Heimlich Manure
There’s something to be said about a book that lets you say “waterfall of shit” in a literary context. That “something” is debatable: perhaps “sophomoric,” “vomit-inducing” or “pulp trash.” Or, perhaps that something is “satirical gold.” Chuck Palahniuk’s 2001 novel Choke is more or less all of these rolled into one ejaculate-crusted ball of perfectly-timed, factoid-heavy mindfuck comedy.
The book is about Victor Mancini, a failed medical student and colonial America re-enactor who intentionally chokes on food in restaurants to scam those who help him, who picks up women at sex addict meetings and who may or may not be the son of Christ.
The “waterfall of shit” gives a good feel for the book’s tone. The scene—actually a third-act storyline, so consider it a minor spoiler—is about two rubber balls from a string of anal beads lost in Victor’s intestinal tract. When Victor is given the Heimlich in an interrogation room by a police officer, the food pops out along with the balls, which inevitably causes days of build-up to pour upon the officer like an Indonesian mudslide.
At a cultural level, Palahniuk’s books read like adult versions of Goosebumps; most readers will obsess over a few of them and will consider the rest repetitious trash. That’s not to say Palahniuk never tills new ground. He experiments with form all the time in his fiction such as the oral biography Rant and the Canterbury Tales-inspired Haunted. It’s just that Palahniuk sticks to his tried-and-true guns of deviancy, grotesquery and stark minimalism that’s heavily-peppered with chorus lines.
But before it became repetitious, we had Choke, a gem no film version could accurately depict without being considered a porno. Here’s hoping they aimed for that.
(The film version of Choke was released Sept. 26, starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. Directed by Clark Gregg.)