Currently, I am reading Chuck's new book Damned. Lately, I have been fairly disappointed in the books he has been writing. What happened to the times of Fight Club, Invisible Monster, and Choke? I lost a lot of faith in one of my all time favorite writers when he wrote Snuff and Pygmy. I never got around to reading Tell All which is his book prior to Damned. I have opened Tell All a few times in bookstores and have paged through it only to be disappointed in it, and in those moments, I knew he was going to disappoint me once again. Books are not cheap these days either, and I am a book collector. So, I had to take some time off from Chuck. But, I have decided to give him another chance and picked up Damned. It looked very promising. I mean what Chuck P. fan would miss the chance to see hell come to life through his eyes. Also, a mention of it being a plot that is breakfast clubish is a mention that cannot be turned down.
I am currently around page 80 and the book is approximately 230 pages. At first, it seemed very interesting and promising. The main character is interesting and hell is described in that well known ultra nasty Chuck P. style. He manages to even capture hell as this stanky ass place, and he brings in the ultimate disgusting human body part: a desert of discarded toe and fingernail pairings. The description he provides is ultimately disturbing in which he comments on different shades of nail polish still attached to some of the clippings. You would think the scene of the characters having to bury themself in the toe and finger nail clippings would be the ultimate gross out but that was not what did it for me.
Everything was chugging along quite wonderfully until I got into the really gross part of the book about a severed head giving female coital pleasure to a giantess (Psezpolnica) who tortures people and then slowly eats their bodies. Now, I know Chuck is gross... He's always been gross. All Chuck fans clearly and distinctively remember the scene in the book the Haunted that deals with bile and bits of peanuts. That particular scene caused many people to faint and throw up when he would do readings of that book. But, I sighed and thought - really? Now, is he just trying to be over the top gross because that is what everyone expects? Of course it causes your skin to crawl knowing that the main character named Madison who is around the age of 13 is the one bringing the still talking, licking, swallowing, fully functioning severed head to the pleasure region of this giantess. (Apparently in hell characters can die multiple times but are always alive and regenerate their bodies - that's why the severed head can still function). Maybe it's the fact I have a step sister named Madison around that age. It's understood the character has hippie parents and of course is advanced in sexual knowledge because of their open nakedness, but it made me super uncomfortable. However, the more I thought about, isn't that what Chuck does best? He makes everyone ultimately uncomfortable.
It makes me wonder if I am just being cynical because his last few books have been less than the masterpieces I have enjoyed in the past. We will see as I continue reading the book. The book has some redeeming qualities but I'm starting to get skeptical on how this is going to turn out.http://chuckpalahniuk.net/books/damned
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