Just minutes ago, I finished the book "Damned" by Chuck Palahniuk. I have written several prior posts giving a semi-explanation on what is going on in this novel. The book is about a 13 year old girl named Madison who finds herself in hell after a "marijuana overdose." As you continue to read the book, you find out she is there for more reasons than just smoking the ganja. Also, there is a colorful group of friends she makes and meets in hell that resembles the Breakfast club. In my past post, I described a really disgusting part which turned out to be the most disgusting part in the book.
This book is part of a three part trilogy. I'm really interested to see how he can write more on this subject, and I have very mixed feelings about this book. At times, I found myself asking existential questions about life which made the reading rather thought provoking. In hell there are two jobs you can have. You can either be involved in Internet porn or you can work as a telemarketer. I thought the telemarketer part was a great touch for a job you could have in hell, because if any job sounds like a hellish nightmare it has got to be a job as a telemarketer. Madison found herself a job as a telemarketer, but the telemarketers communicated with people who were alive on earth, to ask frivolous survey questions such as what is your favorite flavor of lip gloss. Madison ended up talking to a lot of people who were near the end of their lives and were desperate to talk to someone. She would convince them to come to hell because it was so much better than their lives on earth. Chuck introduces many thoughts about life on earth such as you live on earth, you want all the material possessions, the perfect life, and we try so hard to be healthy such as taking vitamins and the list goes on and on. But it all comes back to the point that we all will die. Most of use are trying not to die and take special preventative measures, but essentially in the end we will have to face our inevitable fates. I'm really surprised to find Chuck giving this view that there is an eternal life after death such as a heaven and a hell. For some reason, he always struck me is rather atheist but at the same time this is a fiction novel. Or is it? ha ha.
The book was thought provoking in an existential way to me. Actually, in the same way as fight club provokes such thoughts such as "You are more than your fucking khakis." But on the same note, I was finding some unnerving flaws to the logic of this book. At one point, Madison ends up calling her parents while she is in hell because they are on her telemarketer call list. She doesn't even know who it's calling until they answer and immediately recognize her voice on the other end. In the novel, there are points when Madison does miss her parents and does not want to be in hell. My question was why didn't she call her parents earlier? When she first started her job in hell she was fairly upset about being in hell at that point in the plot. It just seems like a huge hole in the novel that was and is still befuddling to me. I would think the first thing I would do at my telemarketing job in hell would be to call the people I left behind and missed. Once this all happens, the blur between the living and the dead start to get murky for me.
Another view point on this book I have is Chuck is potentially mocking all the teeny bopper trilogies that keep coming out such as The Hunger Games and The Twilight series. I wonder if that is part of his intention for writing this series seeing it is from the perspective of a thirteen year old female. I wonder if Chuck thought to himself "Well, I want to write a teenage trilogy but make it highly uncomfortable, raw, inappropriate, and better than all that shit that keeps coming out." (I do love The Hunger Games Trilogy though, so I am guilty of that).
I'm not entirely sold on this "trilogy" that he is writing but I know I will read the second book and the third book because that is just what I do. I cannot help but read everything and anything that this man writes. Bring on the second installment of Eternal Damnation!
No comments:
Post a Comment