Product DescriptionCassie Wright, porn priestess, intends to cap her legendary career by breaking the world record for serial fornication. On camera. With six hundred men. Snuff unfolds from the perspectives of Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, who await their turn on camera in a very crowded green room. This wild, lethally funny, and thoroughly researched novel brings the huge yet underacknowledged presence of pornography in contemporary life into the realm of literary fiction at last. Who else but Chuck Palahniuk would dare do such a thing? Who else could do it so well, so unflinchingly, and with such an incendiary (you might say) climax?From Publishers WeeklyPalahniuk delivers another entertaining and cynical social commentary on American materialism and gluttony. In her final pornographic performance, Cassie Wright has decided to be on the receiving end of a 600-man gangbang. Neither Cassie nor the men waiting for their chance with her expect her to survive. But some of the men have very different ideas about what this encounter will mean for them in their personal and professional lives. Todd McLaren does an excellent job voicing the many different first-person accounts. Whether reading the accounts of Cassie's assistant, an aging stud or the Cassie's presumptive abandoned son, McLaren finds a complementary voice for each and keeps them consistent throughout. Given the raunchy discussions of sex and the sinister elements that are often associated with the porn industry, McLaren's gritty voice adds the needed edge to this seedy but interesting novel.A Doubleday hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 11). (May)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Review"Palahniuk compassionately and candidly examines the flesh-on-film industry." ---Publishers WeeklyFrom BooklistPalahniuk has made a career out of exploring alienation and depicting sex addicts, suicides, serial killers, and suffering artists. So it’s not surprising to learn that his new novel is set in the sad world of sex cinema. Aging porn legend Cassie Wright is making one last film, a record-setting gang bang in which she will copulate with 600 men. But, as the title foreshadows, the grotesque simulation of love will prove fatal—for someone. As with Rant (2007), Palahniuk employs an oral-history format, with the story recollected by three men—Messrs. 72, 137, and 600—and Ms. Wright’s handler, Sheila. (These passages are obviously very explicit, and not only does the porn not look pretty, the Palahniukian prose may cause readers’ interest in all sex to flag for a while.) While Palahniuk’s strengths—acerbic humor and bold ideas—are present here, his weaknesses are, too: indistinct voices and characterizations, repetitiveness, and research that’s not integrated but quoted from one character to another. That said, he’s an original, and there is something heady about the risks he takes as a writer. But, ultimately, his ideas are more interesting than his writing—some readers are bound to ask why they’re hanging around someone who keeps beating them up. --Keir GraffFrom Bookmarks MagazinePalahniuk has followed his tendency towards sensationalism to its logical conclusion and written a novel about a pornographic film, to mixed reactions. Naysayers wrote thatSnuff either failed in its satirical role or, worse, Palahniuk has simply run out of ideas and only wants to make readers cringe. Yet other reviewers felt that, as in previous novels, Palahniuk’s strong, character-driven explorations of the unseemly actually reveal a great deal about our society. Certainly, he riffs cleverly on Cassie’s cinematic history (“Gropes of Wrath,” for example). But Palahniuk’s play on movies and literature in the context of this novel perhaps points to an important question raised by theNew York Times Book Review: “What the hell is going on? The country that produced Melville, Twain and James now venerates King, Crichton, Grisham, S
Dimensions: 110 x 178
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
ISBN: 9780099535744
Format: Paperback
Pages: 197