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Holistic Guidance - Survivor: A Novel
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List Price: $13.95
Our Price: $11.16
Your Save: $ 2.79 ( 20% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385498722
ISBN: 0385498721
Label: Anchor
Manufacturer: Anchor
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2000-01-04
Publisher: Anchor
Release Date: 2000-01-04
Studio: Anchor
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Editorial Reviews:
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From the author of the cult sensation Fight Club (now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter) comes Survivor.
"A turbo-charged, deliciously manic satire of contemporary American life." --Newsday
"The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," according to the "been there, done that" wisdom of Tender Branson, last surviving member of the Creedish Death Cult. At the opening of Chuck Palahniuk's hilariously unnerving second novel, Tender is cruising on autopilot, 39,000 feet up, dictating the whole of his life story into Flight 2039's "black box" in the final moments before crashing into the vast Australian outback.
Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Wickedly incisive and mesmerizing, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Chuck Does it Again
Comment: I read this after tearing through "Choke," another masterful novel. Admittedly, I'm not much of a novel reader. I gravitate toward non-fiction, but Palahniuk is a great writer that can really pull me in to his story. After choke, this story took a little longer to get into, but I enjoyed it very much.
There is something about his writing that strikes me as very profound: he either writes about what you already know in a way you hadn't been able to express before or convinces you that you think the same way about something. Either way, he's a very talented author. Finally, a writer for our Generation. Thanks, Chuck.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A rollercoaster with few surprises...
Comment: I've been on this ride before, I think, as I strap myself in and open up to the first page of "Survivor."
You'd really think that it would be impossible for a novel by a writer as fiercely original as CP to be formulaic--but write enough of them quickly enough at the pace that today's publishers insist to justify their marketing budgets and make their millions and you end up with Danielle Steel...and now, not quite, but almost, and still a lot more interesting, Chuck Palahniuk.
In this one, a charismatic religious leader, the last surviving member of suicide cult, is alone on an airliner recording his tragicomic life-story into the jet's black box before it crashes into the Australian outback. The whole novel is structured like a countdown to the inevitable crash, even the pages are numbered backward to zero, pretty clever, huh? It's a device custom-made for someone like me who's always so impatient to get on to the next book that I'm perpetually doing the math to figure out how many pages I have to go before I'm finished with the book I'm reading. I think all books should be reverse-numbered this way!
Eccentric characters, an elastic reality stretched to the point of absurdity in the service of satire, a merciless critique of contemporary culture, lots or random factoids such as how to get rid of bloodstains or inject steroids--and all told in a quirky first person voice that uses a distinctive patois made up of repetition, one-liners, and pseudo Valley-girl speak (a sort of "anti-writing" like you'd find in a graphic novel but without the pictures)...and there you have the general blueprint of the CP perpetual novel-writing machine. You keep signing the million-dollar checks, he'll keep writing essentially the same novel.
Can you blame him? I can't. I'd do the same thing; ride it out while you can, right? Cause like the jet in "Survivor," you're going to crash eventually.
Listen, I'm a fan of CP; well, at least a fan of the general idea of CP. "Invisible Monsters" blew me away. "Choke" had me sputtering with admiration. And, if this is the first novel by CP that you read, you're bound to like "Survivor," provided CP is to your taste at all. And there really isn't anything wrong with "Survivor" even stacked up against the other novels, it's just that it's something like looking at a wall of Warhol "Maos." They're all a little different, but there all essentially the same.
Somehow repetition works better as a technique in painting than in writing. You can't silkscreen a novel. Well, actually you can...the shelves of any bookstore in the USA are practically nothing else than silk-screened variations of two or three (no longer) original ideas. You hit on a winning formula and you milk it for every drop its worth.
And thus "Survivor."
Anyway, the same old CP is a hundred times better than the same old Grisham.
Customer Rating:
Summary: we're all conformists
Comment: This book deftly shows what the difference is between groups like Jonestown, the Amish and those within the mainstream culture: nothing. We are all fated to be just alike the only difference with groups such as the Amish, etc., is that at least they are aware of their conformity. Brilliant little piece of work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Grabs You From The Beginning
Comment: This book is fasicnating in its concept, about the survivor of a cult who is on a death watch as a plane heads into oblivion, and telling the story for those who find what may be left. Though the end is known at the beginning, it is still gripping in its story telling and the satirical stream that flows throughout. I enjoyed the sytle of writing becauses it fits in the context of the story itself as events are chronicled in a limited time frame in the charactors mind.
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Summary: wandering in the unlikelihood
Comment: I really enjoy this kind of narrative style, but there are just too many unlikely situations to make the protagonist(s) jump from one situation to another completely different, and this happens far too much. The ending is written as if the book should fit a fixed number of pages: the chapters get shorter and their points more random and unconnected. Fertility's ability is used in trivial ways except once (which is brilliant), especially at the end, which seems to be used just to end the book, despite how unlikely it is. In short: the book let me down after having read the Fight Club.
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