Survivor

I listened to Chuck Palahniuk on the Joe Rogan podcast back in August and was fascinated. I hadn't read anything from him since the obligatory Fight Club four years ago and, watching him trade dark anecdotes with Rogan, I decided I was going to try some of his other stuff.

Reading Survivor, I wasn't really interested in the narrative or the characters. But Palahniuk has an interesting and disturbing mind, as he showed on that podcast, and it is that which redeems him as a writer. Paradoxically, I enjoyed the book even if I did not like it all that much, because Palahniuk touches upon such interesting stuff.

He goes where most writers dare not go, and if this does get a bit wearying when every character is a sex fiend or an abortionist or show more a televangelist or a sad, soulless marketing consultant living in the rat race, it also means he writes a lot of stuff which can seem prescient. Not only did Fight Club write of the emerging crisis in Western masculinity, but the central plot device in 1999's Survivor – a plane hijacking – jars the reader in a post-9/11 era. Some of the lines can be harsher in hindsight ("Going to New York's a lot the way I imagine going to Heaven would be." (pg. 156)) but in truth the hijacking only frames the story. The meat of it – the televangelism, the Creedish cult, the materialism – is rather unremarkable. I just didn't fancy it.

But it is interesting to note that only a week or so before Palahniuk made that podcast with Rogan, a man named Richard Russell hijacked an empty Alaska Airlines plane and, after performing loops in clear blue skies, flew it into the ground. "And the sky is blue and righteous in every direction," Palahniuk wrote on page one of Survivor 19 years earlier. "The sun is total and burning and just right there, and today is a beautiful day." The man's seeing things other people can't see, or don't want to see. He's worth listening to. show less

Simply said, this is among my favorite novels I have ever read and I think it is the best of Chuck Palahniuk's works (at least up to 2010). In what has become fairly commonplace among Chuck novels, we begin the novel by getting a glimpse at the end before really understanding what is actually going on and why. This does a great job of really establishing a tone for the story and sparking an intial flair to get the reader really interested early on. Set up as Tender Branson giving his account of his life, trying to give some meaning and justification to it to the black box recorder or an airplane he is setting out to crash, the narrator does a great job of walking us through his life and giving us a real good understanding of what has show more drove him to this point. While Palahniuk is never really subtle about the themes he is setting out to explore in his novels, I think he really does a great job in this novel of discussing free will, especially though interactions with Fertility. The relationship between Tender and Fertility is overall very interesting and does a good job of really showcasing the changes that each of the characters goes through as the novel progresses. By giving us a glimpse into the future before stepping back to explain the past, it gives the reader a chance to really analyze the events throughout the story relative to what we know is eventually going to happen. I think while this is sometimes overused and used ineffectively, it works remarkably well here. Palahniuk also does a great job in this novel as always of interjecting some really witty and cleaver sections of the novel that really keep it overall entertaining and enjoyable while being so dark at the same time. Overall, this is a great book, and I would recommend it anyone that is looking for a something just a little bit different or someone that is looking to give Chuck Palahniuk a shot. show less

Survivor is a fast, interesting read. It maintains a consistent tone and style throughout—sort of good-naturedly nihilistic. Fully half the paragraphs in the book are one-sentence, creating the sense of a fractured but sincere narrative.

The book is structured as a confession, although not of a religious sort, as the last survivor of the Creedish church tells his story to the black box of a doomed aircraft. The cover of the book pitches it as funny and comic, but I mostly found the satire to be consistently doleful and thoughtful. (The final "miracle", however, was hilarious.) Tender Branson, the narrator of Survivor, has almost the exact opposite attitude of the narrator of Ellison’s Invisible Man—he’s perfectly willing to obey show more (without illusion) whoever will tell him what to do as he perversely subsumes his identity to whatever is most convenient at the moment: church, employer, media agency, clairvoyant love interest. His main shame is that he hasn’t committed suicide the way he was supposed to. Although one can argue that his failure to commit suicide is a decision to live, Tender’s choice to live (although how little he takes advantage of his life is an issue) creates an ironic existential crisis that comments on subjects including religion, mortality, blind obedience, sex, marketing, and self-imprisonment.

Survivor didn’t knock me over (somehow it didn't offend me as much as I kept hoping it would?), but it’s an intelligent satire in the mode of Vonnegut, and I can easily recommend it. show less

This story isn't going to turn out to be what you expect by reading the blurb on the back cover--no, the story isn't about a survivor of a plane crash, but the survivor of a religious cult who goes from being a slave to his religious ideology to being the slave of another kind of ideology. Palahniuk takes us along for the bump, painful ride with Tender Branson, painting a bleak commentary about religion, fame, and society.

audio fiction (8hrs, 25 min)
November2023 bingo: airplane on cover
CW/TW: suicidal thoughts/ideation; growing up in a cult (and experiencing all the traumatic abuse that may entail); violence, sexual content, unwanted pregnancy

I hadn't actually read any Palahniuk before, so even though I'd been told his stuff was good, I was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this was. Definite similarities with Fight Club but still a totally separate and distinct story on its own, plenty of dark humor and unexpected curves thrown in, though you could argue that Tender's love interest is flat and only serves to further his storyline. The one part that really felt iffy was the ending where Fertility/Gwen ends up pregnant and acts as though she's got no show more choice but to raise the child--true, she is fatalistic in all she does, having been cursed to know the future her whole life, and it's also true that she doesn't always reveal the truth of what she knows or will do, but the situation and her attitude rubs the wrong way in view of current (2023) events. show less

I've now read everything of Palahniuk's other than Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey. I read Survivor out of sequence because I never saw a copy for sale until recently. I was pleased to read it, because it was significantly better than Haunted, but also saddened because it seemed to confirm my suspicion that Palahniuk's earlier work much fresher and better written.

Told more-or-less forward but counting back down to the opening moment (including reverse page numbering), Survivor is relatively complex and very engaging. Palahniuk engages in some low-key yet profound worldbuilding that is more characteristic of Jonathan Lethem than of Palahniuk's usual style. Palahniuk sometimes has trouble with the balance between depicting his show more protagonist's brutal (and brutalizing) inner narration and evoking empathy for the protagonist and his or her plight. Not so here--the protagonist is both troubling and attractive. Palahniuk might do well to aim for this blend and not, as his more recent books would lead one to believe, for the most outrageous and disgusting extremes of human behavior and experience. show less

Honestly, I didn't expect to feel this book as much as I did. Usually, I read a Chuck Palahniuk book to laugh and/or drop my jaw, but this one made me tear up a lot. In addition to being hilarious and wild, it's also a heck of a commentary on religion, hypocrisy, and what it's like to lose your faith.