Chuck Palahniuk
Soffocare

"SWALLOW" IS NOT THE EXACT WORD, BUT IT'S THE FIRST THAT COMES TO MIND.

"..Then he turns on the television and starts watching a soap opera, you know, right? Real people playing fake people with invented problems, for the consumption of real people who watch it to forget their real problems.."

Mom says that before the Greeks, art did not exist. Mom told him these exact words: "Art is never born from happiness." His mother was rotting in the hospice with Alzheimer's, and she said that her son was born from the foreskin of Jesus Christ. Helpless as a worm. The omnipotence of others. The martyrdom of Saint Myself. Maternal eco-terrorism. Cosmic copulations, better than first Communion. Those damn and heavy stones of Denny in the living room, everywhere. The bitter food, chewed and spat out by the elderly in the hospital. The routine food of restaurants, which Victor holds back by tightening his throat: close your mouth, remove the air, and prevent breathing. You enter the place, as usual, look around and find there's nothing to laugh about. Yet Victor always has a certain mocking smile. It's the egocentric moment with large ellipses. Followed by simulated and flaunted fragility. Followed by new entertaining families in search of redemption and different cheques each time, sent from a shitty city lost somewhere, with that charitable and silly spirit that screams Telethon. A crazy, funny idea begins to take root in the brain, almost like a trailer truck careening down a slope. "Charity" is not the exact word, but it's the first that comes to mind. In short, what should feed does not kill you but strengthens man; and in this case, it can elevate failure to a state of art that's hard to match (oh, yeah).

"..The point, in my opinion, is that America is like this. You start with a wank and end up having orgies. You smoke a joint and end up doing heroin. Ours is the culture of more: bigger, better, stronger, faster.."

The zoologically trained eye of the ex-mechanic Palahniuk observes these funny, pathetic, and adrift characters with the special affection of losers. A modern Bosch painting in motion, (dis)humans acting in the irrational and desperate, cynical and controversial, devious and pornographic microcosm of our times: it's the carousel of life, but we don't know it (or maybe we pretend not to). The dawn of the end is approaching, and all we can do is tap dance in the streets, between an erection and a premature election. Victor Mancini is the magnificent antihero of the strange, imaginative humanity of "Choke"; a sex addict who works by day in a fake tourist village of the Pilgrim Fathers, stuck in 1734, and by night borderline attends a rehabilitation center with other sex-obsessive maniacs. The protagonist, a former medical student, has devised an infallible, ingenious (extreme) method to pay the costly hospital expenses of his elderly mother: choose a restaurant, go with a friend, and in the middle of the evening simulate choking due to the wicked sidebite. Inevitably, the occasional savior arrives, who will emerge transformed by the purifying experience, rewarding the unfortunate boy with some money, sent on the anniversary of the incident... Thus, after years of profitable suicidal activity, our man continues to receive money in quantity from people of whom he now remembers nothing and who thank him for giving sense to their miserable lives. At point IV of XII, the course for extraordinary addictions requires a written reconstruction of one's abjections, and thus are delivered the off-limits memories of V. Mancini. A destroyed childhood worthy of Unabomber, in the company of his radical eco-terrorist mother. The practice of choking. The acrobatic sex in airplane toilets. The absurd collection of boulders and stones by his friend Denny, jealously kept in his apartment. And the cherry on the whipped cream, the sensational revelation by the elderly Mrs. Mancini, sick and decrepit in a care home, according to which her son would have an incredible divine origin...

Victor loves intensely, not simply, along a red thread of strong and sulfuric emotions, beyond the fire circle of hypocritical common morality. Happy ending: the young man will also find unexpected love in a mysterious and rapacious doctor. The tragicomic universe of Chuck Palahniuk is an often absurd obstacle course, yet very human, vivid, real and above all contemporary. The mushroom cloud is over our heads, it has polluted the air we breathe with its evil seed of unbridled consumerism, of websites, and all those policemen pretending to be sixteen-year-old girls in chats. By pretending to be weak, you gain power, and you make others feel stronger. People need someone to send a cheque to at Christmas. People very much need to feel superior to someone. Always and in every case, you should play submissive. You just need to appear fragile and grateful. Because you are the proof of their courage.

"..I mean, what's better than sex? Surely even the worst blowjob is better, for example, than smelling the most beautiful rose in the world or watching an extraordinary sunset. Or seeing children laugh. I don't think I'll ever read a poem as sweet as a warm, formidable, explosive orgasm."

"CHOKE" AFTER MEALS IS NOT THE EXACT WORD, BUT IT HELPS TO UNDERSTAND.