Snuff

First of all, like many of the other reviewers here, I am an avid fan of Chuck Palahniuk, so let me just get that out of the way. Also, like many of the other reviewers here, I'd highly recommend his earlier books, specifically his first four; Fight Club, Survivor, Invisible Monsters and Choke...undoubtedly the 4 masterpieces (thus far) in his career. If you are new to his work, absolutely read those four first before you get to this, if you have to get to this one at all.
My biggest complaint about this book was that it felt more like a short story than a novel. I finished it in one day and felt empty and unsatisfied at the end. What this book most reminded me of was his 2005 novel 'Haunted'; a book comprised of a main storyline split up and interlaced with separate short, chapter-long stories of horror, gore and death involving each one of the characters in the book...it felt like 'Snuff' should have been one of those short stories that one of the characters in Haunted would have told. Or maybe four separate short stories from the three "Misters" and Sheila. Either way, this didn't feel like a real book. It was almost 200 pages but it still felt like a magazine article. It took place in the time frame of one day and presumably only a few hours, which I suppose is another reason why it felt so short in the end. The book just doesn't really go anywhere and simply does not touch upon the eccentric and intricate plots of his early work. When I ordered it, I knew nothing about it except for its title. In my head I pictured a 350+ page excessively dark and graphic book about a Snuff film, or the Snuff industry; I pictured somewhat of a return to his 90's books, with a narrator and a provocative and delightfully offensive yet darkly funny plot that would actually progress throughout the book and not just stay in the same place. Needless to say, I was disappointed. It did not meet expectations and, while not the worst book I've ever read, certainly is not anything close to the best from this author.

After ignoring the negative hype, I had the misfortune of reading this GARBAGE! I have loved most of Palhniuk's other works. Haunted, Rant and Fight Club are my three favorites. The typical brilliant twist at the end of Palahniuk's books was absent, not only that the replacement ending was the fusing of two unspeakable *cough* things. Don't READ IT. I did after ignoring everybody on earth, what a mistake!

If you've read this book, you're probably already a Palaniuk fan and could care less about this review. A couple of the characters in the book he developed well but the rest of the novel was rather lacking. Still, the novel is just as deranged as his others and most likely won't disappoint a true fan.

Snuff is mediocre. Worth reading if you're a Palahniuk fan, but wait to buy it in paperback. As usual, Chuck shows us the disgusting mess on the bottom of our shoe, in graphic detail. He doesn't hesitate to show us how attached to the meaningless details of life we become. The story was good, and there were a few small twists. I came away looking at the porn industry, relationships, and sex in a new light.
Nothing here hasn't been said before, however. It's kind of "more of the same" from Palahniuk. I'm happy, but in a disappointed way.

An over-the-hill porn star wants to go out with a (gang) bang, so arranges for a world record effort with 600 stout and hearty fellows, brave and true. A few of this cast of hundreds are there for more than their allotted 60 seconds of, ah, contact with the legend. She has deep ulterior motives, as do each of the featured characters, and all of their twisted narratives come together in the concluding pages.

Someone is supposed to die as this event climaxes, and most of the folks know it, although their perceptions of the who, when and how don't quite match up. The plans go a bit off the rails, and everyone gets more or less what they deserve.

The main characters certainly have had enough of the world, with what they have made of it, with their fortunes having turned on single instances and bad choices, in this case almost all of them sexual. Most everyone is ragingly bitter and resentful, untrue and self-serving, bent on rectifying only their problems, regardless of effects on others. The story runs on damaged adults hurting others, intentionally and instinctively, out of selfishness and revenge, or even to manufacture a more compatible companion. It's about the need for fame, the need for redemption, the resentment of future lost, and the clawing need to retain one's perceived best position, all taking place in arena of porn, the "...job you only take after you abandon all hope."

This is not a novel about the sex industry, but there is some behind-the-scenes detail. Palahniuk's detailed portrait of the washed-up porn star Miss Cassie Wright is not as complete and detailed as I had anticipated. I don't know why, but every time I pictured her, a strange combination of Kitten Natividad and Lisa DeLeeuw came to mind. Ah, but I digress. She is more or less the central character, at least that around which all others and the main story revolve, but I was a tad disappointed in that we didn't get more from her. Much of this was necessary for plot purposes, but I thought we'd get a bit more inside her head, and hear a bit more about what Palahniuk has observed about the porn experience. Cassie is a treasure trove of obscure Hollywood factoids, though, all of them thoroughly fun and enlightening.

And Palahniuk has observed; he slips in what appears to me to be his description of things that come to him, "...a remarkably rarefied set of facts for anyone to reference offhand." It was obvious even in Fight Club with the details about automobile recalls that Palahniuk is a collector of slices of divergent existence and uncommon experience. He's fascinated by the edge of the road, and he collects the esoteric, fascinating and titillating tidbits, saving them for the right time to drop into a story. We saw a very straightforward collection of these experiences in Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories. When it's time and the fit is right, these bits add depth to a character, provide the basis for a scene, or serve to power just a soliloquy. We got that in Survivor, with the Palahniuk's extended dissection of the blissful suffering stupor achieved on the Stairmaster. Such is the case here, and this time we get lots of insight on the directly physical aspects of manufacturing video pornography. Most of it has been covered, but Palahniuk manages to show us a few things that are new. We also get details about embalming, the chemical and physical processes of cyanide, and about the sacrifices Hollywood stars made for their careers--not for their craft, mind you, but for themselves.

Palahniuk records detail, and this brings the porn-shoot green room scene into a sharpness of focus that had me wanting to shower after reading. It is unflinching and close-in; I swear I could smell it.

The story has lots and lots of people in it, but only a handful get to speak. The story is all about them, which seems to me to close down the world a bit too tightly. As struck me reading Invisible Monsters, everyone is intertwined, closely and disgustingly, but it seems a bit too close, that everyone is that tied and related a tad too easily. It works to keep the story tight, of course, but it seems that social groups are just not that tight.

Palahniuk's porn-title takes on classic film and literature titles is good fun, with dozens of them sprinkled throughout the book. My personal favorite, unfortunately, is not reproducible in this venue. If anything, just this exercise must have been inspiration enough to bring forth the novel.

The font is large and the pages relatively small; at 197 pages the book reads quickly, in short chapters of about 7-8 pages. Each chapter is the voice and POV of one of the characters, which takes a bit of adjustment. Most can read it all in 3-4 hours. There is very little raw, graphic sex, but lots of descriptions of the business, how things are done. The adult language is profuse and completely liberated; readers put off by profanity need not go on this ride. The language is not clinical, but, ah, straightforward and non-euphemistic professional language for what is brought to the table, and what is then done on the table, under it, with the legs of the table, with the guys who delivered it, their friends, etc.

Bottom line: I enjoyed this story, another off the wall Palahniuk tale populated with thoroughly original characters in a story for which I had no kind of previous reference. It took me to a new and unpredictable situation, with interesting albeit unpleasant characters, in a story that delivers where it counts, right in the end.