chuck Palahniuk so it is a book I will never get rid of.
July 29, 2008
This is the second worst book I have ever read. I don't know if I can say I've even read it because I just cannot bring myself to finish it. This guy has no concept on how to write a good sentence. Not one good sentence. Pick a page, then put your finger on a word. It will all be stupid and bad. A friend of mine paid $30 to take me to hear him speak, and this is how I wound up with a signed copy of this book. Everybody in his cult following crowd was young and ultra hip, and obviously has really bad taste in writing. If that is our future it's gonna be bleak. The story he read at that lecture was a short story about someone at a game show on acid, and normally I love acid stories, but eww. It was totally obvious and predictable and dull. Horribly dull. Not at all creative or insightful. I don't know how he sells books. His stories are based on shock which can only be shocking to the most plain unread reader. It's overdone to the point you can't even call it that. He tries to go so far in shock it comes off as totally unbelievable but not far, or interesting enough, to be any type of fun exaggerated fantasy. And I think he got all his research off the internet. If he was a baddass he would have made a porno. Or at least watched one. It feels like he just randomly threw facts in to sound credible. It was so painful to read. Physically painful too, not only brain aneurysm painful. My face hurt from screwing it up grossing out at the bad writing. The only redeeming thing I got from his crappy unintelligent lecture and this stupid book (and I like porn) is that if he can do it so can I. Or maybe not, cuz if this is what society is digging the tastes and intelligence of America is so dumbed down they may forget what good taste is and we will soon be the way of that Idiocracy movie. When someone asked him who his influences were he couldn't even quote any good writers. He quoted The Hardy Boys or something similar but not as good. What? I'm not dogging The Hardy Boys, but that was really all he could come up with. He needs to never have a book published ever again. I guess I should say I never read any of his other books so I don't have anything to compare this to, mostly because I hated the movie "Fight Club," yeah I said it, and that's a shitty way to judge whether or not you're going to read the book but I just had a feeling, you know, I get those on books. And this being my introduction to his writing does not make me want to waste any time picking up any other book of his.
Oh yeah, and he used the word "dude" a lot. Annoyingly so. And not in dialogue. Ugg. He sucks.
Oh yeah, and he used the word "dude" a lot. Annoyingly so. And not in dialogue. Ugg. He sucks.
June 18, 2008
So far it's not the sex that's making me queasy and itchy as much as the gleefully elaborate descriptions of all the various stains, smears, smudges, dribbles, crumbs and residues that the characters in this book seem to leave on every surface that they come into contact with. Chuck is smart enough to realize that he probably isn't going to shock any of his loyal readers (or anyone who has ever watched a porno) with endless mechanical details, so instead he concentrates on making everything so damn grimy that the psychological discomfort comes from the notion that people really are this filthy and they're out there right now touching everything! In addition to putting you off sex and flavored potato chips, this book has the power to turn anyone into a germophobe.
Now that I finished it I can only add that it ends up feeling more like a long short-story than a full-blown (snicker) novel, and the big twist ending was barely worth the trip. The brown ink did help reinforce the overall ookyness of the experience for me though. The only way it could have been worse was if every copy of the book shipped with greasy cheez-powder fingerprints on every other page, but I guess that just wasn't practical.
Now that I finished it I can only add that it ends up feeling more like a long short-story than a full-blown (snicker) novel, and the big twist ending was barely worth the trip. The brown ink did help reinforce the overall ookyness of the experience for me though. The only way it could have been worse was if every copy of the book shipped with greasy cheez-powder fingerprints on every other page, but I guess that just wasn't practical.
August 24, 2021
It’s definitely a Chuck Palahnuik book lol
June 2, 2008
Snuff is not for everybody. Those who have never read a Chuck Palahniuk novel will probably not enjoy the story or the way it is presented while others may be drawn to the subject matter alone. "Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages." Come on, it's about porn! Palahniuk fans will certainly enjoy this short tirade that seems more like a novella than an actual novel. Snuff is Chuck's shortest novel to date. Fact. Every single letter is in brown ink! Fact. It certainly does not take away from the aesthetic feel but it may come as a surprise to some when they first begin reading though it is not immediately noticeable.
Overall, Snuff is not a bad story at all, Chuck has just put himself in a bad spot with his previous novels. He has raised the bar to such great heights with novels such as Fight Club, Haunted, and Survivor that fans may see Snuff more as something of a writing exercise, rather than a true piece of accomplished work. Opting for a multi-character narrative, the storytelling is different from his other books. There is very little dark humor, instead, the humor in Snuff is much more apparent; not that it's a bad thing, just a little different than usual. It wouldn't be fair to completely bad mouth this book. It certainly does have its golden moments. Each character definitely breathes and acts Palahniuk but everything just seems a bit toned down. For a book about pornography, it seems pretty tame. It still does have its gross-out moments but about ¾ of the novel is spent inside the green room. The entire experience does seem to have a life of its own and the descriptions are nicely depicted, making it easy for readers to picture the room.
There is a great deal of suspense during each narrative and though the chapter titles claim that a different character is narrating, it doesn't always feel unique to the specific character. Sure, one may repeatedly use the word "dude" and another may repeatedly be carrying a stuffed animal but thought-process-wise, they all think alike. Every single character in the book seems to be a walking trivia machine and though that may be synonymous to Palahniuk's style, it just detracts from the authenticity of the story. The shortness of Snuff also seems to alienate us from any of the four main characters. Though we do spend a lot of time in the green room with each character, it just doesn't last long enough for us to feel attached to any of them.
There are a few plot twists but they are all mildly predictable. Anyone who has seen a soap opera in the past month or watched an episode of Family Matters will know what to expect on the next page. The ending is a bit unexpected and true to Palahniuk's signature style but it also feels a little far-fetched. Then again, this is only a book and not real life. Some stuff needs to be far from the truth; nobody wants to read about the mundane reality of life. Palahniuk claims to have already completed the first draft for his next novel Pygmy so Snuff can arguably be passed off as something to tide us over for the wait. Though it is short, somewhat predictable at spots, and a bit tame for what it is depicting; it is full of humor, wonderful trivia, plot twists, and memorable quotes. This book may not win any awards but it certainly will be mentioned in the years to come and you will be glad to have read it.
Overall, Snuff is not a bad story at all, Chuck has just put himself in a bad spot with his previous novels. He has raised the bar to such great heights with novels such as Fight Club, Haunted, and Survivor that fans may see Snuff more as something of a writing exercise, rather than a true piece of accomplished work. Opting for a multi-character narrative, the storytelling is different from his other books. There is very little dark humor, instead, the humor in Snuff is much more apparent; not that it's a bad thing, just a little different than usual. It wouldn't be fair to completely bad mouth this book. It certainly does have its golden moments. Each character definitely breathes and acts Palahniuk but everything just seems a bit toned down. For a book about pornography, it seems pretty tame. It still does have its gross-out moments but about ¾ of the novel is spent inside the green room. The entire experience does seem to have a life of its own and the descriptions are nicely depicted, making it easy for readers to picture the room.
There is a great deal of suspense during each narrative and though the chapter titles claim that a different character is narrating, it doesn't always feel unique to the specific character. Sure, one may repeatedly use the word "dude" and another may repeatedly be carrying a stuffed animal but thought-process-wise, they all think alike. Every single character in the book seems to be a walking trivia machine and though that may be synonymous to Palahniuk's style, it just detracts from the authenticity of the story. The shortness of Snuff also seems to alienate us from any of the four main characters. Though we do spend a lot of time in the green room with each character, it just doesn't last long enough for us to feel attached to any of them.
There are a few plot twists but they are all mildly predictable. Anyone who has seen a soap opera in the past month or watched an episode of Family Matters will know what to expect on the next page. The ending is a bit unexpected and true to Palahniuk's signature style but it also feels a little far-fetched. Then again, this is only a book and not real life. Some stuff needs to be far from the truth; nobody wants to read about the mundane reality of life. Palahniuk claims to have already completed the first draft for his next novel Pygmy so Snuff can arguably be passed off as something to tide us over for the wait. Though it is short, somewhat predictable at spots, and a bit tame for what it is depicting; it is full of humor, wonderful trivia, plot twists, and memorable quotes. This book may not win any awards but it certainly will be mentioned in the years to come and you will be glad to have read it.
February 16, 2023
3.5
Questo, di Cuchk, è forse il libro che mi ha colpita meno....
Tema ammiccante e provocatorio come sempre.
Che cosa fai quando l"intera tua identità va distrutta in un istante? Come ti comporti quando tutta la tua vita si rivela un errore?
Cosa siamo disposti a fare per mantenere o avere notorietà?
Siamo disposti a morire nel modo più assurdo (ma a pensarci per qualcuno potrebbe essere un cazzo di sogno) e impensabile del mondo?
4 voci, ognuna delle quali con una storia che si aggancia a tutte le altre.
A metà libro ero già arrivata però alla soluzione sulla maternità della pornostar Cassie...
Non mi sono documentata su tutti i film descritti, ma quante ghignate cazzo
È la verità
Qualcuno sborrò sul nido del cuculo,
Un pacco a teatro,
Tutte le sorche del presidente,
Ammucchiata posteriore sul Titanic Sborrocop
Io ero rimasta a Biancaneve sotto i nani 😂😂
Altra opera di Palahniuk e altre coincidenze con la mia cazzuta vita...
"Subito dopo era lì in cucina che si allenava a preparare meringhe a forma di scroto e culi di crema al limone, mescolando coloranti alimentari per creare clitoridi e capezzoli.Mia madre colorava cocco tritato per fare ciuffi di peli pubici, oppure strizzava una siringa per dolci tracciando vene rosse sui lati di un"erezione di cioccolato."
Ebbene si, faccio torte di pasticceria, ma detesto quel tipo di torte dove il sesso la fa da padrone, e poi tutto quello zucchero, quel burro stucchevole, rivoltante, nauseante.
Alla fine comunque "Chi è danneggiato ama chi è danneggiato."
È la cazzo di verità
Questo, di Cuchk, è forse il libro che mi ha colpita meno....
Tema ammiccante e provocatorio come sempre.
Che cosa fai quando l"intera tua identità va distrutta in un istante? Come ti comporti quando tutta la tua vita si rivela un errore?
Cosa siamo disposti a fare per mantenere o avere notorietà?
Siamo disposti a morire nel modo più assurdo (ma a pensarci per qualcuno potrebbe essere un cazzo di sogno) e impensabile del mondo?
4 voci, ognuna delle quali con una storia che si aggancia a tutte le altre.
A metà libro ero già arrivata però alla soluzione sulla maternità della pornostar Cassie...
Non mi sono documentata su tutti i film descritti, ma quante ghignate cazzo
È la verità
Qualcuno sborrò sul nido del cuculo,
Un pacco a teatro,
Tutte le sorche del presidente,
Ammucchiata posteriore sul Titanic Sborrocop
Io ero rimasta a Biancaneve sotto i nani 😂😂
Altra opera di Palahniuk e altre coincidenze con la mia cazzuta vita...
"Subito dopo era lì in cucina che si allenava a preparare meringhe a forma di scroto e culi di crema al limone, mescolando coloranti alimentari per creare clitoridi e capezzoli.Mia madre colorava cocco tritato per fare ciuffi di peli pubici, oppure strizzava una siringa per dolci tracciando vene rosse sui lati di un"erezione di cioccolato."
Ebbene si, faccio torte di pasticceria, ma detesto quel tipo di torte dove il sesso la fa da padrone, e poi tutto quello zucchero, quel burro stucchevole, rivoltante, nauseante.
Alla fine comunque "Chi è danneggiato ama chi è danneggiato."
È la cazzo di verità
May 20, 2008
Five stars, because it gives you everything you'd want in a Palahniuk book. No child is left behind.
Think of this book as...as the Oedipus myth, filtered through the worldview of Philip Larkin and the grossout slapstick of Jackass.
---
What the hell is with the brown ink?! Were they out of...out of lemon juice?! I'm sorry, but this is an annoyance on par with the invisotext (click and roll cursor to highlight the spoilers!) that was all the rage in...in your livejournal blog circa 2002.
The book is still kind of embarrassing to lug around. That...that cover.
---
Cripes. If you click through to the Amazon page for this book you can see the horrible cover for this novel. Straight out of the 1970s, like some Harold Robbins horror.
Palahniuk will shift gears in this book, to paint the portraits of misfits participating in the video-shooting of The World's Biggest Gang Bang; one of the "misfits" (in Palahniuk's universe, the "misfit" character is actually a version of ourself that dares to live) focused on is the girl centerstage who hopes to die during the process ("I want to come...then go.") in order to a. go down in history ("I'll go down in history. For history, I'll go down.") and b. outlaw this branch of the pornographic industry ("Sex is the new spectator sport, and like all sports its becoming increasingly user-friendly, interactive, extreme, in your face: like this guy who jumped ahead in line. I don't even need to look him in the face, he's been here before. I give it, like, two seconds thought, tops. Then I'm back at it.").
Think of this book as...as the Oedipus myth, filtered through the worldview of Philip Larkin and the grossout slapstick of Jackass.
---
What the hell is with the brown ink?! Were they out of...out of lemon juice?! I'm sorry, but this is an annoyance on par with the invisotext (click and roll cursor to highlight the spoilers!) that was all the rage in...in your livejournal blog circa 2002.
The book is still kind of embarrassing to lug around. That...that cover.
---
Cripes. If you click through to the Amazon page for this book you can see the horrible cover for this novel. Straight out of the 1970s, like some Harold Robbins horror.
Palahniuk will shift gears in this book, to paint the portraits of misfits participating in the video-shooting of The World's Biggest Gang Bang; one of the "misfits" (in Palahniuk's universe, the "misfit" character is actually a version of ourself that dares to live) focused on is the girl centerstage who hopes to die during the process ("I want to come...then go.") in order to a. go down in history ("I'll go down in history. For history, I'll go down.") and b. outlaw this branch of the pornographic industry ("Sex is the new spectator sport, and like all sports its becoming increasingly user-friendly, interactive, extreme, in your face: like this guy who jumped ahead in line. I don't even need to look him in the face, he's been here before. I give it, like, two seconds thought, tops. Then I'm back at it.").
May 16, 2024
This reminded me why I don’t accept book recommendations from men.
December 6, 2012
I picked this one up, having loved Fight Club and wondering whether Chuck Palahniuk would turn out to be a one-book wonder.
The blurb implies that the story will be about the porn industry. Cassie Wright, pornstar is out to set a record by having continuous sex with 600 different men on camera. The story shifts between the vantage views of three of the men crowded into that green room - Nos.37, 137 and 600 as well as Sheila, the assistant/wrangler who decides who goes in what order.
Sex, such an intensely private act, is brought out and dissected as an everyday act, adding that demented Palahniuk quality to the story. Cassie fancies herself an artist and provides endless diatribe on famous stars' horrific secrets in pursuit of their art. She herself trains as if for a marathon, on what sound like Kegel exercises on steroids - all in preparation for the act.
In real life, sex often ends up being so little about the act and so much about dealing with everything else that comes up when you go in so deep - love, trust, families, motherhood, child abuse and sexuality. Similarly the book spends very little time on the actual act and zips across all of these in that manic way, characteristic of the writer.
I found the book disturbing but not as brutal as Fight Club. That's not an assessment of how good it is though. A dark sense of humour pervades through the entire novel, keeping it palatable. I finished it in three hours flat. And no, Palahniuk isn't a one-book wonder. For the record, I've got another book by him coming up.
The blurb implies that the story will be about the porn industry. Cassie Wright, pornstar is out to set a record by having continuous sex with 600 different men on camera. The story shifts between the vantage views of three of the men crowded into that green room - Nos.37, 137 and 600 as well as Sheila, the assistant/wrangler who decides who goes in what order.
Sex, such an intensely private act, is brought out and dissected as an everyday act, adding that demented Palahniuk quality to the story. Cassie fancies herself an artist and provides endless diatribe on famous stars' horrific secrets in pursuit of their art. She herself trains as if for a marathon, on what sound like Kegel exercises on steroids - all in preparation for the act.
In real life, sex often ends up being so little about the act and so much about dealing with everything else that comes up when you go in so deep - love, trust, families, motherhood, child abuse and sexuality. Similarly the book spends very little time on the actual act and zips across all of these in that manic way, characteristic of the writer.
I found the book disturbing but not as brutal as Fight Club. That's not an assessment of how good it is though. A dark sense of humour pervades through the entire novel, keeping it palatable. I finished it in three hours flat. And no, Palahniuk isn't a one-book wonder. For the record, I've got another book by him coming up.
March 14, 2024
I don’t write reviews.
You know how some people won’t admit they enjoy something so they say “I only read him ironically” or “it’s a guilty pleasure?” Not me, my friend. I will openly say it: I like Chuck Palahniuk. No, I don’t like everything he’s written (Haunted, Pygmy, Damned), nor are all of his stories completely successful (Diary, Tell All). Yes, he’s grown into a caricature of himself, but I’m not bothered whatsoever. I’ve always been inexorably drawn to the eccentrics, to the damaged, to the slightly insane. Opposites attract, but like pulls like, too.
And don’t I know Palahniuk writes filthy-dirty scum-bucket language? Oh my yes, I know. He’s like the guy at the old folk’s home who tells you raw, unfiltered stories about his past in the city and his time in the war. Give me more tales please. Shock me with your words and break down my barriers so you can engage my soul.
Porn sickens me. An in-your-face, smells and all, description of a gang bang SHOULD be gnarly. Palahniuk delivers. But he has this trick, this thing he’s so good at, when he’s at his best; he shows you the thing underneath all the dirt and sweat and spray tan. That’s the thing you can see in yourself or someone you know.
Even his worst characters aren’t irredeemable (though these often choose to remain as such). That is again like us; we are forgivable, no matter how much we’ve sinned. We can be cleaned up and fixed, no matter how much dirt we’ve accumulated over the time we’ve fallen into disrepair. We can overcome hurt and shame, love again and be loved. And sometimes most importantly, we can laugh at ourselves and our mistakes.
Book 1 - The Year of Chuck
You know how some people won’t admit they enjoy something so they say “I only read him ironically” or “it’s a guilty pleasure?” Not me, my friend. I will openly say it: I like Chuck Palahniuk. No, I don’t like everything he’s written (Haunted, Pygmy, Damned), nor are all of his stories completely successful (Diary, Tell All). Yes, he’s grown into a caricature of himself, but I’m not bothered whatsoever. I’ve always been inexorably drawn to the eccentrics, to the damaged, to the slightly insane. Opposites attract, but like pulls like, too.
And don’t I know Palahniuk writes filthy-dirty scum-bucket language? Oh my yes, I know. He’s like the guy at the old folk’s home who tells you raw, unfiltered stories about his past in the city and his time in the war. Give me more tales please. Shock me with your words and break down my barriers so you can engage my soul.
Porn sickens me. An in-your-face, smells and all, description of a gang bang SHOULD be gnarly. Palahniuk delivers. But he has this trick, this thing he’s so good at, when he’s at his best; he shows you the thing underneath all the dirt and sweat and spray tan. That’s the thing you can see in yourself or someone you know.
Even his worst characters aren’t irredeemable (though these often choose to remain as such). That is again like us; we are forgivable, no matter how much we’ve sinned. We can be cleaned up and fixed, no matter how much dirt we’ve accumulated over the time we’ve fallen into disrepair. We can overcome hurt and shame, love again and be loved. And sometimes most importantly, we can laugh at ourselves and our mistakes.
Book 1 - The Year of Chuck
March 22, 2019
A still bankable pornstar slowly inching past her prime goes for one last shot at fame. She's got 600 guys primed to run a train on her in a magnum opus that will decidedly break smut records, aptly entitled World Whore Three: The Whore To End All Whores. If she's going out, she's gonna do so with a (gang)bang. And in a production of this scale with so much hanging in the balance, can murder be far behind? The reasonable answer to that is "prolly not", but this is a bonkers Palahniuk book, so yeah we're prepping some body bags.
It's a thoroughly enjoyable read. What seems like a tawdry plot unfolds its complex layers as the story goes by, and as one explores the twisted history of the characters one begins to grasp what's really at stake here. I've rarely encountered a book that opens with a bunch of sordid characters that I initially found pitiful/distasteful, but who I ended up rooting for. The book is big on redemption without being cheesy or self-indulgent.
Snuff is replete with Palahniuk's trademark ironic and irreverent style, and his powers are on full display here. The oft-dropped trivia (on porn stars, historic whores, gangs, etc) do not get tiring - they even add spice to the story. It gets an 8/10 from me, or 4 seedy, electric stars out of 5.
It's a thoroughly enjoyable read. What seems like a tawdry plot unfolds its complex layers as the story goes by, and as one explores the twisted history of the characters one begins to grasp what's really at stake here. I've rarely encountered a book that opens with a bunch of sordid characters that I initially found pitiful/distasteful, but who I ended up rooting for. The book is big on redemption without being cheesy or self-indulgent.
Snuff is replete with Palahniuk's trademark ironic and irreverent style, and his powers are on full display here. The oft-dropped trivia (on porn stars, historic whores, gangs, etc) do not get tiring - they even add spice to the story. It gets an 8/10 from me, or 4 seedy, electric stars out of 5.
April 5, 2020
"When your agent sends you in a look-see to f**k a dead woman, you know your career’s in the toilet."
One of my favorite things about Chuck Palahniuk is that he’s not afraid to put something strange and bizarre out into the world. He loves that shock factor that his books bring to the world and I’m here breathing it in like it’s my last breath.
Snuff is one of my favorite books by Chuck. It’s one that gets even more bizarre every time you read it and I can’t get enough. Who would have thought a book about making a gang bang snuff film would be so entertaining?
Thank you, Chuck, for opening my eyes up to this insanity. I loved every second of it!
"Didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie."
One of my favorite things about Chuck Palahniuk is that he’s not afraid to put something strange and bizarre out into the world. He loves that shock factor that his books bring to the world and I’m here breathing it in like it’s my last breath.
Snuff is one of my favorite books by Chuck. It’s one that gets even more bizarre every time you read it and I can’t get enough. Who would have thought a book about making a gang bang snuff film would be so entertaining?
Thank you, Chuck, for opening my eyes up to this insanity. I loved every second of it!
"Didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie."
September 25, 2015
I think everyone knows what 'snuff' means, right?
It is not Mr. P's best book but it's still mightily entertaining and it gives us a better understanding on the creation and history of porn, it's a fun read. I own this book and I wish to re-read it ASAP.
a review which lists the funny *fake* titles of porn. Wow, 'The Postman Always Cums Twice'? Really?
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
It is not Mr. P's best book but it's still mightily entertaining and it gives us a better understanding on the creation and history of porn, it's a fun read. I own this book and I wish to re-read it ASAP.
a review which lists the funny *fake* titles of porn. Wow, 'The Postman Always Cums Twice'? Really?
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
August 13, 2022
2.5⭐
Es muy surrealista todo el relato y no es apto para todos los públicos 🔞.
.
The whole story is very surreal and is not suitable for all audiences 🔞.
Es muy surrealista todo el relato y no es apto para todos los públicos 🔞.
.
The whole story is very surreal and is not suitable for all audiences 🔞.
February 12, 2009
I don't believe I've ever read (or heard of) any good fiction written about the porn industry. Drug addiction and alcoholism have been written about ad nauseum, but the porn industry -- a bizarre world in which so many of its participants (from the actors to the viewers) have hit a rock bottom similar to that of the most addicted alcoholic or dope fiend -- seems to be a tougher nut to crack, if you will. Maybe it has to do with the old "write what you know" philosophy. Any writer can drink himself into oblivion or go on a drug binge for a while and then write about it. It would take a special kind of writer to do porn (or hang around porn stars or watch endless amount of porn) for a couple of years and then write about it.
Approximately ten years ago, David Foster Wallace wrote an essay ("Big Red Son," which can be found in his book of essays Consider the Lobster) about the porn industry after he attended the annual Adult Video News Awards (the Academy Awards of porn). It was filled with everything a fan/admirer of DFW would expect to find in his writing: humor, insight, unique observations, excruciating detail, and heavy doses of The Truth. And lots of footnotes, including one in which he likens Peter North's ejaculations to mortar rounds.
Shortly after this essay was published, one of DFW's fan sites, The Howling Fantods! reported that he was rumored to be working on a novel set in the porn industry. Unfortunately, those were just rumors and no such novel was ever published, which is a shame because that novel could very well have been the greatest novel about porn ever written. After reading Chuck Palahniuk's embarrassing attempt to tackle the subject in Snuff, I'm even more disappointed that DFW never wrote a porn novel because it would have, at the very least, saved me from ever having to read this dreck. I highly doubt Mr. Palahniuk would have ventured anywhere near this subject matter if a talent like DFW had already thoroughly dissected it.
If DFW's novel would have been a Peter North-like mortar round capable of coating the faces of three or four women, then Snuff is a premature ejaculation dripping down some 16-year-old kid's boxers before he can even get his girlfriend's bra off. In less than 200 pages, Palahniuk manages to include at least 50, maybe closer to 100, mock titles for porn movies, such as To Drill A Mockingbird, The Da Vinci Load, and The Tale of Two Titties. I had fun doing that when I was 14. Then you've got a female character who thinks of all men as masturbators and calls them pud-pullers, yogurt-yankers, jerk-jockeys, and on and on, never using the same hilarious name twice. There must be close to 100 of these brilliant gems scattered throughout the book. Sure, this stuff can be funny in small doses but using the same joke a hundred times? I could go into great detail about the lifeless narrators/characters, the plotless plot, and the twists that weren't really twists since you knew they were coming a long, long time before they came, much like most male porn stars, now that I think about it. I could do that, but I think I've already put more time into this review than Chuck put into writing this book, so I think it's time to pull out prematurely. Get it? Imagine a groaner like this on every single page.
This was the first Palahniuk book that I've read and it will likely be the last, which is too bad because he seems like a guy who takes chances and tries to write about topics that others don't. I imagine that this is why people like him. He's edgy. He's unique. He's brave. Unfortunately, as far as I can see from this book, he's not a good writer.
David Foster Wallace was every bit as edgy, unique, and brave as Chuck Palahniuk, but he was so much more. What I loved most about him was that, no matter what the topic was, he peeled back its layers until there was nothing left to peel and all of the sadness, hilarity, banality, and ugliness of that topic had been revealed. I'm probably going a bit too far here given that I've only read one of Palahniuk's books, but Chuck seems like a guy with no interest in peeling back the layers. He can sell his books and gather his loyal following without any of that deep thinking.
Approximately ten years ago, David Foster Wallace wrote an essay ("Big Red Son," which can be found in his book of essays Consider the Lobster) about the porn industry after he attended the annual Adult Video News Awards (the Academy Awards of porn). It was filled with everything a fan/admirer of DFW would expect to find in his writing: humor, insight, unique observations, excruciating detail, and heavy doses of The Truth. And lots of footnotes, including one in which he likens Peter North's ejaculations to mortar rounds.
Shortly after this essay was published, one of DFW's fan sites, The Howling Fantods! reported that he was rumored to be working on a novel set in the porn industry. Unfortunately, those were just rumors and no such novel was ever published, which is a shame because that novel could very well have been the greatest novel about porn ever written. After reading Chuck Palahniuk's embarrassing attempt to tackle the subject in Snuff, I'm even more disappointed that DFW never wrote a porn novel because it would have, at the very least, saved me from ever having to read this dreck. I highly doubt Mr. Palahniuk would have ventured anywhere near this subject matter if a talent like DFW had already thoroughly dissected it.
If DFW's novel would have been a Peter North-like mortar round capable of coating the faces of three or four women, then Snuff is a premature ejaculation dripping down some 16-year-old kid's boxers before he can even get his girlfriend's bra off. In less than 200 pages, Palahniuk manages to include at least 50, maybe closer to 100, mock titles for porn movies, such as To Drill A Mockingbird, The Da Vinci Load, and The Tale of Two Titties. I had fun doing that when I was 14. Then you've got a female character who thinks of all men as masturbators and calls them pud-pullers, yogurt-yankers, jerk-jockeys, and on and on, never using the same hilarious name twice. There must be close to 100 of these brilliant gems scattered throughout the book. Sure, this stuff can be funny in small doses but using the same joke a hundred times? I could go into great detail about the lifeless narrators/characters, the plotless plot, and the twists that weren't really twists since you knew they were coming a long, long time before they came, much like most male porn stars, now that I think about it. I could do that, but I think I've already put more time into this review than Chuck put into writing this book, so I think it's time to pull out prematurely. Get it? Imagine a groaner like this on every single page.
This was the first Palahniuk book that I've read and it will likely be the last, which is too bad because he seems like a guy who takes chances and tries to write about topics that others don't. I imagine that this is why people like him. He's edgy. He's unique. He's brave. Unfortunately, as far as I can see from this book, he's not a good writer.
David Foster Wallace was every bit as edgy, unique, and brave as Chuck Palahniuk, but he was so much more. What I loved most about him was that, no matter what the topic was, he peeled back its layers until there was nothing left to peel and all of the sadness, hilarity, banality, and ugliness of that topic had been revealed. I'm probably going a bit too far here given that I've only read one of Palahniuk's books, but Chuck seems like a guy with no interest in peeling back the layers. He can sell his books and gather his loyal following without any of that deep thinking.
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