review: chuck palahniuk's snuff

Chuck Palahniuk's ninth and most recent novel, Snuff, is about an over-aged porn star (Cassie Wright) who plans to kill herself while filming World Whore Three: The Whore to End All Whores, a film in which she'll set a world record for having sex with 600 men in a single session. The story is told primarily from the perspective of three participants: Mr. 72, Mr. 137 and Mr. 600. Much of the tale is set in the film studio's basement, which is crawling with hundreds of men, each waiting for his turn, albeit brief, with Ms. Wright.

For Palahniuk's fans, the plot is par for the course: another tale that tackles another cultural taboo (with an unpredictable ending only Palahniuk could pen). For the uninitiated, however, Snuff may sound like an obscene novel as empty as the fictional pornographic film portrayed in the book. Unfortunately, the latter are mostly correct.

For the record, I am an avid fan -- and defender -- of Palahniuk's work, but when I finished the final word of the final sentence, I felt betrayed and thought, What? Is that it?

Despite Snuff's failures, Palahniuk's brilliant imagination, dark humor and unique writing style occasionally pierce through the seedy characters and money shots, but his brilliance is muffled by the fluff that consumes much of the novel.

Like his previous books, Palahniuk sheds light on the darkened lives of people we would rather shun than acknowledge and transforms them into compelling and very real people. Whether the character is a porn star (Snuff), a sex addict (Choke), or a disenfranchised yuppie (Fight Club), Palahniuk induces the reader to care and ultimately empathize with his protagonist.

However, unlike his previous works, the poignant and epiphanic sentences that strike the reader like holy gospel are mostly absent from Snuff and, apart from the novel's lurid subject matter, there is nothing remarkable about Palahniuk's latest effort.

Additionally, Snuff may alarm some of his loyal readers (affectionately known as members of "the Cult"). Palahniuk's last three novels (Haunted, Rant and Snuff) have all followed the same storytelling method: in lieu of a single narrator, the stories are relayed through several characters or witnesses. While this technique allows the reader to absorb the story three-dimensionally, it also leaves the reader to fill in the holes and wade through intermittent spaces of ambiguity.

Snuff isn't a bad book. It's just disappointing. Disappointing because Palahniuk has shown his fans what he's capable of and unfortunately, Snuff isn't up to snuff.

The novel should come with a warning label -- not for its graphic content but to sway potential Palahniuk readers from Snuff, because this work isn't a proper Palahniuk primer. For Chuck newbies, check out Choke (the film adaptation, which stars Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Houston and Kelly Macdonald, opens in limited release on 26 September 2008), Survivor and/or Lullaby.

Grade: C

xx