Pygmy
Chuck Palahniuk. Love him? Hate him? Wish you could escape the Horror genre tag and claim your space on the General Popular Fiction shelves as seemingly effortlessly?
His latest book, Pygmy, escalates an output already far out on the edge. After the excesses of Rant, I’ve been curious – what comes next? I appreciated Rant as a response to the popular obsession with Fight Club. How do you respond to hearing that men are punching each other in Mexico City, inspired by a movie based on your book? You give your loving public a character who gains his charisma from rabid rodents. A charmer who demonstrates his love by infecting his lovers with rabies. “Emulate this, suckers!”
So, Pygmy. It’s in dialect. A entire-book-sustained first person, English-second-language, sometimes punny, always awkward, voice. Our narrator, an exchange student from an unnamed Communist country, probably China, takes advantage of the bleeding-heart American academic exchange program to infiltrate a typical American family, with a mandate to impregnate as many girls as possible before instigating mass destruction.
I confess, after the male-on-male rape scene in the first 30 pages, I had to take a break. I read two Jim Thompson novels and then came back and finished Pygmy. It was disturbing. Some of it was funny. None of it seemed like a movie Brad Pitt could be in.
The rape scene was particularly disturbing. It wasn’t completely gratuitous like the traditional male-on-female rape scene. It impacted the rest of the story. It was described with great detail. It could be instructional for that all-too-common young man that describes his losses at Halo as being “raped,” although the chances of such a fellow reading this book are probably slim.
I can’t say I like this book. The metaphors never fall in to focus, the narrator is yet another murderous pervert. There is a strong female character, and there might be some redemption to be found in the end. Is it worth the journey? You’ll have to decide for yourself.
