Snuff
Chuck Palahniuk
Doubleday

Last week I was really taken by Mark Morford’s “Notes & Errata” column, which discussed the Internet’s effect on declining reading rates. According to Morford — although this is not really an original idea — the format of information on the Internet has, perhaps irreparably, hindered our attention span, making us unable to handle the longer format of books. This is why independent bookstores are closing and people are getting dumber, even as they think they’re getting smarter.
It’s not all neo-Luddite alarmism, though Morford says, “I am moderately sure a brain thusly amped on the wicked energy drink of the Web can, through honest time spent, through forcibly yanking the Ethernet cable out of your cerebral cortex, be re-rewired, untrained, readdicted to the deeper juice.” This can happen, as you might imagine, by turning the computer off and tucking into a sufficiently difficult book. A book that will force you to slow down your attention span and to think more deeply about a subject than might be comfortable.
Snuff is not that book.
In fact, the reason why Palahniuk is so intensely popular is that he writes in bite-sized chunks of information, just like the Internet. This style is what made Fight Club feel so revolutionary when it was published in 1996. The idea of combining a narrative with loosely related bits and pieces of facts (like how to make a bomb) made the book feel more relevant and in-line with a culture that was gaining speed at a rate no one could measure. But now, 12 years later, this style of writing is becoming a bit tired. Practically narcoleptic.


Snuff is filled with the little gimmicky devices Palahniuk is known for. One character spouts out the more horrifying beauty secrets and deaths of stars such as Marilyn Monroe, Lucille ball and their ilk. This seems like it has a point at first, but after a while it becomes so dull that you don’t care what the point is. Just like the Internet, Snuff is filled with an overwhelming amount of information, but no coherent point, which is a shame because it promised so much more. The story is nothing if not compelling: Veteran porn star Cassie Wright has fallen out of favor in the industry after a mysterious hiatus taken at the apex of her career (or is it at the beginning of her career? The book seems to confuse that point). She wants her last movie to be something to remember her by, so she decides to create a new record for the world’s largest gangbang, taking on 600 men. But as the title hints, it doesn’t all go according to plan. Early reviews called the book audacious, and promised that nothing quite this prurient had ever been attempted by an author of literary fiction.
That’s obviously going to be disputed, and has been quite well on Jezebel. But even if he’s not the first to tackle the subject of exploitation, vulgarity and pornography I wish he had had a bit more to say. Sure there are a lot of gimmicks; I wouldn’t be so generous to call them “literary devices” like some Amazon reviewers, which are fun enough to make your way through. And there are some twists and turns of the plot, some obvious and some not so obvious. But by the end of the book you’ll find yourself wondering what the point was. If he seemingly has so little to add to the often-convoluted discussion about sex and pornography in our culture, why take it on at all?
I’ll admit that it’s been a while since I read a Palahniuk book, and maybe Fight Club wasn’t really as revolutionary as it felt to me in high school; maybe all of his books are just as vapid as this one. But I seem to remember Fight Club having something Snuff sorely lacks: a reason for all the gimmicks and, dare I say it, some heart.
Looking on the bright side, however, with the right casting choices it would make a hell of a film.

Tags: alarmism | amped | attention span | beauty secrets | bits and pieces | cerebral cortex | chuck palahniuk | doubleday | energy drink | ethernet cable | fight club | how to make a bomb | independent bookstores | lucille ball | marilyn monroe | mark morford | reading rates | sized chunks | snuff | spouts

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