R O V I V R U S

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk is sort of a dark comedic outlook on death. This is a theme that's very appealing to me because I don't like to think about death, but when taken in a comedic light, I can deal with it easily. This novel wasn't as funny as Choke, but I still enjoyed reading it.

"Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult - is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid and collagen packed media messiah."

The pages and chapters are numbered backwards which, at first, threw me off and prevented me from knowing how many pages I read in a day or where was the halfway point. But it's an commitment to the entire aesthetic of the book. In my experience most stories that start with the end and go back to tell you how it happened, usually number their pages like a regular linear book. I think Survivor being numbered backwards added to the disorientation and odd tone of the novel. As I kept reading, seeing the pages count down reminded me of counting down for Christmas, my birthday or a special day in which I can't wait. I couldn't wait to find out how Survivor ended and the pages numbers were my countdown.

Reading Survivor always kept me on my toes. It was majorly unpredictable. I couldn't tell what was going to happen next; the element of surprise was very potent. I love a novel that always keeps me guessing. Although Survivor was pretty unpredictable, there wasn't a clear twist that I could identify.

Tender Branson really reminded me of the narrator in Lullaby. Both of them seemed to be cursed, had a dark outlook on life and society, and death and loneliness were main roles in their lives. I sympathized more with the narrator in Survivor than in Lullaby because in Survivor Branson is the butt of a joke told by fate. He never asked to be where he ended up, fate brought him there and he had no choice. In Lullaby, the narrator knew what he was doing, he wasn't born into knowing the culling song would kill people and he didn't seem too broken up about it even though he set out to end the culling song. 

Tender Branson was in a sort of twisted Amish like society. The Amish are already twisted, but in Survivor the Amish like society had that Chuck Palahniuk twist to it. That twist being Branson was part of a cult. The Amish are basically a cult, in my humble opinion. Branson is not Amish, but he's part of a church group, the Creedish, that might be consider Amish in the real world.

Less than midway through Survivor, I thought I had skipped a whole chapter because I became confused about what was happening at that point. It might have been because I finished a chapter and didn't read the following chapter until the next day. As I read more I realized I didn't miss anything. Survivor is not a linear story, it's told mostly in flashback. This might be confusing because the flashbacks start from the very, very beginning. Branson is not just telling you how he got to where he is starting from the beginning of the day, he's telling you everything, starting from his humble beginning. He's recounting the events that led up to him hijacking the plane.

Towards the end of Survivor, it got funnier. I still felt sorry for Tender Branson, but what he was saying and doing were too hilarious. 

Survivor was supposed to get turned into a film, but they stopped it after September 11th happened. Branson hijacks a plane which is now an extremely sensitive subject in America. I understand and respect that, but there are still films being made about terrorists, rape and murder which are aslo sensitive subjects. Maybe not to an entire nation, but to people in that nation. I think they stopped projection on Survivor because it's not a F*ck Yeah America dramatic film like Zero Dark Thirty(2012) or United 93(2006). It's a dark comedy in which a media messiah/"terrorist"/ex-cult member controls a nation. I wonder if they'll start the project back. Survivor could easily be rewritten where he robs a bank or something "simple" like that. Branson is travelling so maybe instead of hijacking a plane, he could try to take over a bus. You know one of those coach buses that go crosscountry. I wish I could write the script, but I think since Fight Club (1999) came out, all of Palahniuk's novels have been bought by studios, even the ones he has yet to write. After finishing Survivor, I want so badly for it to be a film again. I think it'd be so funny. There's no film I've seen like it. Survivor needs to be a film.

I might have to read Survivor again. I liked it, but it didn't evoke as much emotion as other Palahniuk novels evoke. Maybe if I talk about it with someone like I did with The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, I'll understand it. But I think I'd rather just see it be made into a film.

I felt pretty blasé when I finished Survivor; I guess because I knew what was going happen. I think I wanted it to end differently instead of ironically.

Go ahead and check out Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk.