Choke - Chuck Palahniuk

"Art never comes from happiness" says Mancini's mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her son's life would be chock full of nothing but art. Alas, that's not the case--in the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasn't quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, he's trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, he's settling for the Heimlich.

Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palanhiuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot but suffice to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbins's Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillo's The Day Room and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with that book and the other two novels under Palahniuk's belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, such as this sceptical slight on prayer chains: "A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around."

Whether this is the novel that will break Palanhiuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, "dude"-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end though, the author's nerve and daring pull the whole thing off--just. And what's next for Victor Mancini's creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does on the final pages: "Maybe it's our job to invent something better ... What it's going to be, I don't know." --Bob Michaels, Amazon.com

Chronique amazon.fr
"On peut dire n'importe quoi ici. Lavements, orgies, animaux, confessez jusqu'à la dernière obscénité, et personne n'est jamais surpris." Ainsi parle Victor Mancini, le héros de Choke, le nouveau roman de Chuck Palahniuk, auteur culte de Fight Club. Son héros est un sexoolique, un dépendant absolu, "un camé du sexe". Afin de payer l'hospitalisation et les soins d'une mère folle qui ne le reconnaît plus, il s'étouffe régulièrement en public jusqu'à ce qu'une bonne âme pratique sur lui une trachéotomie. Lui expurge, vomit tout et permet aux gens qui l'ont sauvé de se croire l'espace d'un instant des héros.
Le lectorat trop délicat, fragile de l'estomac, sera dispensé de lecture. Ceux qui ont les viscères bien attachés seront peut-être ravis. Au contact de cette littérature américaine postmoderne, on vit une explosion créatrice qui jouit dans la surenchère du nihilisme et de la provocation. Immorale à souhait et parfaitement désespérée. À ce jeu-là, Choke remporte la palme. Punk radicalisé avec un soupçon de doute existentiel (merci Kierkegaard), Chuck Palahniuk, nouveau fer de lance du roman US avec Bret Easton Ellis et le regretté John Kennedy Toole, fait passer Henry Miller pour un boy-scout puritain. "Ce que nous vivons maintenant, c'est la Dés-Illumination", professe l'un des personnages. Brrrr, ça fait froid dans le dos. --Denis Gombert

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Chuck Palahniuk

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