Science news and science current events, research and discoveries.
Top science news articles and science current events stories from the past week.
Science Resources
Science RSS News Feeds
Earth, Life and Space Science RSS News Feeds.
|
 |
 |
 |
| View Larger Image | Survivor: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk
| | List Price: | $13.95 | | Price: | $11.16 | | You Save: | $2.79 (20%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 2687 | | Studio: | Anchor | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 304 | | Publication Date: | January 04, 2000 | | Publisher: | Anchor |
| |
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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. |
Amazon.com
Some say that the apocalypse swiftly approacheth, but that simply ain't so according to Chuck Palahniuk. Oh no. It's already here, living in the head of the guy who just crossed the street in front of you, or maybe even closer than that. We saw these possibilities get played out in the author's bloodsporting-anarchist-yuppie shocker of a first novel, Fight Club. Now, in Survivor, his second and newest, the concern is more for the origin of the malaise. Starting at chapter 47 and screaming toward ground zero, Palahniuk hurls the reader back to the beginning in a breathless search for where it all went wrong. This time out, the author's protagonist is self-made, self-ruined mogul-messiah Tender Branson, the sole passenger of a jet moments away from slamming first into the Australian outback and then into oblivion. All that will be left, Branson assures us with a tone bordering on relief, is his life story, from its Amish-on-acid cult beginnings to its televangelist-huckster end. All of this courtesy of the plane's flight recorder. Speaking of little black boxes, Skinnerians would have a field day with the presenting behavior of the folks who make up Palahniuk's world. They pretend they're suicide hotline operators for fun. They eat lobster before it's quite... done. They dance in morgues. The Cleavers they are not. Scary as they might be, these characters are ultimately more scared of themselves than you are, and that's what makes them so fascinating. In the wee hours and on lonely highways, they exist in a perpetual twilight, caught between the horror of the present and the dread of the unknown. With only two novels under his belt, Chuck Palahniuk is well on his way to becoming an expert at shining a light on these shadowy creatures. --Bob Michaels |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 381 reviews)
|
Muahahaha 
"You won't be able to tell your friends about this book. You'll feel dirty just listening. And in the end it will be one of your favorites ever. Palahniuk's brilliance is his ability to wrap subtlety inside of blinding excess. He's like a guy who punches you in the face to disguise the fact that he's putting $100 in your pocket" I am quoting a review of another Chuck book, 'Choke'. That is pretty much my opinion. It has so many memorable quotes that your head will be spinning, and this guy is a brilliant writer. I actually "read" this as an audiobook, my first, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, because the voice was just as I had imagined it, indifferent and calm. Great great book, but your friends will judge you for reading it. The last sentence was so brilliantly handled that even if you may have thought it wouldn't work, it does, so much.
August 19, 2008 | |
Great read
Not to set the bar too high for this book, but I think this is better than Fight Club. This might be because I read Fight Club after seeing the film, so I already knew most of the story, but it's hard to say.
This book is not hard to get into, like Diary was, it pulls you in right from the first page (Diary might have been a good book, but I wasn't able to get past the first 40 pages). As has already been mentioned, this book starts off at the last page and works down, so you know how close the end is, but it doesn't feel rushed or hurried. This is a great book with a great story and characters that Mr. Palahniuk does so well. I don't want to spoil any of it, but you won't be disappointed. It's brutal, funny, and a great commentary on modern superficial culture.
So, see if you like it better than Fight Club. Even if it comes close, that's a pretty good sign it's a great read.
August 05, 2008 | |
Stunning
Tender Branson, the supposed sole and only survivor remaining of a creedish death cult is taken from being a social slave and cast into fame and stardom when he is the only survivor left of the cult. When Tender wasn't telling people to kill themselves on a suicide hotline, he read obituaries and visited graves. He falls in love with a girl, Fertility Hollis (who dreams of the future) and sees in the paper that one by one survivors are being picked off. Once he's the last remaining survivor Tender becomes a modern-day messiah fronting a religious monopoly and being transformed into a worldwide celebrity. But now he's hijacked a commercial airplane alone spilling his story into the black box in the cockpit as the plane is running out of fuel and eventually to crash in the Australian outback. Read this book to find out the sequence of events that lead to the demise of Tender Branson and learn a thing or two about cults. It's a great book and is sure not to disappoint.
August 04, 2008 | |
Another victory for Chuck 
This is a really great book, filled with the prose indicative of Chuck Palahniuk (by the way...no idea how to pronounce that). The story is exactly the kind of thing that makes you wonder how a guy that looks so normal can write something so twisted. I couldn't give it five stars though; I kept waiting for some really unexpected twist at the end. I don't want to give it away the ending for those that haven't read the book, but I felt he could have done more.
July 11, 2008 | |
Great Service
Book arrived quickly and in great condition. I would buy from this seller in the future.
June 17, 2008 | |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| |
|
|
|
|
