Survivor
by Chuck Palahniuk
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Anchor: 1999. Trade paperback: 304 pages. ISBN-10: 0-385-49872-1 Suggested retail price: $13.95 (US) Tags: airplanes; domestic servants; drug use; Mainstream; religious cults; suicide Tactical strength: [6/10] |
Tender Branson has tried to avoid committing suicide most of his life. Tender grew up in a Creedish church compound that only granted first-born sons rights to property. The community trained all other sons as domestic servants. These servants worked outside the church, sent all their pay to the church, and awaited for "The Deliverance," upon which all church members commit suicide. The church elders ordered The Deliverance several years in the past, but Tender hasn't gotten around to committing suicide yet.
The book opens with Tender in the cockpit of an empty airliner which he has hijacked. The pilot has parachuted to safety, and Tender has a few hours to record his story into the cockpit voice recorder. As part of this frame story, the chapter and page numbers all count down. I like this premise and even found the count down fun, but Palahniuk's writing style doesn't support his premise. If the chapters count down, than each chapter should take place before the previous one, but Palahniuk's story progresses chronologically. Also, from the premise, the prose should look like the transcription of an oral recording, but the style makes very little attempt at reproducing the traits of an orally delivered story. For example, someone telling a story would not just switch speakers of dialogue without making an announcement about the change to another person. The text relies on textual indications, such as producing Tender's speech without any quote marks. So the text provides visual clues about the changes in speakers. If you read the text aloud, it would sound like someone reading a book, not like someone dictating a life story. But this problem only distracts from the book's framing premise, and doesn't really distract from the plot itself.
After the Creedish Deliverance, the Federal government quickly formed a Survivor Retention Program aimed at preventing the suicides of the domestic servants. Tender meets with a case worker every week, and she tries to prevent him from committing suicide. The number of Creedish survivors continues to dwindle until only Tender remains. A publicity firm wants to profit from Tender's status as the only remaining survivor, and Tender becomes a talk-show religious phenomenon.
I found this the most enjoyable of the Palahniuk novels I have read. The plot keeps taking unexpected turns, and Palahniuk avoids overusing his tendency to repeat key phrases throughout the book. For example, in Invisible Monsters, the main character continually uses sentences starting with "Flash" to represent the dialogue of a photo shoot. Palahniuk uses this technique as a shortcut to providing the character's emotional state. Palahniuk uses the same technique in Survivor, but he varies the patterns. At one point, Tender quotes verses from the bible to characterize his emotional state, but this only happens in a few places. Fortunately, Palahniuk finds about five or six other catch phrases for this characterization method, and we don't have as much opportunity to get bored with these patterns.
Of course, the plot makes numerous comments about pop-culture, and Tender engages in the requisite drug use required of any characters in a Palahniuk novel. Palahniuk uses Tender to take a critical look at celebrity. As Tender achieves celebrity, we see how constant publicity and the desire for attention drives celebrity. We can even come to a somewhat sympathetic understanding for odd celebrity antics as we watch Tender loose his popularity and go through "Attention Withdrawal Syndrome." Tender's companions must physically restrain him to keep him from making a spectacle just for the attention. Tender doesn't remain in the spotlight for long, and his story winds up back in the cockpit of the airliner just shortly before it crashes into the ground.
