Pygmy

The book sort of takes on a Clockwork Orange feel as far as writing style, where nothing is explicitly written (plenty is explicit). I am afraid that it is a bit difficult to expand much on any issues with the book without spoiling it too much. What I can say is that, with a lot of Palahniuk's books, a lot of the issues I take with them are rooted in the fact that often times it seems like he doesn't end a book in a proportionate manner in which the rest of the book was written. In other words, the book can captivate you to the point where you cannot put it down (or wait to pick it back up again), to have an anti-climactic ending that doesn't truly match the energy of the book. It definitely had it's moments, but there seemed to be too many unanswered questions pertaining to the storyline.

While Chuck Palahniuk's PYGMY clocks in at 241 pages in the hardback edition, it reads like a short story, launching the reader directly into its world without warning, careening rapidly towards its conclusion and ending abruptly. It is richly detailed with linguistic tricks, that often read like poetry, to amuse the reader. It's pages are blotted with black censorship scars which, while superficial, still amuse. It has been rounded out with chapters that include the back story and training of the narrator, while an action-packed drama with martial arts and espionage is played out in linear time. An observant American reader, having completed this book, is left with the glow of a new terrorist fantasy to worry about and the acute paranoid question, "Do they really think Americans are like that?". While most reviews have centered upon this story as a cynical portrayal of America, it should probably be better viewed as a cynical portrayal of the "perception of America by the outside world", which is a very timely subject and, not surprisingly, territory for GREAT humor. This is a paranoid, self-conscious American nightmare deeply rooted in the American image problem. PYGMY is a brilliant modern work of humor that is a darkly cynical narrative of American paranoia, wrapped in the most unlikely "coming of age" story you will ever read. It is written entirely in minimalistic "Chinglish" sentences by a (probably North Korean) teenaged boy who has been transplanted to an unspecified mid-western American city to perform grass-roots acts of terrorism and topple the American way of life. With his head-full of anti-American propaganda, memorized quotations of histories greatest tyrants, communists and subversives, his brainwashed perceptions of traditional American high school culture, and his scientific understanding (or lack of understanding) of sex and sexuality, the youthful PYGMY embarks on the ill-fated mission he has trained for his entire life. And it is totally hysterical. Over the years I've read every Palahniuk novel, some of them several times and Invisible Monsters is still my favorite, and I look forward to each new work. PYGMY surprised me. It is the most compact/minimalistic prose and funniest book that CP has written to date. The Palaniuk hallmarks of a modern fantasy with sexual absurdity, anti-commercialism, obsessive-compulsive technical details, blatant disregard for social sensitivity, violence, and grotesquery are all employed in this book. It comes up short on including detailed human dynamics and the evolution of human emotions that are other hallmarks of Palaniuk stories, but the reader has to remember that the book only consists of the missives (called "dispatches") sent back to the homeland by "agent number 67" following military directives. And that is why this book works and what makes it so different. The literary trick of the novel being only "letters" written home by a exchange student frees the author to use colloquial

as with a lot of people, I would just like to say that once you get used to the style, it becomes a great story. It only took me a couple chapters, then it began to flow well. This story definitely goes into my top 3 for Palahniuk.

This book is wildly unrealistic and over the top, and personally, I loved it. The writing style is more unusual than it is unreadable, and I didn't find it at all difficult to get through. If anything, this book is better than Palahniuk's others for putting a mirror up to American culture and saying, "Hey look, guys! I can write a book that involves murder, rape, pedophilia, sodomy, abortion, drugs, teenage sex, school shootings, and the destruction of Washington D.C., and what are you bothered by most?! Bad grammar."

I was skeptical when I first found out how 'Pygmy' was written. By about the tenth dispatch, however, I was totally captivated by the story and found myself loving the way Palahniuk wrote this novel. I wouldn't call this an easy read, but it was definately a fun one. 'Pygmy' is now one of my favorite Chuck Palahniuk novels.