So, I just finished reading Snuff, the latest book by “Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk. While I felt it was definitely not one of his best books, in comparison to Fight Club or Choke, I thought this would be a great book to review for this site, considering the topic at hand.
Snuff is about an aging porn star, Cassie Wright and her attempt to end her career with a bang, by risking her life doing a 600 man gang bang, porno shoot and what goes on behind the scenes at such an event. The “real world” gang bang record holder, in case you don’t know, is Annabel Chong, who in her 1995 film “The World’s Biggest Gangbang” attempted to do 300, but could only do 251, after being so badly bruised from the pounding, she had to finish off the last remaining participants doing oral, while her crew packed ice between her legs.
Snuff focuses on what’s going through the minds of 4 main characters. Mr 72, a 20 something midwestern adopted guy who thinks he is Cassie’s long lost son, conceived during an accidental cream pie in one of her films, Mr 137, a has been TV star looking to revive his career, Mr 600 a porn actor who was responsible for launching Cassie’s porn career, by drugging her and raping her on camera, and Cassie’s bitter assistant Sheila, who is managing the whole event backstage.
First off, I still don’t know exactly how I felt about this book. It wasn’t good, maybe in comparison to most meaningful fiction, but I found it an interesting, quick read. The story in itself wasn’t what interested me as much as the way the author goes out of his way to describe the atmosphere and activity that goes on backstage at a gang bang as well as half a book full of porn and entertainment related trivia.
Palahniuk goes into great detail about hundreds of slimy, hairy, naked guys with numbers on their arms, walking around on piss and “spray on tan” covered floors, reeking of sweat and cologne, stroking themselves and popping little blue pills to stay hard, all waiting their turn in line for their one minute of fame to dump their load. Subtle lunch spoiling things, such as dudes licking their lips and sticking their greasy, jerk off, BBQ potato chip powder covered hands into the candy and chip bowls filled with half open condoms leaking spermicide. Or how a woman participating in a gang bang could easily die from an embolism (accidental air injected into her blood stream from too much pounding). Did you know that too much Viagra causes nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy, aka blindness?
I guess what I am trying to say is, if you’re really into gang bang porn, you may not want to read this because it may just take away some of the magic. It gives you a brief, but pretty realistic peek into just how fucked up the porn world can be. If nothing else it will make you lose your boner and you’ll probably want to take more showers.
It also got me wondering, is Chuck Palahniuk bored with porn too?
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