Pygmy [With Earbuds] Book

CW: rape, violence, racism, sexism, school shooting

This review is going to have spoilers, so feel free to skip if you don't like that.

What the literal fuck? I cannot read this for another second. This book is only 256 pages but it felt like eternity. I only have an hour left of the audiobook but I will not subject myself to this any longer. If I could give this zero stars I would.

The story centers around what I assume to be an Asian spy from a communist country. He comes to the US as a foreign exchange student and everyone refers to him as Pygmy. His actual country of origin is not revealed, but racism is present in abundance and gives you insight into how Pygmy might appear. The fact that I had to figure out what the character looks like based on racial slurs is abhorrent. The story is told in broken English, which not only makes the story hard to follow, but also adds to the whole racist atmosphere of the novel. Even the name Pygmy seems racist because the literal definition of the word is "a member of certain peoples of very short stature in equatorial Africa and parts of Southeast Asia." Also, Pygmy is essentially a terrorist, as his main goal is to go to D.C. and set off a bomb. Harmful stereotype, much?

But don't worry if you thought it couldn't get any worse. This book isn't just racist, it's also sexist. One of Pygmy's other goals is to impregnate an American woman. Pygmy constantly looks observes women as "receptacles for seed" and there is no shortage of slang terms for women's breasts. All of the men in the novel regard women with little to no respect. The American girls are characterized as being loose and slutty. After Pygmy saves the students from a school shooting, multiple girls come up to him, offering him sex.

There are many scenes where I think Palahniuk's only intention was to make the reader uncomfortable. There is an anal rape scene of a bully in chapter two and also a scene where the main character removes a vibrator from his host mother's vagina while she is unconscious. I've never read any other of Palahniuk's books, but I have seen Fight Club, so it doesn't surprise me that he is into shock value. I just thought such a revered author would have more substance. I am surprised that this book was written in 2009. This book just feels like a bunch of tired racist and sexist cliches.

After the anal rape scene, the bully comes to Pygmy begging him to love him. Apparently, the bully has been hiding his sexuality and Pygmy awakened his inner desire for gay love. (WTF???) Pygmy turns him down and this leads the bully to later bring a gun to the school and shoot his classmates. This school shooting felt like a big joke and, in 2018, it wasn't very funny.

This just feels like a book written by a gross nihilist who wants to shock you with how cretinous he can be. I know that some authors use dark topics to prove a point, but this just feels like Palahniuk wrote haplessly with the intent of showing us how Edgyâ„¢ and Against the Grainâ„¢ he is. I understand this book is meant to be satirical, but, I'm sorry, I'm not impressed with a white cis man writing any of this.

If you've ever read a Palahniuk book worth your time, do let me know in the comments. I've heard good things about some of his other books, but I'm hesitant to pick another one up.