Customer Reviews

Pygmy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Don't get me wrong, I usually love Chuck's work - even the stuff everyone else hates. So, it pains me to have to give this novel a single star, which apparently in Amazon-speak means "I hate it".
For one thing, the book is written in a broken English reminiscent of scenes from bad racist parodies of Asian cultures in sketch comedy TV shows. Conceptually, this works given the premise of the book; practically, it makes the book incredibly difficult to read for more than a chapter or two.
Even ignoring the difficult language the content of the story itself is boring - something I have never been able to say about one of Palahniuk's books. Even the few "shock value" moments failed to draw my attention more deeply into the story.
Simply put, there is really nothing about this book that would make me recommend it to anyone. If this was the first Chuck Palahniuk book I'd ever read it would be hard to convince me to ever attempt to read another.

A few years back I would have told you Palahniuk was one of my favorite authors. His work is cutting edge, unique, and always shocking. Each of his works is unique, from other authors and from his own works. Palahniuk has an incredibly imaginative and creative mind. The closest authors to him are: in Canada Douglas Coupland and in the UK Irvine Welsh. But the problem with always shocking and being so unique is each new work must outdo the previous. As such I think I have lost my taste for Palahniuk's writings.

The book is unique, different and well-written. It is the story of Pygmy, one of a group of youths from a totalitarian state that has been sent to the United States, to live with Christian families and experience a better life. At least that is what the Host Families and church believe. Yet in reality these youths have been raised from a young age as agents of the state, part of a planned terrorist attack on the States.

Palahniuk does a great job of dissecting Midwestern life through foreign eyes. It is a satire both of America's fears and of America itself. However the story is just too much - male rape, high school massacre, planned seductions, pregnancies and impregnations. And the whole book is written as a series of dispatches from Pygmy to his home government, written in a halting, misunderstood English. Palahniuk captures a feel about the language, yet still conveys his message.

Palahniuk's books are usually a pleasure to read and so addictive that I cannot put them down. Some I have read more than once, even back to back - finished it and started reading it again. That was not the case this time. Twice I put it down for a few days, and was uncertain I would pick it up again to finish it. This was the first Palahniuk book I have read that I easily predicted the ending; that, in and of itself, was a disappointment. As a book it is okay, but as a Palahniuk book it is disappointing on many levels. For the hardcore Palahniuk fans out there - they will love it. I think I have just lost my taste for his extremism.

(First Published in Imprint 2009-05-29.)

While the style of language takes a little bit to get used to, it works fantastically once you're comfortable with it. In classic Palahniuk style he uses a clever, unique, and imaginative story as a basis to skewer North American ultra-consumerism. It works on many levels, you can almost feel how the protagonist is disgusted by the culture around him. The dodgeball sequence was the first time I've actually laughed out loud while reading a book in sometime; it was great! Overall, a fun read, although it does serve to remind us of our lives of overindulgence, which is depressing.

I'm not even sure where to begin with this novel. The first book I had ever read by Chuck Palahniuk was Haunted, which wasn't the most fantastic book that I've read, but it was fun and delightfully gruesome. After reading that one, I was hooked on the author and went out and bought a few of his other books.

The problem with Pygmy, or the fact that I bought Pygmy, is that I bought it from Amazon, based on it's premise from the back cover. I thought it sounded really, really good. What I need to learn to do is to first look at a book'a physical, tangible book'before I buy online. Or at least, see if I can look inside the book online. If I had known what I was getting myself into, I probably would have picked up another'any other'Palahniuk book.

I'm going to say that it's not the most terrible book that I've read, but it's not what I was expecting from Palahniuk. The whole thing just fell short of what I was promised'I expected more of an attack by the end, whereas I just got a mediocre, blah ending. And the journey to the ending wasn't even worth it. I hate ranting on Palahniuk, but honestly, I started skimming by about page 140.

One of the good things of the novel is how Palahniuk pokes fun at American life. At times it was very humorous and the way the 13-year-old comrade describes certain things or places is interesting. Though, I felt like something was missing. I hate to ruin the book for you if you haven't read it, but let me throw out a scenario: Say you and your family are drugged while eating dinner'when you woke up, wouldn't something more happen than just a little bit of confusion and the carrying on of life?

And what about the other eye? (again, don't want to ruin it, but if you've read the novel, seriously, what gives?)

The disjointed, choppy writing style was slightly refreshing at first, but just started to get annoying'hence, my skimming. And at times, I felt like it just didn't make sense. If a 4-year-old can recited the periodic table and is just oh-so-smart, how could he not grasp another language? Why would his dialogue be so choppy? At one point in the novel, the narrator, our comrade who speaks in short, sometimes nonsensical sentences, corrects another characters usage of 'who' changing it to 'whom.' If he knows how to use 'whom' in a sentence, how does he not know English?

The book relies heavily on quotes from a variety of communist leaders, which is okay, but towards the end Palahniuk throws in a quote by D.H. Lawrence which just seemed very out of place. Not to mention the fact that the end is tied up in a little bow, so to speak. Again, not what I was expecting.

After reading Haunted, I had braced myself for the gruesomeness that Palahniuk incorporates into his writing, but honestly, I didn't find this book to be that bad. Yes, there's sodomy and shootings and whatnot, but mix that with the writing style and it's just not the same. My mouth wasn't dropping open at any point during the novel because of twists and turns'I didn't find it that exciting. I know he was going for satire, but maybe I just didn't get it.

I'm not going to give up on Palahniuk, though. I plan to give his other novels a read and I'm sure I'll enjoy them.

"Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." -- Ephesians 2:19

Can you see yourself as others see you? Surely not. Chuck Palahniuk draws on that eternal truth to give Americans a picture of their culture from the point-of-view of totalitarian terrorists masquerading as exchange students. Not since Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" in which the satirist suggested that the starving Irish eat their children has a culture taken such a beating as Americans do in Pygmy.

To be fair, Mr. Palahniuk also takes many potshots at the unidentified foreign nation that so blatantly convinces its people that Americans are vermin. But those shots don't strike home with the same venom.

The book portrays Americans as sex- and materialism-obsessed people who are clueless about what's going on around them. Is that a new finding for you? I doubt it. That's one problem with the book.

Another problem is that the narrator's language is hard to follow. And when you do get it, it hardly seems worth the effort in most cases.

The third problem is that the "exchange students" are exaggerated in their superiority in ways that just seem silly. For instance, Pygmy can discern with perfect accuracy what chemicals are in or on a person's body by smelling them. This leads to a lot of stage setting for scenes based on odor. It was too much for me . . . more gross than funny. Similar sequences push the same gags until they are threadbare, such as the unending searches for new batteries.

I give this book a five for originality of concept and a one for execution.

Unless you have taken a pledge to read all books by Mr. Palahniuk, give this one a pass. The message and humor don't warrant plowing through the writing problems.

This is the worst Chuck P. book I've ever read... I usually like his stuff. Haunted and Survivor are freaking amazing. Nothing awsome in PYGMY alas - just frustration. The main problem with this book is how it's written. It's written in broken english as it's from the point of view of a Chinese terrorist. Reading this broken english is a practice in frustration. It's not clever, it's not funny, and it's not ironic and it could have been any or all of these if the broken english was used in a differnt way. Instead we get to suffer through almost unreadable sentences. The plot moves way too fast to care about any of the characters. By chapter two our (anti)hero rapes a class bully in a Wallmart bathroom. The plot only gets more unbelievable from there. I'd suggest reading Fight Club, or Haunted or Survivor or anything else by Chuck Palphniuk.

I'm a huge fan of Chuck's and I'm sure some brilliance is included in Pygmy but trying to figure out the verbiage was not a good spend of my rec time.
Let's hope Damned is written more like Survivor or Choke

Not one of my favorite Palahniuk books, but he tried something fresh by using a wacky Soviet-inflected, kinda-English dialect with the main narrative. Initially, getting into the flow and rhythm of it took some investment but it worked itself out a few chapters in. I can actually see this being a better movie than book.

I can understand how there seems to be a chasm in the reviews of Pygmy. Either people love it, or people hate it. It also seems that the people who disliked the book, disliked it for the way it was written... broken english... they say.

I beg to differ.

I could only assume that those that had a hard time reading it, also have a hard time clapping in time to music. They are the ones that always seem to be clapping like a pair of sneakers in the dryer, dancing like Elaine, or have to look at the steps as they climb.

Maybe it is that I am a drummer, and can pick up on the rhythmic bounce of Pygmy's style, or that I was never subjected to any severe head trauma as a developing child. I am not sure, but I do know that this was very easy to read and I flew through this book just as easily as Choke or Survivor. I loved it! It had a feel of beat poetry, fast and flighty like that of a martial arts expert. It so well conveyed his thinking and mind, and that is what good writing does.

Interestingly enough, my lead singer also loved the book. hmmm Possibly all the "haters" are just not coordinated enough.

The prose is difficult to read at first, but after the first few chapters it gets easier to digest, though its content may not be so easy to take. Palahniuk has a very disturbing and yet hilarious take on contemporary american culture, and it is even more twisted through the eyes of a young communist opperative. For this reason alone, it is a worthy read.