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Pygmy
The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park—Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club.
“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.”
Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.
It’s a comedy. And a romance.
“Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc.”
Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.
It’s a comedy. And a romance.
255 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2009
991 people are currently reading
15305 people want to read
About the author
Chuck Palahniuk
258 books131k followersWritten in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. Chuck’s work has always been infused with personal experience, and his next novel, Lullaby, was no exception. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father. Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released in 2003. While on the road in support of Diary, Chuck began reading a short story entitled 'Guts,' which would eventually become part of the novel Haunted.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. These were 'How To' pieces, straight out of Chuck's personal bag of tricks, based on the tenants of minimalism he learned from Tom Spanbauer. Every month, a “Homework Assignment” would accompany the lesson, so Workshop members could apply what they had learned. (all 36 of these essays can currently be found on The Cult's sister-site, LitReactor.com).
Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. The best stories are currently set to be published in Burnt Tongues, a forthcoming anthology, with an introduction written by Chuck himself.
His next novel, Beautiful You, is due out in October 2014.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,280 reviews
October 11, 2009
Begins here paragraph the first of reviewer me, goodreader Chris, upon completion great American subversive novel. ISBN: 978-0-385-52634-0. Title: Pygmy. Author: Esteemed sodomite Chuck Palahniuk. For official record, expose novel as shit of iguanadons.
Sales of novel great, fueled by author prior reputation as popculture satirist. For establish goodreader history, this reviewer previously read Choke, disliked as bite in testicle by rabid wombat nut-chomp, however, is willing to give chance the second to esteemed author. Pygmy sourced from store of unwanted belongings for make resale, this reviewer surprised not this book forsaken shortly after release to fickle American public, along with musical genius of 3 Doors Down and Doctors of Spin. This reviewer see discount price, value equal to one monetary unit feature evil tyrant George Washington, next now, this reviewer make small parade to register, purchase Pygmy novel.
Story describe efforts of special Operatives from great unnamed nation oppressed by imperialist American war machine, agents embark on righteous counter-attack Operation Havoc: infiltrate Midwest American families under guise as students of exchange, impregnate peers to create anchor babies, acquire supplies and build weapon of mass destruction, last, detonate weapon blam-pow kill many Americans. Narrator Agent 67, issued name “Pygmy” by host American family, Cedar family. During assimilation process to society typical of American suburb, Agent Pygmy teased as foreigner, retaliates by demonstrating superior combat training, superior spelling prowess, recitation of wise quotations former world leaders, and rape of bully’s young puckered anus.
Now, I understand that Palahniuk was trying something different, to write a book in English, yet using the syntax of an alternate language to more truthfully narrate the story from Pygmy’s point of view, but really, does anyone want to read shit like that for 200 pages? Plus, with Pygmy being such a quick learner you’d think that maybe towards the end there would be some sort of improvement towards more better Engrish, but that doesn’t happen. I don’t know whether I should give Palahniuk a big pat on the back or a kick in the junk for managing to write like a cretin throughout the course of the book. It’s akin to listening to a band with absolutely no cohesiveness, no rhythm, no music sense, and a lead singer with an uncontrollable stutter and wondering if it’s the most god-awful noise on the planet or a new groundbreaking statement. So while Chuck may have gloriously displayed his large sack by gambling with this experiment, it certainly didn’t help endear me to his work, not that I suppose he cares.
So with the book barely managing to remain readable to me, it was really up to the story itself (glowingly described as “The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park – his finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club) to win the day. This, unfortunately, didn’t happen. There were a few elements which really kept me from enjoying the story, the first was a niggling carry-over from Choke which was also utilized in this story: the annoying habit of Pygmy alphabetically reciting the elements in times of duress, much like Victor rattled off medical conditions in the previous book. To me, this comes across as a poor way for Palahniuk to make the narrator appear clever, that may not be his intent, but that’s how I interpret it. The next bother was the deadpan delivery when introducing what I’m guessing was intended to be comedy, but Pygmy’s matter-of-fact observations didn’t work for me. Much less, with many of these referring to pop culture and brand names, it’s hard to imagine that a well-trained mole would confuse Listerine with cologne (even more so when the character is able to discern the chemical composition of most items with a mere whiff). Lastly, most of the events which occur while the agents are being indoctrinated into society were just too over-the-top to suspend my disbelief and allow the story to continue as something I should take even remotely seriously (killing a priest during a baptism in front of the entire congregation, breaking numerous arms and legs in gym class, and don’t even get me started on the school-shooting during the Model United Nations). While I have no doubt that this is just Palahniuk’s style, it doesn’t work for me. I’ve never read Fight Club, but after I first saw the movie, I had to turn to my fellow-viewer and ask, “Am I really supposed to believe a bunch of thick dudes were inspired to take direction from a guy they witnessed kicking his own ass outside a bar?”
On a positive note, there are some people I can actually recommend this book to, or at least I suppose they’d like it, I personally wouldn’t associate with any of the dimwits I’m attempting to describe. Anyone who considers the USA as a global bully deserving of retribution by terrorist factions for foisting its tainted culture upon the world, consuming an inordinate amount of precious resources, and for sticking its nose in foreign affairs will probably enjoy this. Pygmy’s training in his home country, which I am going to call out as Turkmenistan simply because Palahniuk pussies out from pointing the finger at any nation in particular, focuses heavily on anti-materialist rhetoric and the negative aspects of America’s global policing, and Pygmy crams these astute lessons into a filibuster while acting as the United States’ delegate in the United Nations fiasco, demanding the evil empire make reparations for basically everything since their inception, and calls for the execution of their past and present leadership. Using Pygmy’s backasswardly-written thoughts, Palahniuk spends a good deal of time attacking most of the social values and economic practices of the contemporary USA, hell, it’s so anti-American he even takes time to dis “A Horse With No Name” by the band America in passing. That’s just gratuitous. The other group that might enjoy this is anyone who hass ever fantasized about dropping a beat-down on some high school punk in a bathroom, and anally raping him and painting his prostate with your cum afterwards. Or anyone who thinks the idea of a clandestine group of adolescent foreign agents being trained to suck cock by a war-scarred old rebel fighter is pretty hot stuff. If you’re one of those enlightened folks that can sympathize with any of the sentiment expressed in this paragraph, you might want to check Pygmy out.
Overall, even if the writing style hadn’t been intentionally bad, the lack of a redeeming story really makes it hard to understand why the author is still being published, even with a ‘generation-defining’ work under his belt (I cringe just thinking I’m included in that unfortunate group, even though I probably will get around to checking out Fight Club at some point). Having read two books by Palahniuk, I’m completely baffled as to why he’s considered a gifted writer. I'm so thoroughly disgusted that I actually own this that I'm probably just going to give my copy to the stinky kid next door when he stops by trick-or-treating, dick-slap!
Sales of novel great, fueled by author prior reputation as popculture satirist. For establish goodreader history, this reviewer previously read Choke, disliked as bite in testicle by rabid wombat nut-chomp, however, is willing to give chance the second to esteemed author. Pygmy sourced from store of unwanted belongings for make resale, this reviewer surprised not this book forsaken shortly after release to fickle American public, along with musical genius of 3 Doors Down and Doctors of Spin. This reviewer see discount price, value equal to one monetary unit feature evil tyrant George Washington, next now, this reviewer make small parade to register, purchase Pygmy novel.
Story describe efforts of special Operatives from great unnamed nation oppressed by imperialist American war machine, agents embark on righteous counter-attack Operation Havoc: infiltrate Midwest American families under guise as students of exchange, impregnate peers to create anchor babies, acquire supplies and build weapon of mass destruction, last, detonate weapon blam-pow kill many Americans. Narrator Agent 67, issued name “Pygmy” by host American family, Cedar family. During assimilation process to society typical of American suburb, Agent Pygmy teased as foreigner, retaliates by demonstrating superior combat training, superior spelling prowess, recitation of wise quotations former world leaders, and rape of bully’s young puckered anus.
Now, I understand that Palahniuk was trying something different, to write a book in English, yet using the syntax of an alternate language to more truthfully narrate the story from Pygmy’s point of view, but really, does anyone want to read shit like that for 200 pages? Plus, with Pygmy being such a quick learner you’d think that maybe towards the end there would be some sort of improvement towards more better Engrish, but that doesn’t happen. I don’t know whether I should give Palahniuk a big pat on the back or a kick in the junk for managing to write like a cretin throughout the course of the book. It’s akin to listening to a band with absolutely no cohesiveness, no rhythm, no music sense, and a lead singer with an uncontrollable stutter and wondering if it’s the most god-awful noise on the planet or a new groundbreaking statement. So while Chuck may have gloriously displayed his large sack by gambling with this experiment, it certainly didn’t help endear me to his work, not that I suppose he cares.
So with the book barely managing to remain readable to me, it was really up to the story itself (glowingly described as “The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park – his finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club) to win the day. This, unfortunately, didn’t happen. There were a few elements which really kept me from enjoying the story, the first was a niggling carry-over from Choke which was also utilized in this story: the annoying habit of Pygmy alphabetically reciting the elements in times of duress, much like Victor rattled off medical conditions in the previous book. To me, this comes across as a poor way for Palahniuk to make the narrator appear clever, that may not be his intent, but that’s how I interpret it. The next bother was the deadpan delivery when introducing what I’m guessing was intended to be comedy, but Pygmy’s matter-of-fact observations didn’t work for me. Much less, with many of these referring to pop culture and brand names, it’s hard to imagine that a well-trained mole would confuse Listerine with cologne (even more so when the character is able to discern the chemical composition of most items with a mere whiff). Lastly, most of the events which occur while the agents are being indoctrinated into society were just too over-the-top to suspend my disbelief and allow the story to continue as something I should take even remotely seriously (killing a priest during a baptism in front of the entire congregation, breaking numerous arms and legs in gym class, and don’t even get me started on the school-shooting during the Model United Nations). While I have no doubt that this is just Palahniuk’s style, it doesn’t work for me. I’ve never read Fight Club, but after I first saw the movie, I had to turn to my fellow-viewer and ask, “Am I really supposed to believe a bunch of thick dudes were inspired to take direction from a guy they witnessed kicking his own ass outside a bar?”
On a positive note, there are some people I can actually recommend this book to, or at least I suppose they’d like it, I personally wouldn’t associate with any of the dimwits I’m attempting to describe. Anyone who considers the USA as a global bully deserving of retribution by terrorist factions for foisting its tainted culture upon the world, consuming an inordinate amount of precious resources, and for sticking its nose in foreign affairs will probably enjoy this. Pygmy’s training in his home country, which I am going to call out as Turkmenistan simply because Palahniuk pussies out from pointing the finger at any nation in particular, focuses heavily on anti-materialist rhetoric and the negative aspects of America’s global policing, and Pygmy crams these astute lessons into a filibuster while acting as the United States’ delegate in the United Nations fiasco, demanding the evil empire make reparations for basically everything since their inception, and calls for the execution of their past and present leadership. Using Pygmy’s backasswardly-written thoughts, Palahniuk spends a good deal of time attacking most of the social values and economic practices of the contemporary USA, hell, it’s so anti-American he even takes time to dis “A Horse With No Name” by the band America in passing. That’s just gratuitous. The other group that might enjoy this is anyone who hass ever fantasized about dropping a beat-down on some high school punk in a bathroom, and anally raping him and painting his prostate with your cum afterwards. Or anyone who thinks the idea of a clandestine group of adolescent foreign agents being trained to suck cock by a war-scarred old rebel fighter is pretty hot stuff. If you’re one of those enlightened folks that can sympathize with any of the sentiment expressed in this paragraph, you might want to check Pygmy out.
Overall, even if the writing style hadn’t been intentionally bad, the lack of a redeeming story really makes it hard to understand why the author is still being published, even with a ‘generation-defining’ work under his belt (I cringe just thinking I’m included in that unfortunate group, even though I probably will get around to checking out Fight Club at some point). Having read two books by Palahniuk, I’m completely baffled as to why he’s considered a gifted writer. I'm so thoroughly disgusted that I actually own this that I'm probably just going to give my copy to the stinky kid next door when he stops by trick-or-treating, dick-slap!
March 9, 2018
CW: rape, violence, racism, sexism, school shooting
This review is going to have spoilers, so feel free to skip if you don’t like that.
What the literal fuck? I cannot read this for another second. This book is only 256 pages but it felt like eternity. I only have an hour left of the audiobook but I will not subject myself to this any longer. If I could give this zero stars I would.
The story centers around what I assume to be an Asian spy from a communist country. He comes to the US as a foreign exchange student and everyone refers to him as Pygmy. His actual country of origin is not revealed, but racism is present in abundance and gives you insight into how Pygmy might appear. The fact that I had to figure out what the character looks like based on racial slurs is abhorrent. The story is told in broken English, which not only makes the story hard to follow, but also adds to the whole racist atmosphere of the novel. Even the name Pygmy seems racist because the literal definition of the word is “a member of certain peoples of very short stature in equatorial Africa and parts of Southeast Asia.” Also, Pygmy is essentially a terrorist, as his main goal is to go to D.C. and set off a bomb. Harmful stereotype, much?
But don’t worry if you thought it couldn't get any worse. This book isn’t just racist, it’s also sexist. One of Pygmy’s other goals is to impregnate an American woman. Pygmy constantly looks observes women as “receptacles for seed” and there is no shortage of slang terms for women’s breasts. All of the men in the novel regard women with little to no respect. The American girls are characterized as being loose and slutty. After Pygmy saves the students from a school shooting, multiple girls come up to him, offering him sex.
There are many scenes where I think Palahniuk’s only intention was to make the reader uncomfortable. There is an anal rape scene of a bully in chapter two and also a scene where the main character removes a vibrator from his host mother’s vagina while she is unconscious. I’ve never read any other of Palahniuk’s books, but I have seen Fight Club, so it doesn’t surprise me that he is into shock value. I just thought such a revered author would have more substance. I am surprised that this book was written in 2009. This book just feels like a bunch of tired racist and sexist cliches.
After the anal rape scene, the bully comes to Pygmy begging him to love him. Apparently, the bully has been hiding his sexuality and Pygmy awakened his inner desire for gay love. (WTF???) Pygmy turns him down and this leads the bully to later bring a gun to the school and shoot his classmates. This school shooting felt like a big joke and, in 2018, it wasn’t very funny.
This just feels like a book written by a gross nihilist who wants to shock you with how cretinous he can be. I know that some authors use dark topics to prove a point, but this just feels like Palahniuk wrote haplessly with the intent of showing us how Edgy™ and Against the Grain™ he is. I understand this book is meant to be satirical, but, I’m sorry, I’m not impressed with a white cis man writing any of this.
If you’ve ever read a Palahniuk book worth your time, do let me know in the comments. I’ve heard good things about some of his other books, but I’m hesitant to pick another one up.
This review is going to have spoilers, so feel free to skip if you don’t like that.
What the literal fuck? I cannot read this for another second. This book is only 256 pages but it felt like eternity. I only have an hour left of the audiobook but I will not subject myself to this any longer. If I could give this zero stars I would.
The story centers around what I assume to be an Asian spy from a communist country. He comes to the US as a foreign exchange student and everyone refers to him as Pygmy. His actual country of origin is not revealed, but racism is present in abundance and gives you insight into how Pygmy might appear. The fact that I had to figure out what the character looks like based on racial slurs is abhorrent. The story is told in broken English, which not only makes the story hard to follow, but also adds to the whole racist atmosphere of the novel. Even the name Pygmy seems racist because the literal definition of the word is “a member of certain peoples of very short stature in equatorial Africa and parts of Southeast Asia.” Also, Pygmy is essentially a terrorist, as his main goal is to go to D.C. and set off a bomb. Harmful stereotype, much?
But don’t worry if you thought it couldn't get any worse. This book isn’t just racist, it’s also sexist. One of Pygmy’s other goals is to impregnate an American woman. Pygmy constantly looks observes women as “receptacles for seed” and there is no shortage of slang terms for women’s breasts. All of the men in the novel regard women with little to no respect. The American girls are characterized as being loose and slutty. After Pygmy saves the students from a school shooting, multiple girls come up to him, offering him sex.
There are many scenes where I think Palahniuk’s only intention was to make the reader uncomfortable. There is an anal rape scene of a bully in chapter two and also a scene where the main character removes a vibrator from his host mother’s vagina while she is unconscious. I’ve never read any other of Palahniuk’s books, but I have seen Fight Club, so it doesn’t surprise me that he is into shock value. I just thought such a revered author would have more substance. I am surprised that this book was written in 2009. This book just feels like a bunch of tired racist and sexist cliches.
After the anal rape scene, the bully comes to Pygmy begging him to love him. Apparently, the bully has been hiding his sexuality and Pygmy awakened his inner desire for gay love. (WTF???) Pygmy turns him down and this leads the bully to later bring a gun to the school and shoot his classmates. This school shooting felt like a big joke and, in 2018, it wasn’t very funny.
This just feels like a book written by a gross nihilist who wants to shock you with how cretinous he can be. I know that some authors use dark topics to prove a point, but this just feels like Palahniuk wrote haplessly with the intent of showing us how Edgy™ and Against the Grain™ he is. I understand this book is meant to be satirical, but, I’m sorry, I’m not impressed with a white cis man writing any of this.
If you’ve ever read a Palahniuk book worth your time, do let me know in the comments. I’ve heard good things about some of his other books, but I’m hesitant to pick another one up.
February 4, 2017
"I am Palahnuik damn it!"
He may be the Vonnegut of our age. Scathing satire with all the subtelty of a sledge hammer. And a fun read, too, though the stream of consciousness pigeon English took some getting used to.
Flying panda kick! BAM POW!
He may be the Vonnegut of our age. Scathing satire with all the subtelty of a sledge hammer. And a fun read, too, though the stream of consciousness pigeon English took some getting used to.
Flying panda kick! BAM POW!
January 14, 2010
I got so caught up at reading the mangled English that I forgot I was reading a Chuck Palahniuk book, and I had not properly mentally braced myself when the first horrible thing happens in Chapter 2. After getting that shock, it was easier to remember who I was dealing with.
This has got everything you'd expect from a Palahniuk novel. Dark humor, graphic violence, and a bunch of disturbing characters with an outlandish plot and outrageous twists.
This story of a spy trained since childhood by an unnamed facist government posing as an exchange student allows Palahniuk to engage in his usual bashing of American consumer culture, but flashbacks to Pygmy's upbringing and training are used to illustrate that there are worse things in the world.
What sets this apart from his other books is the abuse of the English language in the hands of Pygmy. It's oddly addictive to read and hilarious. For example, here's Pygmy at Junior Swing Choir:
"For official record, currrent now, ape mimic joyous facial expression fellow student during bellow propaganda lyrics. All lauding agrarian United States deemed Oklahoma, primitive environment employing equine labor for drag wheeled conveyance despoiled with superfluous decrotive fringe."
If you find that funny, you'll probably like the book.
This has got everything you'd expect from a Palahniuk novel. Dark humor, graphic violence, and a bunch of disturbing characters with an outlandish plot and outrageous twists.
This story of a spy trained since childhood by an unnamed facist government posing as an exchange student allows Palahniuk to engage in his usual bashing of American consumer culture, but flashbacks to Pygmy's upbringing and training are used to illustrate that there are worse things in the world.
What sets this apart from his other books is the abuse of the English language in the hands of Pygmy. It's oddly addictive to read and hilarious. For example, here's Pygmy at Junior Swing Choir:
"For official record, currrent now, ape mimic joyous facial expression fellow student during bellow propaganda lyrics. All lauding agrarian United States deemed Oklahoma, primitive environment employing equine labor for drag wheeled conveyance despoiled with superfluous decrotive fringe."
If you find that funny, you'll probably like the book.
April 30, 2010
I'll give it another chance as soon as they translate it into English.
July 19, 2009
If your reading level and vocabulary aren't excellent, you don't have a good grasp of 40's-80's Communist history, and your tolerance for extreme sexual weirdness isn't pretty high, don't read this book. All of Palahniuk's books are a little... extreme, but this one has reached a whole new level of weird.
As a quick check of the synopsis should tell you, Pygmy is an exchange student from an unnamed Communist country. His story is told in a series of mangled-English dispatches back to his masters. He and a group of other kid supersoldiers have been sent to the Bible belt to engineer the downfall of America through Project Havoc.
Pygmy's problem is that, though he spouts Communist dogma (including quotes from Mao and Hitler that should curdle your blood), the essential bipolar humanity of the people around him seeps into his psyche. Within his first couple of days in America, he has attacked (this scene is violent and contains unacceptable sexuality) a bully who has been terrorizing Pygmy's exchange brother.
Pygmy regularly performs acts of public bravery, and his views of American cultural traditions are both hilarious and deeply troubling. His visits to WalMart (and his treatment of the elderly female greeter, who sees through him and reacts in kind) are crushingly honest, and also terrifying. Pygmy goes on a trip to WalMart to purchase bomb-making supplies that should make you go and search your kids' closets RIGHT NOW.
I have trouble "recommending" Pygmy to anyone. If, like me, you read to give your brain a workout, to feel the pathways in your brain change, to feel and think things to which you do not ordinarily have access, and to take a vacation from yourself, then you might be interested in Pygmy. If you read purely for escape and expect a slight depression in the middle of a story, then a soaring, satisfying finish, choose another book.
As a quick check of the synopsis should tell you, Pygmy is an exchange student from an unnamed Communist country. His story is told in a series of mangled-English dispatches back to his masters. He and a group of other kid supersoldiers have been sent to the Bible belt to engineer the downfall of America through Project Havoc.
Pygmy's problem is that, though he spouts Communist dogma (including quotes from Mao and Hitler that should curdle your blood), the essential bipolar humanity of the people around him seeps into his psyche. Within his first couple of days in America, he has attacked (this scene is violent and contains unacceptable sexuality) a bully who has been terrorizing Pygmy's exchange brother.
Pygmy regularly performs acts of public bravery, and his views of American cultural traditions are both hilarious and deeply troubling. His visits to WalMart (and his treatment of the elderly female greeter, who sees through him and reacts in kind) are crushingly honest, and also terrifying. Pygmy goes on a trip to WalMart to purchase bomb-making supplies that should make you go and search your kids' closets RIGHT NOW.
I have trouble "recommending" Pygmy to anyone. If, like me, you read to give your brain a workout, to feel the pathways in your brain change, to feel and think things to which you do not ordinarily have access, and to take a vacation from yourself, then you might be interested in Pygmy. If you read purely for escape and expect a slight depression in the middle of a story, then a soaring, satisfying finish, choose another book.
January 29, 2011
Pygmy is focused on the experiences of Agent Number 67, a 13-year old secret agent from an unnamed totalitarian state. Agent Number 67 along with 11 other young men and women take a journey to America disguised as foreign exchange students with the ultimate goal of executing a terrorist attack named Operation Havoc upon the American society.
When I was watching Angelina Jolie's movie, SALT, I couldn't help but think of this vintage Palahniuk novel. It left me wondering if the people who wrote Salt's screenplay have used this novel as a pattern. Although Pygmy and the movie's stories have great disparities, you can not deny that there are obvious common grounds as well.
At first, I was a bit disappointed when I read the first few lines from the book. It was written in "Broken English" or as other readers call it "Pygmy English". I browsed through the other pages only to have a confirmation that the whole book was indeed written in the same manner... I thought to myself, "What was Palahniuk thinking?!"...with that and my insatiable curiosity, I pushed to give it a try... a few hours later, I was half way through it.
Every word was intoxicating! There is a common misconception that if a person can not communicate well in English, he is as dumb as a cardboard. But in Pygmy, this way of thinking is greatly challenged and was proven wrong countless of times.
Chuck chose the right writing style for Pygmy. It gives the readers a genuine feel of the narrator's point of view. Not to mention that Agent Number 67 is such an innocently witty and funny character. The novel gives the point of view of the "other guys"... the "bad guys" branded by the society. Because of Agent Number 67's musings, you learn to sympathize with him and his group. The readers will also see how very different sets of people could have so much in common.
(just read the book and find out for yourself. I don't want to spoil anyone with my ranting ;p)
Chuck Palahniuk berated the ridiculous lifestyle most people have through the eyes of this new comer. There is a subtle juxtaposition that speaks so much about the differences between the totalitarian culture where the Agents grew up in and the lifestyle practiced by the majority. Through the eyes of Agent Number 67, Chuck once again attacked consumerism, pop culture, racism, the educational system, religion, sexuality, familial living and much MUCH more. It is so refreshing to read all of it.
I think this novel is a wake up call in disguise care of Mr. Palahniuk's genius mind.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not only because of its "entertainment factor" but mainly because of the messages and moral lessons beyond every "Dispatch". You can actually learn morality from a seemingly dark and flawed character just like the ones in Pygmy better than if you read the generic tales of heroes and heroines.
This book is a challenge! Both intellectually and spiritually!
I recommend it to those who are craving on deviating from the "sometimes annoyingly boring" norms of the literary world.
When I was watching Angelina Jolie's movie, SALT, I couldn't help but think of this vintage Palahniuk novel. It left me wondering if the people who wrote Salt's screenplay have used this novel as a pattern. Although Pygmy and the movie's stories have great disparities, you can not deny that there are obvious common grounds as well.
At first, I was a bit disappointed when I read the first few lines from the book. It was written in "Broken English" or as other readers call it "Pygmy English". I browsed through the other pages only to have a confirmation that the whole book was indeed written in the same manner... I thought to myself, "What was Palahniuk thinking?!"...with that and my insatiable curiosity, I pushed to give it a try... a few hours later, I was half way through it.
Every word was intoxicating! There is a common misconception that if a person can not communicate well in English, he is as dumb as a cardboard. But in Pygmy, this way of thinking is greatly challenged and was proven wrong countless of times.
Chuck chose the right writing style for Pygmy. It gives the readers a genuine feel of the narrator's point of view. Not to mention that Agent Number 67 is such an innocently witty and funny character. The novel gives the point of view of the "other guys"... the "bad guys" branded by the society. Because of Agent Number 67's musings, you learn to sympathize with him and his group. The readers will also see how very different sets of people could have so much in common.
(just read the book and find out for yourself. I don't want to spoil anyone with my ranting ;p)
Chuck Palahniuk berated the ridiculous lifestyle most people have through the eyes of this new comer. There is a subtle juxtaposition that speaks so much about the differences between the totalitarian culture where the Agents grew up in and the lifestyle practiced by the majority. Through the eyes of Agent Number 67, Chuck once again attacked consumerism, pop culture, racism, the educational system, religion, sexuality, familial living and much MUCH more. It is so refreshing to read all of it.
I think this novel is a wake up call in disguise care of Mr. Palahniuk's genius mind.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not only because of its "entertainment factor" but mainly because of the messages and moral lessons beyond every "Dispatch". You can actually learn morality from a seemingly dark and flawed character just like the ones in Pygmy better than if you read the generic tales of heroes and heroines.
This book is a challenge! Both intellectually and spiritually!
I recommend it to those who are craving on deviating from the "sometimes annoyingly boring" norms of the literary world.
February 19, 2009
I'm giving this two stars because it's better than Snuff, but only because it's better than Snuff. Like, in hope that ol' Chuck's on an upswing?
Okay so. Did you see that M Night Shyamalan movie The Village? If you're like me, five minutes into that movie you were like, 'clearly these puritanical folks are modern-day back-to-olden-times people! Otherwise why would a director like Mr Shyamalan, who normally pays so much attention to details and specifics, have them all talking like people in the oughties?' And then in the end you felt very smart for having such brilliant insights when you were proved right.
My point is not that I am a brilliant, insightful genius. My point is that, if you are going to have people talk a specific, idiosyncratic way, there had better be a goddam reason for it, y'know? The whole hook of this book is, oh hey, this is fragmented English because English isn't the narrator's first language! Which is a legitimate conceit, except that when the narrator is someone who's mastered the periodic table of elements by the time he's four, there had better be a goddam reason that he can barely grasp another language's syntax. And also, while we're at it, if the book is told in the form of reports back to his home country, why the fuck is he reporting in this language he sucks at? It just doesn't hold up.
Oh, wait, no it holds up in the context of xenophobia!
Which is complicated, right, because here is what the book is about: America is full of jerks (a thesis I'd agree with) and other countries don't always like it (a thesis I'd agree with) and sometimes people from other countries do something about it via terrorism (true). This is all fine fodder for a novel, for sure. Let's even make it science fiction, and instead of having the terrorist be from a real country America has declared war on, let's have him be from a made-up, futuristic coalition of countries- that might cut down on the potential for real-world political insight or commentary, but hey, it's fiction, Chuck can do what he wants. Plus they were made-up countries in Brave New World, weren't they? Oceania was, anyway. And Brave New World worked.
That is a good idea for a book! So Chuck, why did you have to waste it on jokes about vibrators and how foreigners can't speak English right? Oh, because you're Chuck Palahniuk and you pander to an audience of manly, bro-ey duders (and me, I guess) who want titillation, not insight. Who want you to play with but ultimately reinforce their prejudices and snappy judgments.
Of course this is old news to everyone except me. Chuck Palahniuk's reputation is: famous dunderhead, churning out stupid bullshit. I think it's more complicated than that, though! Dude has a giant brain, comes up with good ideas- brutal criticism of America from an oppressed outsider's perspective!- he just always then completely blows them with jokes about that murderous vibrator, or fucking your sister or something. (Whereas when he just lets his brain goes and gets less, like, sensationalistic- see Rant or even Invisible Monsters, although I guess Invisible Monsters was pretty ridiculous- he can be pretty amazing.) When you strip away the vaguely xenophobic conceit, Pygmy is just a bunch of goddam predictably outrageous Chuck Palahniuk hijinx: "Oh, Pygmy thought that he could bake the cake in half the time if he turned the heat twice as high! Oh, Pygmy ate all the chocolates!" Whatever.
It's a shame. I want better from you, Chuck! At this point, I almost wish you hadn't written Rant, because Rant was absolutely brilliant and is one of my favorite books and if I'd never read it I certainly wouldn't keep reading this shit.
Okay so. Did you see that M Night Shyamalan movie The Village? If you're like me, five minutes into that movie you were like, 'clearly these puritanical folks are modern-day back-to-olden-times people! Otherwise why would a director like Mr Shyamalan, who normally pays so much attention to details and specifics, have them all talking like people in the oughties?' And then in the end you felt very smart for having such brilliant insights when you were proved right.
My point is not that I am a brilliant, insightful genius. My point is that, if you are going to have people talk a specific, idiosyncratic way, there had better be a goddam reason for it, y'know? The whole hook of this book is, oh hey, this is fragmented English because English isn't the narrator's first language! Which is a legitimate conceit, except that when the narrator is someone who's mastered the periodic table of elements by the time he's four, there had better be a goddam reason that he can barely grasp another language's syntax. And also, while we're at it, if the book is told in the form of reports back to his home country, why the fuck is he reporting in this language he sucks at? It just doesn't hold up.
Oh, wait, no it holds up in the context of xenophobia!
Which is complicated, right, because here is what the book is about: America is full of jerks (a thesis I'd agree with) and other countries don't always like it (a thesis I'd agree with) and sometimes people from other countries do something about it via terrorism (true). This is all fine fodder for a novel, for sure. Let's even make it science fiction, and instead of having the terrorist be from a real country America has declared war on, let's have him be from a made-up, futuristic coalition of countries- that might cut down on the potential for real-world political insight or commentary, but hey, it's fiction, Chuck can do what he wants. Plus they were made-up countries in Brave New World, weren't they? Oceania was, anyway. And Brave New World worked.
That is a good idea for a book! So Chuck, why did you have to waste it on jokes about vibrators and how foreigners can't speak English right? Oh, because you're Chuck Palahniuk and you pander to an audience of manly, bro-ey duders (and me, I guess) who want titillation, not insight. Who want you to play with but ultimately reinforce their prejudices and snappy judgments.
Of course this is old news to everyone except me. Chuck Palahniuk's reputation is: famous dunderhead, churning out stupid bullshit. I think it's more complicated than that, though! Dude has a giant brain, comes up with good ideas- brutal criticism of America from an oppressed outsider's perspective!- he just always then completely blows them with jokes about that murderous vibrator, or fucking your sister or something. (Whereas when he just lets his brain goes and gets less, like, sensationalistic- see Rant or even Invisible Monsters, although I guess Invisible Monsters was pretty ridiculous- he can be pretty amazing.) When you strip away the vaguely xenophobic conceit, Pygmy is just a bunch of goddam predictably outrageous Chuck Palahniuk hijinx: "Oh, Pygmy thought that he could bake the cake in half the time if he turned the heat twice as high! Oh, Pygmy ate all the chocolates!" Whatever.
It's a shame. I want better from you, Chuck! At this point, I almost wish you hadn't written Rant, because Rant was absolutely brilliant and is one of my favorite books and if I'd never read it I certainly wouldn't keep reading this shit.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
May 20, 2010Honestly, what the FUCK?
I wonder how much money Palahniuk made on sales of this piece of shit from fools like me who wanted to give the author one more chance.
Behold, one sentence (just pages after the ass-rape scene in mangled English in the Wal-Mart bathroom): "Here worship shrine, all male neck must bind around with knotted banner, silk banner knotted at windpipe so dangle two long strands down chest to waistband trouser." I get that the main chartacter is supposed to be a Chinese exchange student... Given that I teach ESL students, I'm also pretty sure the main character could just look up "tie" in the dictionary instead of having this long-winded, confusing mess of words.
Yeah, I can't take 200 pages of this.
I want my money back.
I wonder how much money Palahniuk made on sales of this piece of shit from fools like me who wanted to give the author one more chance.
Behold, one sentence (just pages after the ass-rape scene in mangled English in the Wal-Mart bathroom): "Here worship shrine, all male neck must bind around with knotted banner, silk banner knotted at windpipe so dangle two long strands down chest to waistband trouser." I get that the main chartacter is supposed to be a Chinese exchange student... Given that I teach ESL students, I'm also pretty sure the main character could just look up "tie" in the dictionary instead of having this long-winded, confusing mess of words.
Yeah, I can't take 200 pages of this.
I want my money back.
June 24, 2019
This was a mission to read. Deciphering every sentence was a bit of a pain but it was such an unusual book and you did get used to it during the better chapters.
December 30, 2024
I don’t write reviews.
Best hello to sacred animated corpse. Reader me found laughing fun time in book parading silliness capitalism versus communism wrestling match with love.
Ok, but really I did enjoy this story, which is interesting considering my anger during the first reading, upon release in 2009. I hated it. Pygmy didn’t feel like the Chuck I knew and loved. In retrospect, it does, and I’m better at accepting change. The chorus in this one was probably one of my favourites.
Oddly enough, I think Pygmy grows more than any lead character in a Palahniuk story. Pygmy learns how to love (and no, it’s not his actual sister).
“… this agent now offer announcement. Lips operative me kissed red leaving own black stain behind, this agent say, ‘If able attain love only sister, would this agent never all other love require.’”
He breaks through the rigid indoctrination of his home country training. He decides to live for himself and the people he cares about, instead of the State which stole him from his family and brainwashed him to complete its political goals.
I found this story particularly charming on audiobook. Nick Walther did an amazing job with the writing style and still managed to bring out a depth of humanity in the characters despite the rigid wording. So relax and enjoy, please, esteemed madam funbags.
Book 14 - The Year of Chuck
Best hello to sacred animated corpse. Reader me found laughing fun time in book parading silliness capitalism versus communism wrestling match with love.
Ok, but really I did enjoy this story, which is interesting considering my anger during the first reading, upon release in 2009. I hated it. Pygmy didn’t feel like the Chuck I knew and loved. In retrospect, it does, and I’m better at accepting change. The chorus in this one was probably one of my favourites.
Oddly enough, I think Pygmy grows more than any lead character in a Palahniuk story. Pygmy learns how to love (and no, it’s not his actual sister).
“… this agent now offer announcement. Lips operative me kissed red leaving own black stain behind, this agent say, ‘If able attain love only sister, would this agent never all other love require.’”
He breaks through the rigid indoctrination of his home country training. He decides to live for himself and the people he cares about, instead of the State which stole him from his family and brainwashed him to complete its political goals.
I found this story particularly charming on audiobook. Nick Walther did an amazing job with the writing style and still managed to bring out a depth of humanity in the characters despite the rigid wording. So relax and enjoy, please, esteemed madam funbags.
Book 14 - The Year of Chuck
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 1, 2010
I really liked Pygmy. It’s Palahnuik’s brand of demented satire, only this time it’s aimed at traditional American ideologies. Here, a group of youngsters from a far off communist state are sent to America as exchange students. It doesn’t matter what country they’re from, just that their native land is the pinnacle of everything America isn’t. The kids are drones that have been conditioned almost since birth to carry out the will of their hyper-socialist state. Basically, they’re everything right-wing America is afraid of.
There’s plenty of humor in pre-pubescent communist killing machines infiltrating Middle America and plotting to destroy it. Scenes of the ultra-left country that Pygmy comes from show the flaws of that system, but so-called “mainstream” America is what’s on stage here. Through Pygmy’s eyes we see everything bad about ourselves. Ultra-consumerism, over-indulgence, religious corruption, greed, corporate culture, social gossip, and dysfunctional family dynamics are all on display. In other words, the traditional American ideal is a sham, and Pygmy provides the perspective to see it.
Iconic American rituals are seen on Pygmy’s journey. We see a school dance, a church baptism, trips to Wal-Mart, and a science fair. There’s even a mock U.N. meeting performed by the students that’s particularly twisted. These scenes along with flashbacks to Pygmy’s homeland show that both right and left-leaning systems are flawed and wrong. One is stern and cruel while the other is hypocritical and corrupt. And when these polar opposite cultures interact, they never seem to fully understand one another. The miscommunication and faux pas are funny, and I thought they served to shed more light on the schism of old politics (and how they’re carried on to this day).
And all that isn’t even taking into consideration Palahnuik’s style in Pygmy. He’s written the entire thing in broken English, the way a boy like Pygmy would say things. Some may find it hard to follow, but I didn’t. Mixed in is the usual wordplay you can expect from Palahnuik. He’s taken careful steps to weave lots of thematic phrases into the language, like references to breasts, martial arts, the periodic table, and quotes from various revolutionaries/madmen from the 20th century. The character of Pygmy always finds interesting ways to talk about his situation and the people around him. That character along with the political imagery made this book very entertaining.
There’s plenty of humor in pre-pubescent communist killing machines infiltrating Middle America and plotting to destroy it. Scenes of the ultra-left country that Pygmy comes from show the flaws of that system, but so-called “mainstream” America is what’s on stage here. Through Pygmy’s eyes we see everything bad about ourselves. Ultra-consumerism, over-indulgence, religious corruption, greed, corporate culture, social gossip, and dysfunctional family dynamics are all on display. In other words, the traditional American ideal is a sham, and Pygmy provides the perspective to see it.
Iconic American rituals are seen on Pygmy’s journey. We see a school dance, a church baptism, trips to Wal-Mart, and a science fair. There’s even a mock U.N. meeting performed by the students that’s particularly twisted. These scenes along with flashbacks to Pygmy’s homeland show that both right and left-leaning systems are flawed and wrong. One is stern and cruel while the other is hypocritical and corrupt. And when these polar opposite cultures interact, they never seem to fully understand one another. The miscommunication and faux pas are funny, and I thought they served to shed more light on the schism of old politics (and how they’re carried on to this day).
And all that isn’t even taking into consideration Palahnuik’s style in Pygmy. He’s written the entire thing in broken English, the way a boy like Pygmy would say things. Some may find it hard to follow, but I didn’t. Mixed in is the usual wordplay you can expect from Palahnuik. He’s taken careful steps to weave lots of thematic phrases into the language, like references to breasts, martial arts, the periodic table, and quotes from various revolutionaries/madmen from the 20th century. The character of Pygmy always finds interesting ways to talk about his situation and the people around him. That character along with the political imagery made this book very entertaining.
September 23, 2016
"Pygmy" is not a good book. Unlike some of his other works, I'm not even going to praise him for experimentation, because what he did doesn't feel like all that much of a risk.
You will not find a review of this book that does not address the prose. If you haven't already read the book or an excerpt, please do so before continuing this review.... go ahead, I'll wait.......alright, now we're on the same page on the ridiculous way this is written. It's hard to adapt to because it doesn't feel like convincing English as a Second Language writing, it feels like normal Palahniuk prose with random words cut out. It's not a consistent style like "A Clockwork Orange" that you can adapt to, it's just clipped Palahniuk.
For a guy who seems to flaunt his research it always amazes me the areas where he tends to get lazy in some books. "Choke" didn't understand choking, "Snuff" was scoffed at by most journalist working in the porn industry, and "Haunted" was almost insultingly cartoonish all around. The lack of realism or even acknowledgement of real Chinese culture makes all the flashbacks look like Cold War leftovers from "The Manchurian Candidate".
Most of the characters in "Pygmy" come off as the sort of suburban cliches that ran out of cultural relevance sometime in the mid-80's. Housewives addicted to pills, out of control teenagers, Wal-Mart criticism, it's all glib, off-the-rack social commentary and paper-thin characterizations throughout.
It's one thing to have to parse through challenging text, but finding out the story beneath lacks almost any depth is the gravest insult.
You will not find a review of this book that does not address the prose. If you haven't already read the book or an excerpt, please do so before continuing this review.... go ahead, I'll wait.......alright, now we're on the same page on the ridiculous way this is written. It's hard to adapt to because it doesn't feel like convincing English as a Second Language writing, it feels like normal Palahniuk prose with random words cut out. It's not a consistent style like "A Clockwork Orange" that you can adapt to, it's just clipped Palahniuk.
For a guy who seems to flaunt his research it always amazes me the areas where he tends to get lazy in some books. "Choke" didn't understand choking, "Snuff" was scoffed at by most journalist working in the porn industry, and "Haunted" was almost insultingly cartoonish all around. The lack of realism or even acknowledgement of real Chinese culture makes all the flashbacks look like Cold War leftovers from "The Manchurian Candidate".
Most of the characters in "Pygmy" come off as the sort of suburban cliches that ran out of cultural relevance sometime in the mid-80's. Housewives addicted to pills, out of control teenagers, Wal-Mart criticism, it's all glib, off-the-rack social commentary and paper-thin characterizations throughout.
It's one thing to have to parse through challenging text, but finding out the story beneath lacks almost any depth is the gravest insult.
May 26, 2023
Tell passport man, to be exchange student with host family six month.
Passport man strike paper of book with ink, marked good to enter nation. Slide passport book returned to this agent. Man say, "Welcome to the greatest country on earth." Press button and doors allow way inside United States, accessing target family to harvest.
Pygmy is my first Chuck Palahniuk novel, and follows a thirteen-year-old terrorist known as Operative 67 as he is sent to America by his unnamed authoritarian country as an exchange student to infiltrate the United States and carry out a terrorist attack there. Operative 67 is soon nicknamed "Pygmy" by the people of his new home, and the story mostly focuses on him, a handful of his fellow agents who have also infiltrated American society as exchange students, and the members of the host family he stays with.
Not much really happens in the book and you could say that for the most part it is "plotless". It's a biting satire of many aspects of American life and society, from religion, to mass shootings in schools, to education, to aggressive tendencies, to drug use, etc. In this, the book has quite a lot to say and can be very funny in places. I also really liked some of the characters, mainly Pygmy and his fellow female operative named Magda. To me, it's incredibly impressive that Palahniuk achieves here what Vladimir Nabokov tried and spectacularly failed to do in Lolita, which is to make the reader care about his despicable main character. I found Pygmy and his stiff, broken English writing and speaking to be very endearing, and I loved him and Magda as characters, despite who and what they were.
The main drawback to the book is that it's incredibly difficult to read, as the entire book is written in Pygmy's broken English, which was done intentionally by Palahniuk but still makes the book insufferable at times. I sometimes had to reread certain things Pygmy said three or four times just to try to decipher what he was actually trying to say. Ironically, though this is clearly the book's greatest weakness, I also see it as the book's greatest strength, as without this naive, stiff broken English, Pygmy and Magda wouldn't be as charming and endearing as they are.
There are some things in the book that don't make sense though, with one glaring plot hole in particular. This being: if Pygmy is staying with this family and writing these letters/progress reports for presumably months or even years as he lives with an American family...why does his English never improve? His English is just as awful by the end of the book as it was in the beginning. You'd think that if he was doing immersion like he was (which they say is the best and quickest way to learn a language), you'd see his English slowly improve as the book went on. But this never happened. I found that became more and more obvious as a logical flaw in the book the more pages went by.
Overall, Pygmy is not for everyone. It's fundamentally a pain to read, it pokes a lot of fun at American culture, and it has some brutal scenes that the reader is exposed to early on, like a very graphic rape scene within the first twenty pages. But if you're looking for a book that's occasionally funny, says a lot about American society, and has some surprisingly lovable characters, Pygmy might be worth the effort for you. Though difficult to read in more ways than one, I think it's a flawed but impressive achievement.
3.5 stars
Passport man strike paper of book with ink, marked good to enter nation. Slide passport book returned to this agent. Man say, "Welcome to the greatest country on earth." Press button and doors allow way inside United States, accessing target family to harvest.
Pygmy is my first Chuck Palahniuk novel, and follows a thirteen-year-old terrorist known as Operative 67 as he is sent to America by his unnamed authoritarian country as an exchange student to infiltrate the United States and carry out a terrorist attack there. Operative 67 is soon nicknamed "Pygmy" by the people of his new home, and the story mostly focuses on him, a handful of his fellow agents who have also infiltrated American society as exchange students, and the members of the host family he stays with.
Not much really happens in the book and you could say that for the most part it is "plotless". It's a biting satire of many aspects of American life and society, from religion, to mass shootings in schools, to education, to aggressive tendencies, to drug use, etc. In this, the book has quite a lot to say and can be very funny in places. I also really liked some of the characters, mainly Pygmy and his fellow female operative named Magda. To me, it's incredibly impressive that Palahniuk achieves here what Vladimir Nabokov tried and spectacularly failed to do in Lolita, which is to make the reader care about his despicable main character. I found Pygmy and his stiff, broken English writing and speaking to be very endearing, and I loved him and Magda as characters, despite who and what they were.
The main drawback to the book is that it's incredibly difficult to read, as the entire book is written in Pygmy's broken English, which was done intentionally by Palahniuk but still makes the book insufferable at times. I sometimes had to reread certain things Pygmy said three or four times just to try to decipher what he was actually trying to say. Ironically, though this is clearly the book's greatest weakness, I also see it as the book's greatest strength, as without this naive, stiff broken English, Pygmy and Magda wouldn't be as charming and endearing as they are.
There are some things in the book that don't make sense though, with one glaring plot hole in particular. This being: if Pygmy is staying with this family and writing these letters/progress reports for presumably months or even years as he lives with an American family...why does his English never improve? His English is just as awful by the end of the book as it was in the beginning. You'd think that if he was doing immersion like he was (which they say is the best and quickest way to learn a language), you'd see his English slowly improve as the book went on. But this never happened. I found that became more and more obvious as a logical flaw in the book the more pages went by.
Overall, Pygmy is not for everyone. It's fundamentally a pain to read, it pokes a lot of fun at American culture, and it has some brutal scenes that the reader is exposed to early on, like a very graphic rape scene within the first twenty pages. But if you're looking for a book that's occasionally funny, says a lot about American society, and has some surprisingly lovable characters, Pygmy might be worth the effort for you. Though difficult to read in more ways than one, I think it's a flawed but impressive achievement.
3.5 stars
June 28, 2021
This is the sort of book I expected from Chuck Palahniuk after Invisible Monsters and Choke - one that is darkly funny, but also pushing boundaries both in content and language.
Pygmy is the nickname of a 13 year old 'exchange student' who in reality is a secret agent working with other children to land a huge terrorist blow on America. The story is told in dispatches to his superiors in a very literal non-emotive way. The book looks at, and pokes fun at the American way of life, modern spy craft and also at the way we treat children in the West. This is not a book for those that can be triggered, as this is packed with triggering themes and issues, but nevertheless, this is yet another ground breaking piece of work by Chuck! 8 out of 12.
Pygmy is the nickname of a 13 year old 'exchange student' who in reality is a secret agent working with other children to land a huge terrorist blow on America. The story is told in dispatches to his superiors in a very literal non-emotive way. The book looks at, and pokes fun at the American way of life, modern spy craft and also at the way we treat children in the West. This is not a book for those that can be triggered, as this is packed with triggering themes and issues, but nevertheless, this is yet another ground breaking piece of work by Chuck! 8 out of 12.
June 13, 2010
CLASSIC Chuck! Hard to read (literally, hard to read in the way it was written), gross, yet making great points about consumerism and how it has infected the American Way. Trust me here, you won't like it at first. It takes at LEAST 20 pages to get into the dialect it's written in (if you've read Trainspotting, you'll understand what I'm talking about) and even after that, there were times I had to re-read the same paragraph a few times to get what was going on.
Chuck presents an anti-hero you really do hate at first, until we see why the character is the way he is, and then you feel pity for him, until he does something else fucked up!
Chuck surprised me with the ending, and I won't give it away, other than to say it was different and not nearly as nihilistic as his other books. I would almost dare to say he's gone soft if not for the fact that I read his newer book, Tell-All, before this one.
Short book, but not a 'fast' read, due to the way he wrote it, but highly recommended! You'll never be able to think of cliched martial arts moves again! Punching Panda THRUST!
Chuck presents an anti-hero you really do hate at first, until we see why the character is the way he is, and then you feel pity for him, until he does something else fucked up!
Chuck surprised me with the ending, and I won't give it away, other than to say it was different and not nearly as nihilistic as his other books. I would almost dare to say he's gone soft if not for the fact that I read his newer book, Tell-All, before this one.
Short book, but not a 'fast' read, due to the way he wrote it, but highly recommended! You'll never be able to think of cliched martial arts moves again! Punching Panda THRUST!
May 14, 2009
Finally, I got around to reading and reviewing a recent book. Feels good to be with the times. Though I have to admit that I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the new releases table if I hadn’t been anxiously anticipating this book for the past year. Ol’ Chuck is one of the few authors whose entire bibliography I’ve taken the time to read. He has rarely disappointed me. I was nervous about this novel, because his previous novel Snuff was one of those rare disappointments. Fortunately, Pygmy was mostly satisfying. I’m glad that I picked it up right away.
Pygmy is told by a boy raised in an unnamed totalitarian state, conditioned to hate capitalism and everything else American, and trained as an elite operative in a secret plot to wreak havoc upon the US. Masquerading as a foreign exchange student, Pygmy and his fellow operatives work together to implement Operation Havoc. What follows is an exaggerated commentary on American culture that is by turns hilarious, sickening, and sobering.
I was initially a little turned off of this book by the language. It reads like it was written by a person who has memorized the English dictionary, but who has had no instruction in English grammar. It took a little while to get used to. Here’s an example:
“Only one step with foot, operative me to defile security of degenerate American snake nest. Den of evil. Hive of corruption. Host family of operative me waiting, host arms elbow bent to flutter host fingers in attention of this agent. Host family shouting, arms above with wiggling finger.”
Yes, the entire book is written like that. There were a lot of paragraphs I had to go back and re-read, and that was a little bit frustrating. But after the first couple chapters, the narrator’s dialect is more familiar, and it’s a little easier to get through.
It’s easy to love our misguided narrator, Pygmy. Despite his anti-American, no-mercy training, he has a soft heart. He also has a rather dark sense of humor. He’s not a robot terrorist. He’s very human.
This novel says a lot about the absurdity of American habits and customs, but it says an equal amount about the absurdity of anti-American factions who believe that we’re the devil. Both sides are comically exaggerated, but there is a biting tang of truth contained within. It’s not an anti-American novel (though it seems like a lot of readers have been disappointed by that). It skirts being actual social commentary, and ends up being…well…just a novel. And I am happy with that. If I want blistering social commentary, I’ll pick up the opinion page of my local paper.
It took me until the very end (like, seriously, the very last page) to figure out if I liked Pygmy or not. I couldn’t tell how Palahniuk would choose to end things, and it almost seemed like it was a snap decision on his part. I won’t say how it ends, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an alternate final page floating around in Chuck’s personal notes. Up until that point, it seemed like things could go either way. I was satisfied with the ending, though, and it swung my Enjoy-O-Meter slightly into the Enjoyment zone.
I do think that Pygmy falls short of the high bar set by some of Palahniuk’s earlier work. I think he would have a hard time topping Lullaby or Choke. While the broken English format was amusing, it was unnecessary and took away from the story. That was my main complaint. But Pygmy wasn’t bad, and I’m not sorry I picked it up. Couldn’t say the same for Snuff.
Pygmy is told by a boy raised in an unnamed totalitarian state, conditioned to hate capitalism and everything else American, and trained as an elite operative in a secret plot to wreak havoc upon the US. Masquerading as a foreign exchange student, Pygmy and his fellow operatives work together to implement Operation Havoc. What follows is an exaggerated commentary on American culture that is by turns hilarious, sickening, and sobering.
I was initially a little turned off of this book by the language. It reads like it was written by a person who has memorized the English dictionary, but who has had no instruction in English grammar. It took a little while to get used to. Here’s an example:
“Only one step with foot, operative me to defile security of degenerate American snake nest. Den of evil. Hive of corruption. Host family of operative me waiting, host arms elbow bent to flutter host fingers in attention of this agent. Host family shouting, arms above with wiggling finger.”
Yes, the entire book is written like that. There were a lot of paragraphs I had to go back and re-read, and that was a little bit frustrating. But after the first couple chapters, the narrator’s dialect is more familiar, and it’s a little easier to get through.
It’s easy to love our misguided narrator, Pygmy. Despite his anti-American, no-mercy training, he has a soft heart. He also has a rather dark sense of humor. He’s not a robot terrorist. He’s very human.
This novel says a lot about the absurdity of American habits and customs, but it says an equal amount about the absurdity of anti-American factions who believe that we’re the devil. Both sides are comically exaggerated, but there is a biting tang of truth contained within. It’s not an anti-American novel (though it seems like a lot of readers have been disappointed by that). It skirts being actual social commentary, and ends up being…well…just a novel. And I am happy with that. If I want blistering social commentary, I’ll pick up the opinion page of my local paper.
It took me until the very end (like, seriously, the very last page) to figure out if I liked Pygmy or not. I couldn’t tell how Palahniuk would choose to end things, and it almost seemed like it was a snap decision on his part. I won’t say how it ends, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an alternate final page floating around in Chuck’s personal notes. Up until that point, it seemed like things could go either way. I was satisfied with the ending, though, and it swung my Enjoy-O-Meter slightly into the Enjoyment zone.
I do think that Pygmy falls short of the high bar set by some of Palahniuk’s earlier work. I think he would have a hard time topping Lullaby or Choke. While the broken English format was amusing, it was unnecessary and took away from the story. That was my main complaint. But Pygmy wasn’t bad, and I’m not sorry I picked it up. Couldn’t say the same for Snuff.
July 25, 2017
I just started this book yesterday, and I can already tell that I'm going to despise it. The broken English is absolutely horrible. I read for pleasure, not to spend ten minutes a page trying to figure out what the hell is being said and trying to follow along.
Further review to come once I've finished it. Providing that actually /do/ finish it.
(Update)
I could not finish this book, and I do NOT just put books down. It annoyed me so badly that I closed it and returned it to the library before it angered me further. SO disappointed in you, Palahniuk.
Further review to come once I've finished it. Providing that actually /do/ finish it.
(Update)
I could not finish this book, and I do NOT just put books down. It annoyed me so badly that I closed it and returned it to the library before it angered me further. SO disappointed in you, Palahniuk.
May 4, 2009
Do I dare say that Chuck Palahniuk is back? I mean, not quite "Fight Club" back, or "Choke" back. But at least "Diary" back, and that was the novel that got me to join Team Palahniuk in the first place, so it's a start. Especially after the grueling, repetitious, obsessive-compulsive, list-of-porn-movie-titles disaster that was "Snuff" [which I ranked among the Top 3 worst novels I read in 2008:].
"Pygmy" is fantastic social sattire: Portrait of suburban Americana, through the lens of a foreign exchange student, sent here with a teen-aged posse of other foreign exchange students to perform the opaque "Operation Havoc." Pygmy settles in with a typical American family: chicken-faced mom, Viagra-breath dad, pig dog brother and cat-like sister. They welcome his visit with the gift of a too-large Jesus T'shirt, a promise to fatten him up, and a grand claim:
"We'll make an American out of you, or swear to our Lord almighty God, we're gonna die trying."
A few minutes later, Pygmy is raping the school bully in the "spa" [read: men's bathroom] at Wal-Mart.
The story is told in 36 dispatches that range from the progression of "Operation Havoc" within the scope of, say, church, junior swing choir, high school dances, or just hanging out with cat-sister as she solder's her science fair project [actually, a vibrator that has an alarm and the ability to play music:].
Pygmy goes from maligned freak show, to hometown hero when he kills a school shooter at a Model United Nations event in the school gym. He becomes the first-pick for dodgeball in gym class, and a science fair wizard. And when he is attacked by his fellow operatives, who resent his public profile, the high school girls think the attack is an elaborate collection of new dance moves and make a protective circle around him.
Pygmy occasionally includes, for official record, how he came to be this young terrorist. A process that included getting 100 percent on a test, being told his family was dead, learning American slang, and learning combat techniques such as "flying giant stork death kick." Some of these maneuvers are illustrated on the back of the book by faceless, red terrorists, in a way that is reminiscent of yoga manuals from the mid-1980s.
The most impressive thing is that this story is told in a language that Palahniuk seemingly invented. Stilted, literal, anti-intuitive collections of nouns and verbs and adjectives. These are sometimes confusing, but always worth the effort of decoding. [The price of decoding is that you may find yourself talking to yourself in this language whenever you set the book aside.:]
"For official record, have not yet violated secure entry host sister vagina. More easy this agent able violate secure American national border."
I can't think of another writer who could make this novel work, the consistency of the stilted language alone would be exhausting. But I also can't think of another writer who would try.
"Pygmy" is fantastic social sattire: Portrait of suburban Americana, through the lens of a foreign exchange student, sent here with a teen-aged posse of other foreign exchange students to perform the opaque "Operation Havoc." Pygmy settles in with a typical American family: chicken-faced mom, Viagra-breath dad, pig dog brother and cat-like sister. They welcome his visit with the gift of a too-large Jesus T'shirt, a promise to fatten him up, and a grand claim:
"We'll make an American out of you, or swear to our Lord almighty God, we're gonna die trying."
A few minutes later, Pygmy is raping the school bully in the "spa" [read: men's bathroom] at Wal-Mart.
The story is told in 36 dispatches that range from the progression of "Operation Havoc" within the scope of, say, church, junior swing choir, high school dances, or just hanging out with cat-sister as she solder's her science fair project [actually, a vibrator that has an alarm and the ability to play music:].
Pygmy goes from maligned freak show, to hometown hero when he kills a school shooter at a Model United Nations event in the school gym. He becomes the first-pick for dodgeball in gym class, and a science fair wizard. And when he is attacked by his fellow operatives, who resent his public profile, the high school girls think the attack is an elaborate collection of new dance moves and make a protective circle around him.
Pygmy occasionally includes, for official record, how he came to be this young terrorist. A process that included getting 100 percent on a test, being told his family was dead, learning American slang, and learning combat techniques such as "flying giant stork death kick." Some of these maneuvers are illustrated on the back of the book by faceless, red terrorists, in a way that is reminiscent of yoga manuals from the mid-1980s.
The most impressive thing is that this story is told in a language that Palahniuk seemingly invented. Stilted, literal, anti-intuitive collections of nouns and verbs and adjectives. These are sometimes confusing, but always worth the effort of decoding. [The price of decoding is that you may find yourself talking to yourself in this language whenever you set the book aside.:]
"For official record, have not yet violated secure entry host sister vagina. More easy this agent able violate secure American national border."
I can't think of another writer who could make this novel work, the consistency of the stilted language alone would be exhausting. But I also can't think of another writer who would try.
Read
August 30, 2016I legit read 50 pages of this and gave up. I'm not wasting my time on this shit. I don't want to have decipher every fucking sentence in the entire fucking book. No.
May 25, 2009
Let my biases ring clear: I typically love Chuck Palahniuk. No single author has influenced my love of reading and writing more than Chuck has over his career.
"Pygmy", as the book jacket says, is a romance and a comedy (satire would be closer to the truth). It is by far the most obviously humorous of his books (the running joke about Colonel Sanders made me chuckle several times). It's at once a biting send-up of American values (the observations about public education were absolutely priceless) as well as a well-balanced satire of totalitarian socialist states. In the end we find out that Americans are not so much actively evil as just dumb and unaware. It's an interesting conceit to see the world through the eyes of a narrator you initially loathe but then come to understand and even pity. That alone completely reversed my early condemnation of the book as trite, unimaginative drivel. In Chuck's hands this book works and I don't think anyone else could do it so well.
That being said, I saw the ending coming a mile away. But I don't see how I couldn't have.
Pygmy isn't the best thing he's written or the worst. I feel like he made similar points that resonated with me much more in Fight Club and Survivor. And after the early promise of Choke, Lullaby and Diary it seems he's drifted into a strange period (even by Palahniuk standards) and I'm not sure it's totally for the best. For example, I have very little desire to read "Snuff", though I probably will just because it's Chuck.
I guess there's a reason you don't review books based on the first thirty pages. Probably not the book to pick up if you've never read Chuck before. It's difficult to build momentum, given the broken English of the narrator. As usual, Chuck puts in an early shock and, as per my early thoughts on the book (below) it comes off as sort of hackish and attention-seeking. If you give up after thirty pages you'll probably feel about the same as I did at first, but press on and you might be surprised at how much the book redeems itself and its narrator.
These are some initial thoughts on the book: So far this resembles something a talented high school student might turn in for a creative writing assignment simply to freak out the instructor.
More initial thoughts: Less than twenty pages in and there's already been blood, crap and semen as well as an anal rape. The gross-outs are starting to wear thin and even become, gasp, predictable in his hands. It's like he's trying oh so hard to offend me, again like a teenager.
"Pygmy", as the book jacket says, is a romance and a comedy (satire would be closer to the truth). It is by far the most obviously humorous of his books (the running joke about Colonel Sanders made me chuckle several times). It's at once a biting send-up of American values (the observations about public education were absolutely priceless) as well as a well-balanced satire of totalitarian socialist states. In the end we find out that Americans are not so much actively evil as just dumb and unaware. It's an interesting conceit to see the world through the eyes of a narrator you initially loathe but then come to understand and even pity. That alone completely reversed my early condemnation of the book as trite, unimaginative drivel. In Chuck's hands this book works and I don't think anyone else could do it so well.
That being said, I saw the ending coming a mile away. But I don't see how I couldn't have.
Pygmy isn't the best thing he's written or the worst. I feel like he made similar points that resonated with me much more in Fight Club and Survivor. And after the early promise of Choke, Lullaby and Diary it seems he's drifted into a strange period (even by Palahniuk standards) and I'm not sure it's totally for the best. For example, I have very little desire to read "Snuff", though I probably will just because it's Chuck.
I guess there's a reason you don't review books based on the first thirty pages. Probably not the book to pick up if you've never read Chuck before. It's difficult to build momentum, given the broken English of the narrator. As usual, Chuck puts in an early shock and, as per my early thoughts on the book (below) it comes off as sort of hackish and attention-seeking. If you give up after thirty pages you'll probably feel about the same as I did at first, but press on and you might be surprised at how much the book redeems itself and its narrator.
These are some initial thoughts on the book: So far this resembles something a talented high school student might turn in for a creative writing assignment simply to freak out the instructor.
More initial thoughts: Less than twenty pages in and there's already been blood, crap and semen as well as an anal rape. The gross-outs are starting to wear thin and even become, gasp, predictable in his hands. It's like he's trying oh so hard to offend me, again like a teenager.
January 28, 2015
The Vapidity Wars: 1,188 Words and Running
This was originally a long rant about not just Palahniuk but also Bret Easton Ellis, Rick Moody, and Jonathan Franzen, who I feel have problems similar to Palahniuk's, although I'd take Moody and Franzen over Palahniuk and Ellis. I saved the whole rant in Word and plan to work it into a much more elaborate and less Palahniuk-focused essay, because while I really wanted to publish the whole thing here, this review is long enough even without the outside authors.
The basic idea of this book: young terrorist crashes into America as a mole, discovers American teenagers are disgustingly vapid, does some other shit, a parade happens, dildos, child rape as an object of hilarious uproariousness, childish cynicism, &c., &c., everybody laughs and learns absolutely nothing (butthat'sthepointyouguys) and comes home and concludes that they were just had. Whaaaaaaat a crock of shit. Now get ready for my signature literary analysis weenieism. Try your best not to beat me up and take my lunch money and break my glasses. My glasses look quite modern, I'll have you know.
I guess the slippery thing about Palahniuk is that what he wants to do looks decently high-concept pre-analysis. Palahniuk's whole routine is built around this famous sense of "well sure, my books are vapid, my characters are empty spiteful petty people with an absurd sense of entitlement and no sense of proportion, but that's only because your average American is the EXACT SAME WAY. If my books suck, what you should really be concerned about is the fact that you suck." I mean, surely it's at least a little sophisticated to blast a reader's expectations right back in their face, isn't it? To write in anticipation of receiving a certain reaction, and not just that but to write an argument for the reaction into your text, isn't there some sort of art or whatever in that? I probably would've made that argument two years ago, although I wouldn't have worded it quite that way, but I certainly remember having thoughts along those lines, i.e. "this bit of stupidity is actually brilliant social commentary, wotta genius, etc., etc." And so imagine my excitement when I, in full thrall of what I perceived as Palahniuk's powers, picked up his satire on the War on Terror! No way to lose, right? Erm, not exactly. We can run these circles of "it's vapid because we're vapid" all the livelong day, but all Pygmy does is reveal just how limited Palahniuk's abilities as a novelist really are, because to my way of seeing things, vapidity with an artistic agenda behind it is still fucking vapidity, and Pygmy fails to really say anything we don't already know about this War.
Which means that Palahniuk just plain isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Yes, he's trying to be smart and has a distinctive artistic agenda; what this man does is, in its own weird way, art, or at least closer to "art" than it is "entertainment," but it isn't good art. I can sometimes find the exaggerated grotesqueness of Palahniuk's humor entertaining - I'll admit I still get a few chuckles off of Choke's more absurd sexual gags, because my sense of humor pretty much stopped developing when I hit twelve - and if he was comfortable with being just this dark humorist who just told these fucked-up stories about fucked-up people, I'll admit: a lot of his books would probably sit safely in my three to four star range. BUT, but but but, Palahniuk so frequently references being influenced by writers like DeLillo and Wallace and Hempell, whose work is not only art but fucking good art (I mean, I praise the first two authors to high heaven on a daily basis, so I'll change it up and ask: have you read Hempell? The novella at the heart of Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories is a reminder of why I'm alive) and therefore probably sees himself as an inheritor of their legacy, isn't supposed to be "just" a funny author or "just" a guy whose books you read and have a good laugh at and forget about until the next one comes out, like that Christopher Moore guy who I see all over the place these days. Except we're supposed to see him as an important prophet of the Vapid Age.
This is all a very long-winded and essayistic that way of saying that Chuck Palahniuk isn't saying anything about the War on Terror that an angry teenager couldn't tell you, i.e. yes okay the Islamic terrorists are regularly doing unacceptable things but I mean look at US idiots! I feel this is in a way true, that both sides of the War on Terror debate are wrong, but here's the deal: the specific wrongdoings that Palahniuk points out within this book just ain't that daring and smack to me of intellectual subterfuge. "America really is this morally bankrupt nation because our children are running wild in the street with their sex and their drugs and their loud music, a ha ha ha ha I've got you all beat" just isn't a patch on, for instance, "America really is this morally bankrupt nation because we've engineered and instigated two centuries of economic exploitation." And for all he talks about how this stuff is supposed to suck, look how proud he seems of the orgy scenes Pygmy reports on! Look how much sickening writhing detail he goes into with his report on this sex and drugs-type insanity! Which leads me to believe that the "it sucks because we suck" thing that people put around Palahniuk is a subterfuge in and of itself, that he might to some degree actually see this "deliberately inane" material of his as brilliant and insightful and that the deliberate inanity is an after-the-fact justification tacked on by his more rabid fans which Palahniuk sure isn't doing much to discourage.
But you don't get to do that. That's the bottom line of this review. You don't get to say "well, you think my commentary on the War on Terror is stupid? Look at the War on Terror itself, it's pretty dumb." Because then you yourself get stuck in your own ridiculous labyrinth of vapidity, you yourself end up the butt of your own clever-clever jokes, you yourself look just as vapid as the vapid people and mindsets you've set out to criticize, and maybe other readers will give this guy points because it's ambiguous as to whether or not he chose the vapidity for himself, but I for one do not. Yes, setting out to play both sides of an issue and make it unclear as to where you stand, like Pynchon does with irony and paranoia, is interesting in theory, but I have my limits, and when it comes to the Vapidity Wars, you're either vapid and trying to pretend you're not, or you're no better than the "get-a-load-of-this-guy cam" from Wayne's World, which means you may be pretty smart but you're also spiteful and petty, so either way you're not in a good position. Either way, you lose.
This was originally a long rant about not just Palahniuk but also Bret Easton Ellis, Rick Moody, and Jonathan Franzen, who I feel have problems similar to Palahniuk's, although I'd take Moody and Franzen over Palahniuk and Ellis. I saved the whole rant in Word and plan to work it into a much more elaborate and less Palahniuk-focused essay, because while I really wanted to publish the whole thing here, this review is long enough even without the outside authors.
The basic idea of this book: young terrorist crashes into America as a mole, discovers American teenagers are disgustingly vapid, does some other shit, a parade happens, dildos, child rape as an object of hilarious uproariousness, childish cynicism, &c., &c., everybody laughs and learns absolutely nothing (butthat'sthepointyouguys) and comes home and concludes that they were just had. Whaaaaaaat a crock of shit. Now get ready for my signature literary analysis weenieism. Try your best not to beat me up and take my lunch money and break my glasses. My glasses look quite modern, I'll have you know.
I guess the slippery thing about Palahniuk is that what he wants to do looks decently high-concept pre-analysis. Palahniuk's whole routine is built around this famous sense of "well sure, my books are vapid, my characters are empty spiteful petty people with an absurd sense of entitlement and no sense of proportion, but that's only because your average American is the EXACT SAME WAY. If my books suck, what you should really be concerned about is the fact that you suck." I mean, surely it's at least a little sophisticated to blast a reader's expectations right back in their face, isn't it? To write in anticipation of receiving a certain reaction, and not just that but to write an argument for the reaction into your text, isn't there some sort of art or whatever in that? I probably would've made that argument two years ago, although I wouldn't have worded it quite that way, but I certainly remember having thoughts along those lines, i.e. "this bit of stupidity is actually brilliant social commentary, wotta genius, etc., etc." And so imagine my excitement when I, in full thrall of what I perceived as Palahniuk's powers, picked up his satire on the War on Terror! No way to lose, right? Erm, not exactly. We can run these circles of "it's vapid because we're vapid" all the livelong day, but all Pygmy does is reveal just how limited Palahniuk's abilities as a novelist really are, because to my way of seeing things, vapidity with an artistic agenda behind it is still fucking vapidity, and Pygmy fails to really say anything we don't already know about this War.
Which means that Palahniuk just plain isn't as smart as he thinks he is. Yes, he's trying to be smart and has a distinctive artistic agenda; what this man does is, in its own weird way, art, or at least closer to "art" than it is "entertainment," but it isn't good art. I can sometimes find the exaggerated grotesqueness of Palahniuk's humor entertaining - I'll admit I still get a few chuckles off of Choke's more absurd sexual gags, because my sense of humor pretty much stopped developing when I hit twelve - and if he was comfortable with being just this dark humorist who just told these fucked-up stories about fucked-up people, I'll admit: a lot of his books would probably sit safely in my three to four star range. BUT, but but but, Palahniuk so frequently references being influenced by writers like DeLillo and Wallace and Hempell, whose work is not only art but fucking good art (I mean, I praise the first two authors to high heaven on a daily basis, so I'll change it up and ask: have you read Hempell? The novella at the heart of Tumble Home: A Novella and Short Stories is a reminder of why I'm alive) and therefore probably sees himself as an inheritor of their legacy, isn't supposed to be "just" a funny author or "just" a guy whose books you read and have a good laugh at and forget about until the next one comes out, like that Christopher Moore guy who I see all over the place these days. Except we're supposed to see him as an important prophet of the Vapid Age.
This is all a very long-winded and essayistic that way of saying that Chuck Palahniuk isn't saying anything about the War on Terror that an angry teenager couldn't tell you, i.e. yes okay the Islamic terrorists are regularly doing unacceptable things but I mean look at US idiots! I feel this is in a way true, that both sides of the War on Terror debate are wrong, but here's the deal: the specific wrongdoings that Palahniuk points out within this book just ain't that daring and smack to me of intellectual subterfuge. "America really is this morally bankrupt nation because our children are running wild in the street with their sex and their drugs and their loud music, a ha ha ha ha I've got you all beat" just isn't a patch on, for instance, "America really is this morally bankrupt nation because we've engineered and instigated two centuries of economic exploitation." And for all he talks about how this stuff is supposed to suck, look how proud he seems of the orgy scenes Pygmy reports on! Look how much sickening writhing detail he goes into with his report on this sex and drugs-type insanity! Which leads me to believe that the "it sucks because we suck" thing that people put around Palahniuk is a subterfuge in and of itself, that he might to some degree actually see this "deliberately inane" material of his as brilliant and insightful and that the deliberate inanity is an after-the-fact justification tacked on by his more rabid fans which Palahniuk sure isn't doing much to discourage.
But you don't get to do that. That's the bottom line of this review. You don't get to say "well, you think my commentary on the War on Terror is stupid? Look at the War on Terror itself, it's pretty dumb." Because then you yourself get stuck in your own ridiculous labyrinth of vapidity, you yourself end up the butt of your own clever-clever jokes, you yourself look just as vapid as the vapid people and mindsets you've set out to criticize, and maybe other readers will give this guy points because it's ambiguous as to whether or not he chose the vapidity for himself, but I for one do not. Yes, setting out to play both sides of an issue and make it unclear as to where you stand, like Pynchon does with irony and paranoia, is interesting in theory, but I have my limits, and when it comes to the Vapidity Wars, you're either vapid and trying to pretend you're not, or you're no better than the "get-a-load-of-this-guy cam" from Wayne's World, which means you may be pretty smart but you're also spiteful and petty, so either way you're not in a good position. Either way, you lose.
September 24, 2020
TW: rape, sexual assault, racial slurs, violence
Obviously from the trigger warnings this is a highly uncomfortable book. I have not read Palahniuk's other books yet however I knew to expect dark humor and controversial writing. That doesn't mean I was ready or that I won't feel uncomfortable because I very much did. I should and do recognize that Pygmy (the word and everything the character represented) is alot directed at me but I'm still mulling it over because this is satire. That doesn't mean satire can't be racist but it's a tool to send a message and in this message, this whole book, Palahniuk kind of went at everyone in that I think he was portraying an extreme reflection of the world today. Any person alive can find something that is not ok to them in here. Pygmy is a terrorist with an outrageous mission, you can fully see the grooming done to him from his country but everything he observes about America, it's not wrong either. Palahniuk honestly portrayed every side. The family that took in Pygmy? They were hella racist. When they publicly announced adopting Pygmy they called him a filthy orphan. The daughter is the average wholly ignorant teen in America. This isn't to say, the racism to Asians is ok because he was discriminating everyone, if you're offended that's still valid. Pygmy, is probably what Trump and his people view of the Chinese right now. So I'm uncomfortable, but is this terrible as a story or book? I'm not so sure. And I can't imagine this was easy to write either.
Obviously from the trigger warnings this is a highly uncomfortable book. I have not read Palahniuk's other books yet however I knew to expect dark humor and controversial writing. That doesn't mean I was ready or that I won't feel uncomfortable because I very much did. I should and do recognize that Pygmy (the word and everything the character represented) is alot directed at me but I'm still mulling it over because this is satire. That doesn't mean satire can't be racist but it's a tool to send a message and in this message, this whole book, Palahniuk kind of went at everyone in that I think he was portraying an extreme reflection of the world today. Any person alive can find something that is not ok to them in here. Pygmy is a terrorist with an outrageous mission, you can fully see the grooming done to him from his country but everything he observes about America, it's not wrong either. Palahniuk honestly portrayed every side. The family that took in Pygmy? They were hella racist. When they publicly announced adopting Pygmy they called him a filthy orphan. The daughter is the average wholly ignorant teen in America. This isn't to say, the racism to Asians is ok because he was discriminating everyone, if you're offended that's still valid. Pygmy, is probably what Trump and his people view of the Chinese right now. So I'm uncomfortable, but is this terrible as a story or book? I'm not so sure. And I can't imagine this was easy to write either.
June 6, 2012
I tried really hard to like this book, but I could not bring myself to give more than a half smile every now and then. I have to comment on the prose. It makes the reading incredibly difficult. Usually, when the writing is strange (A Clockwork Orange) it’s consistent and one gets used to it after a while. However, with Pygmy I felt that fluid reading of the book was hindered by the writing and I was struggling to understand passages. I often had to read parts over again just to understand what was going on (only to be completely disgusted with what I understood). Despite the attempt to make the narration broken and mind-on-paper-absence-of-any-proper-grammar, it came across as forced and I have to commend Palahniuk for writing like that for 200 pages but it was really awful for me as a reader. After getting past the crazy writing, I found the plot to be lacking and vapid. It had so much potential-foreign kids brought up to hate America and trained to bring its destruction-but Palahniuk failed to move it along. His attempt to be crude but insightful about the corrupt American middle class was-if I’m being frank- stupid and honestly insulting. Oooo, promiscuous middle school girls and corrupt pastors, wow congrats you’re so revolutionary. Honestly, I expected much better. I’m disappointed in Palahniuk and this falls VERY short from the high expectations I had after reading Fight Club. Don’t waste your time on this book.
July 31, 2012
I had completely forgotten about this book until I found it while packing up all my books yesterday. A couple years ago I was put on to Palahniuk's books and enjoyed Fight Club, Snuff and Choke. Then I heard he had a new book out and thought I'd give it a try.
What a waste of money. The writing style was horrible, I just couldn't get into it at all. I gave up after a few chapters and will not ever pick it up again. It turned me off Palahniuk to the point that I've never read another of his books.
What a waste of money. The writing style was horrible, I just couldn't get into it at all. I gave up after a few chapters and will not ever pick it up again. It turned me off Palahniuk to the point that I've never read another of his books.
August 8, 2016
This book was poop .... That being said it was hard to read the writing style was ridiculous... Chuck will always have a place in my heart for writing fight club but his other works have been disappointments altogether
October 2, 2013
If you came here looking for the next Fight Club then walk away now.
February 28, 2019
2.5/5
Quality of writing: 3
Plot development: 3
Pace: 2
Characters: 3
Enjoyability: 3
Ease of reading: 1
So... Ummmm...
Everyone probably knows that I love Chuck Palahniuk. It pains me to give this book such a low rating, but, dammit, it's not good.
Pygmy has some good elements but overall it just falls apart. It's a satire and an attack on American culture. The writing stile is unique (why I love Palahniuk - he's not afraid to experiment) but it's also pretty unreadable. I tried reading it, then switched to audio book because I had to reread every page.
It's really hard to review this book because my brain has been turned to mush and I just can't make a coherent thought. What I can say - this is by far the worst Chuck Palahniuk book I've read.
The End.
Quality of writing: 3
Plot development: 3
Pace: 2
Characters: 3
Enjoyability: 3
Ease of reading: 1
So... Ummmm...
Everyone probably knows that I love Chuck Palahniuk. It pains me to give this book such a low rating, but, dammit, it's not good.
Pygmy has some good elements but overall it just falls apart. It's a satire and an attack on American culture. The writing stile is unique (why I love Palahniuk - he's not afraid to experiment) but it's also pretty unreadable. I tried reading it, then switched to audio book because I had to reread every page.
It's really hard to review this book because my brain has been turned to mush and I just can't make a coherent thought. What I can say - this is by far the worst Chuck Palahniuk book I've read.
The End.
December 31, 2017
This book was such a huge disappointment for me. I adore Chuck Palahniuk and his wonderfully twisted stories but this one was just not for me. From the very beginning it failed to capture my interest and I really struggled to keep with it until the end.
I think the main reason I struggled with it so much is the way it’s written. It’s done in such a broken English that sometimes I had absolutely no clue what was going on and would have to reread a page multiple times to make sense of it. Not really my idea of an enjoyable read.
The idea of the story was interesting but the execution just fell flat for me. I’m sure it would have been infinitely better if it had just been written normally and didn’t hurt my brain to read.
I think the main reason I struggled with it so much is the way it’s written. It’s done in such a broken English that sometimes I had absolutely no clue what was going on and would have to reread a page multiple times to make sense of it. Not really my idea of an enjoyable read.
The idea of the story was interesting but the execution just fell flat for me. I’m sure it would have been infinitely better if it had just been written normally and didn’t hurt my brain to read.
October 6, 2023
Title in English: Pygmy.
Author: Chuck Palahniuk.
Lots and lots of trigger warnings in here, along with the intentionally corrupted English to represent a speech of a foreigner (but how does he win a spelling contest then?). Easy to read though.
P.S. If you want to know how texts created by AI look, try 'Pygmy.'
Author: Chuck Palahniuk.
Lots and lots of trigger warnings in here, along with the intentionally corrupted English to represent a speech of a foreigner (but how does he win a spelling contest then?). Easy to read though.
P.S. If you want to know how texts created by AI look, try 'Pygmy.'
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