I listen to audiobooks while I walk my dog -- books I get free from the library -- so my choices are limited by my frugality and also by the inefficient search functions on the site. After spending ten or so minutes scrolling through titles, I'll often sigh and click when I finally see something I've at least heard of. Even though my history with Chuck Palahniuk, in particular with his audiobooks, should be enough to warn me off another of his books, I wasn't entirely disappointed with Choke -- but even now I can't be sure it wasn't just satisfactory in comparison to the lamer Invisible Monsters, Damned, Survivor, and Pygmy (and I didn't realise this was the fifth of Palahniuk's books I've listened to until I thought to make a list). And maybe the enjoyment I had was because Choke was read by Palahniuk himself and I appreciated his style -- a deadpan monotone that must reflect the way the author means for it to be read, and as a bonus, he didn't put on different voices for the different characters -- and as that is the most annoying feature I find in most audiobooks, the experience was like the first time I watched a sitcom that didn't have a laughtrack: I felt like I was given the respect due to an audience; that I was presumed bright enough to follow along with the action without overt and condescending clues.
As in all the Palahniuk I've read, Choke makes commentary on modern society by treating extremes as though they were ordinary -- in this case, the main character, Victor Mancini, is a sex addict who craves real contact. He is also a scam artist who pretends to choke in restaurants in order to create an obligation on behalf of anyone who saves him -- an obligation to send him cards and money. Not only does Mancini do this because he craves the feeling of people throwing their arms around him, but he needs the money to support his mother -- who has Alzheimer's and requires care in an expensive nursing home. In one of several twinned themes, Mancini's mother is wasting away because her dementia has caused her to forget how to swallow -- while Victor chokes to create saviours, his mother can't eat and makes him the saviour as he spoons pudding into her mouth.
That's pretty much it: social commentary layered with in-your-face Palahniuk sex scenes that might be shocking for some, but listening to them in the author's monotone, even a colon blocked by red rubber butt balls didn't make me bat an eye (and that's likely the point he's making all along).
What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.^^That quote has almost 5000 likes on Goodreads right now and I have to wonder, "Is that profound? I mean, you can't even put it on a pillow." In the end, it doesn't matter I suppose. People seem to either love Palahniuk or hate him and to me it's all just okay -- with Choke being a cut above the rest. Maybe it's just time to start paying for audiobooks in order to have more control...
