| | Snuff |  | Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $11.16
You Save: $2.79 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  97 reviews
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
ISBN: 0307275841
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780307275844
ASIN: 0307275841
Publication Date: April 7, 2009 (In 126 Days)
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Not yet published
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Product Description
From the master of literary mayhem and provocation, a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction has gone before
Cassie 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?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 92 more reviews...
Snuff, As In "Not Quite Up To" May 29, 2008
73 out of 81 found this review helpful
No amount of bad reviews will stop a Palahniuk fan from buying one of his books. I oughta know. I'm one of those fans.
I'm the first to admit that Palahniuk is a one-trick pony, but let's face it, it's a pretty good trick. There are times where it has worn thin, and others where it has struck gold. Essentially, Chuck (may I call you Chuck?) takes a few premises, milks the gastric juices out of them, and tries to blend a cocktail with a little social or psychological merit.
SNUFF, a brisk biopsy of porn, has all the trademark Palahniuk panache, but very little of his elusive elan. Chuck's not what you would call very nice to most of his characters, but buried under vivid piles of meat and blood, they still have hearts, and souls, and yens. Chuck shows us their voids, and whether or not they fill them, somehow we still manage to care.
There are lots of voids in SNUFF, and they get filled in gruesome and graphic detail, but none of them are very much other than raw, pointless wounds. The story, about an aging porn star who wants to break records with a 600-man gang bang, grasps at a few emotional straws -- failed parents and failed dreams -- but never really holds on tightly enough for any of it to matter. It's very much a "going through the motions" installment.
The motions themselves are alright, I suppose, although some of them are bizarrely out of place. Chuck's books are, if anything, catalogues of the grotesque and the arcane, but he usually manages to find some way, eloquently or not, to tie them all together. Here, some of it works (the macabre celebrity factoids and embalment techniques), but some of it is just plain pointless (see the several pages devoted to prison tattoos).
In fact, these little literary curios mostly get in the way. Chuck sets almost the entire story in the basement of the studio set where the film (World Whore Three) is being filmed. But even this limited scenery is very vaguely described. And the five main characters that compose the story (Mr. 600, Mr. 137, Mr. 72, the "wrangler," and the starlet) are equally vague personalities, people who stutter alike, who regurgitate odd-ball trivia at the drop of a hat, and who -- in spite of their gaping holes and yens -- don't inspire much in the way of either sympathy or concern. Mostly, they give Chuck a chance to come up with as many goofy porn movie titles he can, or the opportunity to utilize every single euphemism he can find or think up for the word "masturbator."
It's not a bad book, given what most Palahniuk fans will want or expect, and parts of it are downright hilarious. It's slimy, sick, and will teach you new and interesting ways to exfoliate your face (try cold, used coffee grounds). Unfortunately, that's about it. For a book that deals with such fleshy concerns, it's a shame Chuck didn't try harder to get under the skin.
 Nothing new here May 21, 2008
19 out of 33 found this review helpful
Let me state for the record that I am a huge Chuck Palahniuk fan and have been waiting for the release of this book for months. Maybe my anticipation of this book and the love of all his other novels put too much pressure for me to love Snuff. The book was not very exciting, never really caught my attention and if it the book was not so terribly short I would not have finished it so quickly. As far as all the work of Chuck Palahniuk go this was by far my least favorite novel. I would not recommend this book to anyone unless they were familiar with Chuck's work. I say read at your own risk or wait for the paperback to save a few dollars.
 Excellent Character Study from the Mind of Chuck May 27, 2008
13 out of 26 found this review helpful
In Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk visits the dark underbelly of the porn industry. While the subject matter of the novel may be coarse to some, the book is nevertheless a worthy edition to the body of Chuck's work. While the novel is a narrative of the making of an adult movie, it is also a character study which reveals much about man's search for identity in this world.
Told from the point of view of three actors in the movie, Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600, the story explores how each man is trying to either reinvent himself and find out who he really is. Mr. 72 is a virtual unknown that believes that the star of the movie, Cassie Wright, is his long lost mother. Mr. 137 is a former television star hoping that his part in this movie will remove a past stigma and relaunch his career. Finally, Mr. 600, is an aging adult film star who hopes to get some redemption from a perceived guilt in his past. As all three tell their stories from their own point of view, the reader is introduced to Sheila, the talent wrangler, with a hidden agenda of her own.
It is interesting to learn about these characters through their stories as well as through their perceptions of each other.
The book moves on at a fast pace and can be read in a short amount of time. The writing is signature Chuck right down to the shocking end and twist of events. I can understand that some may take issue with the subject matter, but that is what makes Chuck's fans love him so much -- his raw, in your face storytelling that will live inside you for a long while.
 The World Of The Bottom Feeders June 4, 2008
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
Cassie Wright, an over-the-hill porn star, whose career is on the wane because of age and high definition-- "stage makeup didn't look like skin, not anymore"-- stages her swan song (though she isn't Leda) by having sex with 600 men in Chuck Palahniuk's latest novel SNUFF. She sets out to break the records of (real porn stars) Annabel Chong (251 sex acts), Jasmine St. Claire (300), Spantaneeus Xtasy (551 partners), and Sabrina Johnson who supposedly took on 2,000 but was exposed as cheating.
Cassie is for the most part seen through the eyes of other characters and literally through her old videos that are playing constantly--"The Handmaid's Tail," "Miracle Sex Worker," "From Her To Eternity" are some of the titles that can be mentioned here-- in the room where the male performers, barefoot and wearing only their underwear, wait their turn. The principal characters are her manager/handler Sheila, Mr. 72, 137 and 600. Each of the male performers receives a number that indicates when he will be called to strut his stuff. Number 72 is a youngster who has brought flowers for Cassie; Number 137 is a former television star, hoping for a comeback, heavy into bronzer, lip-gloss and nail polish; and Number 600 is Branch Bacardi, a veteran porn star who has his own line of sex toys modeled after his organ. Theses four characters are harboring secrets that come out as this small novel (197 pages) unfolds in a plot that moves as quickly as the sex. (Sheila has a stopwatch and tells the performers when enough is enough.)
SNUFF, full of tongue-in-cheek humor, is a raw--oops-- look at the lucrative porn industry in these United States and a novel that I suspect both Charles Bukowski and Harry Crews would like. The author gives an unflinching account of these rather sad characters in language so vivid that you can smell the Stetson cologne and feel the sticky baby oil on the floor.
Mr. Plahniuk says in an interview that he wants to write novels that must compete with video games and music videos (and porn videos perhaps?), that he writes for people who otherwise would not read and that humor is crucial to his plot-driven stories. "Without humor, my books would be like those tragic Oprah books." The author succeeds admirably in SNUFF, which certainly will not make Ms. Winfrey's list.
 Poor... Even for Chuck. May 27, 2008
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
If you disliked the ending of Lullaby, Invisible Monsters, or Choke... you will loathe the ending of Snuff. As the book plays out through its 4 narratives, you begin to see that though the writing is excellent; the story telling never goes anywhere. The black humor of the book comes though well, and the conveyor-belt-pornification of America has never been quite so hilariously in your face... this story takes off fast and hard, but completely fizzles with every page from the intros to the end.
Really, for all the great positives of the book; it is completely missing a backbone. The topic of Snuff itself, Cassie Wright, doesn't make an actual `appearance' until the very end. When Cassie finally does actually take part in the near real-time story, she disappoints and goes from unlikeable in the back story, to a despicable screw up that quickly becomes a stranger to the reader, completely alienating us to the point of hoping something bad happens to her. This just leaves no room for any type of audience connection, and it is a shame because until the last couple of chapters, she is the actual topic of this novella. As well as lacking any of the black humor that should have made her a goofy caricature.
I loved the porn descriptions, the satire of how truly stomach churning the sex industry is at its base. Unfortunately, I found it a little ironic that the very idea also parallels this book; it's a nice, pretty, attractive, glossy product... but it's just a shallow and hollow product that ends up as disturbing and unappealing as the world it is trying to satirize.
And at the end of the day, you are left with a few dollars missing from your wallet, and a very poor novel on your bookshelf. I recommend you skip unless you are absolutely the most diehard Chuck fan. Overall I feel that it was a waste of time to read, and truly a shame.
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