Rating: 
Summary: Kamikaze L'Amour, or: Kill Trend Suicide
Review: Remember that Saturday Night Live faux-commercial that ran the Heaven's Gate mass-suicide footage to a techno soundtrack, the camera closing in on the Nike "swoosh" logos of their official cult footwear, shuffling off their mortal coils to join their extraterrestrial chums on the tail of a comet?"Nike," the narrator intoned, "Just do it." That delightfully sick parody is very close to the spirit of *Survivor*, which provides the most entertaining fictional send-up of cult-psychology since DeLillo's *Mao II*, Jane Campion's *Holy Smoke*, and that wonderful episode of *Strangers With Candy* when Jeri Blake's lesbian instincts procure her own hilarious abduction into a hippie death cult. Palahniuk's novel has tapped into something heady and waggish, mapping the next century of American satire. *Survivor* allows C.P.'s wild raconteur spirit to run up the walls, in the frantic 1st-person confessional of a tubby, unkempt, quaintly lovable loser (appropriately named Tender), whose freakish past as a cult "survivor" puts him on a suicide-course even more bizarre than the Heaven's Gate loons. Sure, the plot tends to unwind in the process, the paragraphs are too dizzyingly elliptic and punch-drunk, and the acid comedy doesn't always burn through, but in the end, Palahniuk may be the best of the post-Vonnegut satirists, and *Survivor* drives another stake into his path of (deserved) literary celebrity. The novel's jolt and swagger, its snide hepcat prose-style, its elliptical addiction to the present tense, its prickly caricatures of media culture, are all pure Vonnegut, and delightfully so. But like his whiskered, squirrelly mentor, Palahniuk also has a tendency to repeat himself, compulsively, to milk his own idiom for everything it's worth, with the lactose-intolerant reader chuckling less and less as the same killing jokes jingle their digressive coxcombs. *Survivor* has all the blazing hubris of *Fight Club*, all the zany correspondences and elbow-nudging set-pieces, but makes an interesting attempt to ground its frantic zigzagging in the bleak expenditures of postmodern malaise (i.e. if *Fight Club* taught us how to make napalm out of frozen orange-juice concentrate, *Survivor* reads like the demented slush-pile of *Better Homes and Gardens*, with useful tips on removing bloodstains from piano keys, recycling draperies, spraypainting artificial shrubbery, and dissecting gourmet crustaceans, amongst other delights). If all this sounds duller than watching Martha Stewart on a black-and-white TV with your mom on a rainy day, take into account that the design and maintenance of the upper-class postmodern household is among the cruelest and most willfully insane modern rituals we Westerners have inflicted on ourselves. It's not about sweeping and dusting and changing the linen anymore, it's about germophobic hypochondria, and pathogenic symmetries, and a jittery mania for antiseptic order. These days, epidemiologists speak of a "hygiene virus" that comes from growing up in sterile, disinfected spaces, away from the dirt and grime that (ironically) permits our bodies to build up immunities to these disease vectors. Palahniuk shows us "how to clean everything," and why this mania for polished hardwood and manicured gardens makes us filthy with the smut of techno-serfdom. You see, Tender is an indentured servant of sorts, a full-time house-cleaner for wealthy clients he's never met face to face. While frittering away in bathroom-scrubbing purgatory, Tender runs his own suicide crisis-hotline, glibly encouraging anxious callers to "Just do it." When one of his clients actually *does*, a bizarre relationship with that caller's sister (in a whimsical mausoleum scene) sets in motion a nationwide romp to escape the vengeful media conglomerates that Tender has (quite entertainingly) balked and buggered. Palahniuk's flashbacks to the Creedish cult-colony are among his most tender and compelling writing, a wistful Amish nightmare of puritan brainwashing and blustery eschatology (a contorted echo of Project Mayhem?). Before the novel begins, 95% of the cult have gone the way of the Heaven's Gaters, putting Tender under the auspices of state surveillance bureaucrats trained to "de-program" him. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose, dusting off those cult-members who've decided NOT to be "called to Heaven," and Tender's unique status as sole survivor of the Creedish death cult makes a him a walking media-franchise in the hands of unscrupulous marketeers. Brilliant and memorable satire ensues. The average Palahniuk paragraph runs an average of 2.5 sentences, which is great when the story needs to flow, but at length tends to trip up the eye, a "channel-surfing" prose style. Palahniuk hasn't really figured out how to ground his outrageous satire in the austere workmanship of novelistic craft (jeez, that sounds awfully stuffy). Tender's character goes through so many bizarre metamorphoses, becoming a synthetic media icon (a Tony Robbins self-help messiah) built from steroids, amphetamines, plastic surgery, and a crack-team of psychologists and speechwriters who plot his every move, that the narrative tends to unravel like a roll of toilet paper thrown off the observation deck of some flaming corporate tower. Nevertheless, the appeal of Palahniuk's work to a mass audience seems to involve the vicarious thrill of being a vengeful secret agent (and/or willful eccentric) against the "adult" expectations of the polis. The fantasy of being a petty criminal, an amateur confidence-man, a hacker of modern culture, a decadent pill-popping celebrity, a de-programmed cult survivor, a master-terrorist with a split-personality, are all wistful daydreams that momentarily loosen the straitjacket of our media-saturated careerist sanatorium. Like the Misfits song "TV Casualty", but with faces behind the music, with narrative depth, with black-toothed satiric bite.... In the end, though, I think Palahniuk can do better, and has.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Breathtaking Ending I've Ever Inhaled...
Review: Man... People will tell you that this book is similar to Fight Club- and in many ways, they're right... The tone of the narrator in this book is very similar to that of Fight Club's narrator, for one. The character is very detached, cynical, and gives these random, little, quirky, odd, not-entirely-useless facts throughout the novel(in Fight Club it was about explosives and things of that nature, in this book it's about cleaning and hygenics). However, aside from these small similarities, Fight Club and Survivor are entirely different novels... Both were good, but I have to say that I enjoyed Survivor's ending better. Many were a bit confused and dissapointed with the ending of Fight Club, and I'd have to say that I was, partially anyway, as well. But... Man, Survivor's ending just seems to twist at something inside you, seems to wound you in ways that you've only felt in real life, makes you want to cry but you won't because the you feel compelled and have to keep on reading... That's how good this ending is. Anyway, I've already over-hyped this, so just read the freakin' book, okay?
Rating: 
Summary: Too much expected
Review: If you liked FC, and you're expecting too much out of Survivor, your expectations will be belied.
Rating: 
Summary: A simple Tender from the Creedish Cult
Review: Yet another outstanding work from Palahnuik. In Survivor, Palahnuik was at his best in my oppinion. I know that there are numerous similarities with his novels but that's what set him apart from other authors of this generation. In Survivor, a mild mannered man, Tender Branson, was supposedly the last survivor of the Creedish Cult. With that information, the media exploited him and created somewhat another person. His only words were the words that was written in the telepromter. After leaving his homeland, in the outside world, he found himself in unsual situation dealing with suicide, house cleaning, therapy, etcetera, etcetera. Them comes Fertility, a foreteller of mordant disasters and miracles. Then the irony between Adam and Tender. The ending was a complete surprise with a dark sense thrown in. I highly recommend this novel to any one. Unforgettable, I garantee...
Rating:
Summary: Fight Club II?
Review: Chuck Palahniuk definitely has a unique style; and this novel more than attests to it. From the first page, or should I say, the 289th, you can tell that this is no ordinary author. However, even the original becomes banal with repetition. I would recommend Fight Club over Survivor, if for no other reason than it's the latter's predecessor and, therefore, more raw and original. To those Fight Club movie fans out there who are dying for a sequel, this may be a good answer for you. You'll find that Mr. Palahniuk's prose could easily be narrated by Edward Norton himself. Overall, Survivor was a good story with a terrific amount of symbolism and social commentary for even the most obsessed reader to dissect. Just don't expect that Fight Club pizzazz.
Rating:
Summary: Edgy and unrepentantly bold.
Review: The author takes that anarchistic sensibility he used in "Fight Club" and infused it into a religious death cult and it's lone survivor for amazing results. I found myself mezmerized by the characters and the protagonist's journey toward fame and fortune in a society of sound-bites, media-saavy agents, and "IN/OUT" lists. It's a daring journey into the mind of a man who doesn't know where his place is, and I think we can all relate in some way to his dilemma.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This is a great book, myself (being a huge Palahniuk fan) can say that this (like his other books) have really developed characters in settings and situations that we can really picture happening. It read like a movie script at the very end which is a downfall in his writing. but all in all, its a great book. If this is your first time reading Palahniuk, read something else first (probably Fight Club) so you can get a real sense of what Palahniuk's writing is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Surprise! A strange book from Chuck.
Review: The story of a true survivor. The only survivor, supposedly, of some kind of Amish, death cult deal. Becomes a superstar. The takes place backwords, the whole story... Summedup in one word. Survivor!
Rating:
Summary: Good...and that's it.
Review: Having trodded thru Fight Club and Invisible Monsters, I have to take a different side against those who think this is "Palahniuk's best" work. Granted - don't get me wrong - it's worth reading. Not noted for deep character developement, this one fits that bill through a one line summation of each, except the main. As usual. It's a quick read and I did it on a trans continental flight. For those iffy about flying, don't read it on a plane! ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Blood Stains on the Piano
Review: If you've never read a Chuck Palahniuk book before let me warn you: This man is screwed up. He writes screwed up books with screwed up characters and screwed up plots. But he's very good at it. He builds these surreal settings with characters that do crazy and obscene things, and you can't stop reading about it. He pinpoints the things about people that drive us crazy, the things that we know but have never really given thought to. I'm not going to spoil the plot here, but read this book. A lot of people said it would be offensive to Christians, but I wasn't too offended. His books are raw and violent and often obscene, but they're true. A question: Did this book really go back to the beginning? that confused me a little, I must admit. I am not the smartest thing around. Did it really start in the plane or was that just a metaphor, like he SURVIVES the plane crash, and starts a new life? Someone with a thought, please share.
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