Pygmy (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Palahniuk's 10th novel (after Snuff) is a potent if cartoonish cultural satire that succeeds despite its stridently confounding prose. A gang of adolescent terrorists trained by an unspecified totalitarian state (the boys and girls are guided by quotations attributed to Marx, Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.) infiltrate America as foreign exchange students. Their mission: to bring the nation to its knees through Operation Havoc, an act of mass destruction disguised as a science project. Narrated by skinny 13-year-old Pgymy, the propulsive plot deconstructs American fixtures, among them church (religion propaganda distribution outlet), spelling bees (forced battle to list English alphabet letters) and TV news reporters (Horde scavenger feast at overflowing anus of world history), before moving on to a Columbine-like shooting spree by a closeted kid who has fallen in love with the teenage terrorist who raped him in a shopping mall bathroom. Decoding Palahniuk's characteristically scathing observations is a challenge, as Pygmy's narrative voice is unbound by rules of grammar or structure (a typical sentence: Host father mount altar so stance beside bin empty of water), but perseverance is its own perverse reward in this singular, comic accomplishment. (May)
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From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jeff VanderMeer Sloppy yet smart, Chuck Palahniuk's "Pygmy" veers from sublimely ridiculous to just plain ridiculous, sometimes within a single paragraph. An infiltrating agent from a nameless authoritarian country, Pygmy poses as a high school exchange student and joins the Midwestern family of Donald Cedar. "Host father," as Pygmy calls him, works for the Radiological Institute of Medicine and has access to biotoxins. Pygmy and his fellow undersize operatives hope to unleash a biochemical Operation Havoc on an unsuspecting United States. Much of the novel's demented comedy derives from Pygmy's clipped syntax, as when he asks an aging Wal-Mart greeter: "Revered soon dying mother, distribute you ammunitions correct for Croatia-made forty-five-caliber, long-piston-stroke APS assault rifle?" It's a very funny line, but I can't figure out what it has to do with running a covert biochemical operation. Brutal flashbacks to Pygmy's rigid indoctrination also sit uneasily next to sections of broad farce that, one could argue, consist mainly of extended vibrator-based monologues. Even worse, just about every adult in the novel acts like an idiot to advance the plot, from the boob of a host father to the priest who (quelle surprise!) sleeps with underage girls. Throughout, Palahniuk displays such a lust for profane jokes that he's willing to sacrifice logic for them. That's a shame, because Palahniuk is brilliant at juxtaposing Pygmy's insane background with the madness of contemporary Western society. From school dances to gym dodge ball, the novel mercilessly, sometimes with rote, joyless precision, takes the reader through the gamut of high school life while Pygmy works on activating Operation Havoc. Pleasures along the way include a model U.N. summit staged by the students that features some of the author's finest satire, with observations like this: "Operative Chernok as delegate Italy sucking the earlobe of lady delegate Venezuela" and an unforgettable pledge by Pygmy to "make available own cherished American children, ship overseas as lifelong chattel slaves, gesture shown of goodwill." Still, it's another great scene sacrificed to the novelist's lack of discipline. A climax at the national science fair seems right out of a made-for-TV movie and rushes to a sentimental ending Pygmy doesn't truly deserve; this is, after all, an agent who brutally raped a boy who bullied him. Maybe Palahniuk isn't capable of doing more with Pygmy's great voice than using it to strike a series of grotesquely comic poses, or maybe I'm just partially immune to the pleasures of a novel that features a thousand slang terms for "breasts." Either way, "Pygmy" could've done with fewer vibrator jokes and more ripping out of jugulars.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; First Edition, First Printing edition (May 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385526342
• ISBN-13: 978-0385526340
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,495 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

128 of 152 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I hardly know what to say ..., May 5, 2009

By	Nicole Del Sesto (Northern Cal) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First, if you've never read a Palahniuk, I don't recommend starting here.

Second, I am Palahniuk fan. Not a die-hard, but I've read all the books except Snuff, and many are favorites. I love Chuckie P. I love the mood his books create; his unique point of view; sense of humor; and particularly his typical writing style.

I rushed out to get this book because I was so excited about it. The concept, the premise, sounded amazing. I've gotten to page 100, and unfortunately, I can't make myself go on.

I get that he wanted to do something different with this book, but the writing is so convoluted, that I am just not enjoying it.

Here's an example: "Location former chew gum, chocolate snack, salted chips of potato, current now occupy with cylinder white paraffin encase burning string, many tiny single fire."

I thought it might be like A Clockwork Orange, where it takes you a bit to get into the flow of the writing, and once you do it's great. And I'm sure a lot of people will ultimately feel this way about the book. For me, it was too much work and not enough payoff. If there was humor, I completely missed it.

If you are interested in this book, I definitely suggest reading the first chapter which is posted on Amazon before purchasing it. It's written in the same style throughout, so if that style works for you, it may turn out to be a highly entertaining read. It just didn't work for me.

37 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Weird, convoluted, and tough to read. That said, fun!, May 5, 2009

By	Bill Oakes "bill_o" (NorCal USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is NOT an easy book to read. That's a definite. The writing style is, to say the least, VERY interesting. Convoluted. Weird. Just downright strange.

But the story is intriguing. And while I was hoping after each chapter that the writing would be a bit more normalized in the next chapter, nonetheless, I kept reading. I had NO idea, at the end of each chapter, where in the hell this story was going. It's not often (with the exception of DeMille) that I'll sit down and read a book in one sitting. And yet, it happened with Pygmy.

So what we have is a VERY strange read, with a VERY well crafted story, told in a VERY different way. I liked it.

Oh...and some of the lines in it had me absolutely rolling. It's easy to see where a recent immigrant from an un-named country in the Pacific (read...China) could see porn as video instruction manuals that consistently fail in its premise of impregnating women. Or that jr HS dances were American pre-mating rituals. Hysterical stuff.

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worth it., May 15, 2009

By	Ashley Loza - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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."