Begins Here One Hundredth Account of Operative Me

Or, how to get teenagers, dildos, sodomy, terrorism, Wal-Mart, school shootings, and the word "Chesticles" together in one book.

Wow. Before I begin, I just realized this is post 100. [Insert small party here.]

Today, it's all about Chuck
Palahniuk. Specifically Pygmy, his latest (2009) tromp into the world of decidedly disturbing distopia. Two things before I get going: 1. I like Palahniuk. Even when his writing isn't grand, I still like him because he's got the balls to say and do shit that stuns even my thoroughly desensitized core. 2. I'm pretty thoroughly desensitized (which is a good trait to have when you read Palahniuk. Especially considering that people faint at his readings from his wonderfully visceral descriptions.)

With finishing Pygmy, I've now read half of Palahniuk's library, and I have at least two more of his books sitting unread on my shelves. I generally like the guy.

Pygmy the book
A coupla weeks ago we took a trip up to Borders (a store I usually avoid because hours will pass and wives and children will murder me for getting lost in the stacks for too long) and I decided to finally blow the gift card I got at Christmas. I settled on this book because, knowing my reading time constraints, I needed something that would be both interesting and a fast read.

Overall the book has a very promising premise. From the jacket, "Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students...all the while planning and unspecified act of massive terrorism....It's a comedy. And a romance." Thoroughly Palahniuk, right? Add to it the fact that the entire book is written in very poor English, which though difficult to decipher at first, manages to maintain a consistent and logical flow to it.

I've long been a fan of books that play with dialect, and this application, of foreign English worked very well and in a humorous way without relying on custom grammar rules. Here's a fine example:

Magic quiet door go sideways, disappear inside wall to open path from outside. Not total all glass, extruded aluminum metal frame silver edge, doors slide gone until reveal inside stand old woman, slave woman appareled with red tunic, spring apparatus gripping tunic front to hang swinging sign, printed, "Doris." Ancient sentinel rest gray cloud eye upon operative me, roll eye from hair and down this agent, say, voice like old parrot, say, "Welcome to Wal-Mart." Say, "May I help you find something?"....
Smile of operative me say, "revered soon dying mother, distribute you ammunitions correct for Croatia-made forty-five-caliber, long-piston-stroke APS assault rifle?" (Palahniuk 9)

It's both quirky and entertaining, and not so distracting that it breaks down the overall flow of the narrative.

Palahniuk also plays it smart with the actual nature of the terrorists. First, he casts them as kids, making it more difficult for a redneck America to redflag bomb these would-be killers before they get a chance to reciprocate. Second he doesn't show the terrorists doing things that you'd expect right off the bat. Sure the ultimate plan is to kill millions with some type of bomb, but the going about that isn't as you'd expect. And this is typical Palahniuk--always twisting away from what you'd expect; it's one of his primary modes of building tension.

One of my big worries with this novel is that it's structure, consisting of thirty-six dispatches would not be explained. Since we have a metafictive setting of the main protagonist telling his own story, the vessel of that telling needs to be explained. Sadly many books don't do this; they set up the story within a story for effect and don't really explain the purpose of said effect, and thus destroy the relevant power of using metafiction in the first place. Since I'm writing this more in book review style than literary analysis style, I'm not going to reveal the purpose for this structure, but know that my need to have well formed metafictional structures in books was satisfied.

I've said a number of good things here about the book; but if you look over to my GoodReads account, you'll see I only gave it two stars. Why? Well, while this was an enjoyable quick read kind of book it lacked the oomph that other Palahniuk books like Rant and Invisible Monsters, carry. And unfortunately, like Haunted, (and from what I hear Snuff as well), Pygmy relied far too heavily on the shock factor. Very early on in this book Pygmy does something pretty hideous, and Palahniuk apes that image throughout the rest of the book. While I'm desensitized enough to not be bothered by things like this, it seemed like he was trying to use this to build a lot of reader revulsion for the Pygmy's character, you know, cut him way down before building him up, and in the long run, this wasn't enough for me. The overall character growth was marginal, and I'm not entirely convinced that the outcome was entirely earned.

And for all the effort that went into generating a novel in broken English, the overall net effect is that the novel becomes sparse. Weighing in at only 241 pages, there isn't a whole lot to work with to start with, and with the added weight of broken English, the narrative became somewhat scattered and choppy, skipping and jumping across a fairly decent span of time (the dates are all purposefully blacked out, so I can't give the span, but I'd expect at least 4-6 months).

The book was funny and quirky, but not one of Palahniuk's best.