Εγώ θέλω να με έχουν ανάγκη.
Εγώ θέλω να είμαι απαραίτητος
Κάποιον που να είναι εθισμένος σε μένα. Έναν αμοιβαίο εθισμό.

Σήμερα όλος ο κόσμος έχει παραισθήσεις.

Πέφτουν πέτρες και το έδαφος σείεται.
Το μαρτύριο του Αγίου Εγώ.

Μπορούμε να περάσουμε τη ζωή μας ολόκληρη αφήνοντας τον κόσμο να μας υπαγορεύει ποιοι είμαστε. Τρελοί ή λογικοί. Άγιοι ή σεξομανεις. Ήρωες ή θύματα.

Ή μπορούμε να αποφασίζουμε μόνοι μας. Οι παλαβοί του καιρού μας που προσπαθούμε να εδραιώσουμε τη δική μας εναλλακτική πραγματικότητα.

Non ho più l’età per questo genere!

AL RITMO DI ALLARMI ANTINCENDIO


L’omonimo film è del 2008 diretto da Clark Gregg.

Il mio primo incontro con la letteratura di Palahniuk, autore che mi pare appartenere al circolo che ha come massima la legge di Murphy: se qualcosa può andare storto, lo farà.
Il nostro Chuck aggiunge – o, aggiungerebbe – e poi andrà anche peggio.
Perché a quanto si dice chi dimentica il passato è condannato a riviverlo.

Come estetica adotta quella che io definirei del vomito, racchiudendo con questo termine le varie secrezioni umane, gli odori più disgustosi, rifiuti spazzatura e compagnia bella.
E come registro un realismo esasperato e sopra le righe che credo si potrebbe definire grottesco, un aspetto del comico col quale non sono sicuro di trovarmi a mio agio.


Il protagonista da adulto è il sempre bravo Sam Rockwell.

La mamma del ragazzino – che si capisce presto essere lo stesso Steve, e cioè l’io narrante, ma quando era marmocchio – è italiana emigrata negli States per studiare all’università. Credevo si trattasse di medicina, ma poi viene fuori che è laureata in lettere (medicina è quella che invece studia Steve per un anno o due ). Come e perché abbia manifestato presto segni lampanti di delirio schizofrenico, di “bordello del subconscio” non è dato sapere. Certo è che il ragazzino si ritrova una mamma ben mattacchiona, incasinata e incasinatrice: dentro e fuori di prigione, iper-femminista e rivoluzionaria piena di velleità. Ma, soprattutto, schizzata.
Come altrettanto ignoto resta l’altro genitore, il padre. Potrebbe addirittura trattarsi di un caso di inseminazione simil miracolo… Infatti, Steve parla spesso di Gesù, lo prende a esempio e modello (da non seguire, o da farlo in base a interpretazioni alquanto personali).


Ida Mancini, la mamma, è interpretata dalla geniale Anjelica Huston.

La genitrice ha soli 62 anni, ma giace nel letto di una clinica privata: tra possibile Alzheimer, vuoti di memoria, deliri, e stato fisico simile allo scheletro, non sembra destinata a rialzarsi. Steve la va a trovare, ma non sembra volerla curare e far guarire. Forse la sua vita sarebbe migliore e più leggera se lei togliesse il disturbo.
In effetti il buon figliolo è costretto a raggranellare ogni mese almeno tremila dollari per pagare il luogo di degenza di Ida, sua madre.
È per questo che – oltre al lavoro da comparsa in un museo vivente della storia americana, dove gli impiegati, a paga da sopravvivenza (sei dollari l’ora) vestono costumi del 1734 e mettono in scena la vita della colonia americana di quell’epoca – Steve ha escogitato un sistema più unico che raro indicato dal titolo: andare in un ristorante, mangiare fingendo abilmente di soffocare, aspettare che qualcuno dei clienti o camerieri o gestori o cuochi si commuova e intervenga praticandogli la manovra di Heimlich, in pratica lo salvi. Da qui nasce automatico un legame di affetto tra salvatore e salvato, con il primo destinato a diventare protettore e benefattore del secondo. Steve ne accumula parecchi di salvatori, spuntano fuori nei momenti più inaspettati. E così intasca assegni e contanti che vanno a pagare la clinica di sua mamma.

Per completare il quadro occorre notare che Steve è sesso-dipendente (con corredo di deviazione sessuale) e i suoi frequenti incontri simil-erotici con numerose rappresentanti del sesso femminile sembrano veri, più che immaginati.


Sul bus in abito da lavoro (stile 1734).

E fin qui si potrebbe forse credere che Choke – Soffocare non mi sia piaciuto, che io sia rimasto deluso. Invece così non è stato.
Palahniuk racconta la grande sterminata America dei reietti, dei rifiuti umani, degli emarginati, dei non integrati, di quelli respinti ed espulsi dal sogno americano, dalla corsa all’accumulo, dalla gara esistenziale chiamata ambizione.

Il punto, secondo me, è che l’America è così. Cominci con una sega e ti ritrovi a fare le orge. Ti fumi una canna e finisci a farti le pere. La nostra è la cultura del “più”: più grande, più bello, più forte, più veloce. La parola d’ordine è: progresso. In America se non hai una dipendenza sempre nuova e migliore di quella di prima sei un fallito.

Si tratta di gente che prima di tutto ha bisogno d’amore, ne ha sempre ricevuto poco, è in astinenza da amore.
E pur se con penna (o tastiera) improntata a una certa qual brutalità e asprezza, Chuck li ama tutti.
E io con lui: io lettore sento che il mio amore riesce ad avvolgerli. Nonostante il lezzo, il marcio, la scarsa igiene personale, le secrezioni. Vere, finte o immaginate.
In fondo l’arte è nata disegnando le ombre sulle pareti di una grotta.


Appoggiati alla gogna, elemento portante del luogo di lavoro.

n  "Just keep asking yourself: What would Jesusn not do?"

"Hathos*" is not the right word, but it is the first word that comes to mind. This book, as others have said, is pretty F-ed up, with plenty of WTF moments. And yet, for something that is in parts so disgusting, it is also strangely beautiful. And for every moment that made me double take, or wince, or made my jaw drop, somehow it all came together and made sense in the end (even the really F-ed up stuff).

It's also filled with surprisingly deep and introspective quotes, that are also really relate-able if you happen to be quite depressed. Some of my favourites:

n  “More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.”n

n  “I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.”n

n  "Nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it."n

n  “I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything... I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it.”n

n  “That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.”n

n  “By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.”n

n  “Sobriety is okay enough," Denny says, "but someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff. You know?”n

n  “Art never comes from happiness.”n

Victor Mancini is a 25-year-sex addict who works at a colonial theme park and goes to different restaurants every night to pretend to choke and illicit sympathy in the form of monetary donations from the strangers who "save" him. He needs the money to pay for his dementia-suffering mothers $3,000 a month care facility, where he visits her daily in an attempt to uncover the secrets of his paternity (in between bonking all the staff). He's stuck on step 4 of his recovery, not that he's really in recovery at all, his best friend Denny is constantly in trouble at the theme park and now Dr Paige Marshall claims his mother needs a feeding tube and has a strange and elaborate plan to save her...

(*To clarify, by "Hathos" I mean the definition that means 'not being able to look away from something unpleasant' or 'being fascinated by something revolting', not the other meaning about loving to hate.)

This book is bizarre. It was like being in the head space of a man that never matured from a teenage boy. Some of the true crime community make a big deal of the book being in the possession of men accused of violent crimes including murder. Honestly I didn’t see any correlation.

Once again, Palahniuk provides perfect social commentary. Essential to understanding America and ourselves, Choke invites you to consider your life holistically, question what you know, and examine the quotidian anew. In addition, Palahniuk challenges us to find the best of ourselves, to focus less on "Saint Me," and to experience fully those near-life experiences he documents so well in Fight Club. Another marvel, another marvel.

ma cosa stracazzo è successo in questo romanzo?

CHOKE was my first Chuck Palahniuk read and maybe it wasn’t the best book of his to start out with. Bored isn’t the right word but it’s the first word that comes to mind. Is that a tad bit harsh to call a book boring? Maybe, maybe not, but that is how I felt about this one. I just didn’t really care at all about the characters or the story.

Palahniuk tells us from the beginning that our protagonist Victor Mancini is not a character you’ll root for. He’s unlikable and not a good person. This wasn’t my issue with the book. I can get behind a “villain'', a less than savory character and be invested in them as long as the story pulls me in and holds my interest. With CHOKE that did not happen. It felt like we were just spinning our wheels, stuck in place with basically the same scenarios occurring over and over again. Repetitiveness is the right word while also being the first word that comes to mind. I just wanted something, anything, to happen to light a spark of interest in me but that flame never caught. I had heard that the ending to CHOKE was jaw dropping, mind blowing, insert description here, but when I finally got around to the end the reveal was just like oh, okay, so that happened, and I moved on.

Not the best first impression for a highly touted author such as Chuck Palahniuk. I didn’t hate CHOKE but also I was far from loving it. Just sort of meh. The writing itself wasn’t bad per say so I am willing to give him another shot at some point. I have had HAUNTED and SURVIVOR recommended quite a bit so I will probably go with one of those. You can’t love every book you read and that’s okay. Time to move onto the next one.

Choke is one of those books that it still lies in my head. I remember when my College professor of ethics and aesthetics commanded us to read the short story "Guts" of Chuck Palahniuk. He warned us in how unpleasant would be to read it! But after reading it I thought that the author had a way of telling stories so visceral and cruel that attracted me. So inquiring more about him I found the book "Choke".
In Choke the protagonist is the character who has more defects, more misery, and less ethical values than other of the characters, but even though in the first pages the author warns you to stop reading the book, there is something in it that make you continue reading, and all that seems cruel, uncomfortable and unfriendly at the first pages, it starts to become more interesting and you can stop reading it. I recommend this book and this author to all readers with "guts". And I challenge all of you to read the story of "Guts". I leave here the link! ;) http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/sh...

Spanish version:
Asfixia es uno de esos libros que te marcan de por vida. Recuerdo cuando mi profesor de universidad de ética y estética nos mandó a leer los relatos cortos "Tripas" Chuck Palanuik. Creo que se quedó corto al avisarnos de lo desagradable que resultaría leerlos! Pero después de leerlos me pareció que ese autor que hasta ese momento había sido desconocido para mí tenía una forma de contar las cosas increíblemente visceral y cruel, lejos de los prototipos y tal y como la mayoría de veces es la vida. Así que indagando más sobre él encontré el libro "Asfixia".
Para mi Asfixia marcó un antes un después en la concepción de "protagonistas". Aquí el protagonista es el personaje que acumula más defectos, más miserias y con valores menos éticos de todos los personajes, pero pese a que en las primeras páginas el propio autor te avisa precisamente de que dejes de leer el libro, hay algo en él que te engancha, y lo que al principio te parece cruel, incómodo y antipático al final es precisamente lo que más te gusta del libro. Recomiendo este libro y este autor a todos los lectores, y por supuesto, os reto a todos a que leáis los relatos de "Tripas", os dejo aquí el link! ;) http://www4.loscuentos.net/cuentos/li...

"Palahniuk, dude... this book is sort of gross."

"Sort of gross? Of course it's sort of gross, man, it's the world that's gross."

"No, I mean, like, gratuitously gross. Gross for the sake of being gross. That sort of gross."

"Hey, man. I call 'em like I see 'em. You don't like the grossness of my book? Check out how gross the WORLD is sometimes. You should be more worried about that than about how gross my book is."

"All right, I understand that. Gross with a purpose. Right. What do you propose we do about this grossness?"

"Tear it all down and start over."

"All right. How do you think we should go about that?"

"We don't even need to consider it, man, it'll happen by itself. Society will get too disgusting to do anything but wallow in its own morass, and when it does, something new will spring up, and when something new springs up, that's when the grossness will stop and we'll get to move onto something bigger."

"O... kay. Let's, um, let's move away from grossness-"

"You can't. It's everywhere."

"Away from grossness and over to this hero of yours. He's kind of boring, really. Just this one-dimensional asshole with no real personality characteristics beyond being a gross nihilist."

"A lot of people are like that, man. He's part of the problem."

"I suppose that's fair, but look. The dude has, like, two personality traits. He's more defined by what he does than who he is. 'Works at a colonial village' and 'is a sex addict' don't really count as characterization. They're the extra details you graft onto a character after we have a sense of their motivations, their temperament, their ambitions, their fears, their backstory if need be. David Foster Wallace wrote a bazillion similarly fucked-up characters in The Pale King, which the prospective reader should read instead of this, but he allowed them to be actual real people instead of just an accumulation of things they do."

"Man, you don't get it. I did that on purpose. Victor Mancini is representative of the empty person who lives a life of shallow hedonism and self-satisfaction. He is the modern man who has ruined our modern society so thoroughly. He is a corrupting force who needs to go. This book is about why."

"And yet he's present at the symbolic rebuilding-of-society, as evidenced by the Nihilism 101 ending you graft onto this book. So what you're telling me is the shallow, empty-headed morons will inherit the earth?"

"Um..."

"This is what you suggested in Fight Club. And Lullabye. And probably a couple of others."

"He literally shovels shit. That's symbolic, man. It's a metaphor for how he has dedicated his life to shit-shoveling in a symbolic sense, what with his absurd levels of self-worship and all. We are the generation of chickens hatched from shaken eggs. This is us. This is our world. We have degraded ourselves so thoroughly that we have gotten what we deserved."

"Right-o, buddy, okay. Let me know how that worldview works out for you."

This book is funny sometimes.

Woow, cum a fost cartea aceasta, efectiv m-a SUFOCAT. A fost o lectura puternică din mai multe puncte de vedere dar superbă. Avem un obsedat sexual cu grave probleme de comportament, plus o mamă care i-a cam distrus viața. Povestea este una cât se poate de tristă iar modul de scriere e unul fără perdea. O carte care vorbește despre partea mai întunecată a vieții dacă pot spune așa și este cutremurătoare.M-am identificat destul de mult cu unele aspecte din carte si cred ca cu toții am putea-o face într-o oarecare măsură. Sunt mai mult ca sigura că acest autorul o sa devină unul dintre autorii mei preferați

Nooo don't choke yourself you're so sexy haha