Reviews for Pygmy [With Earbuds]

The average rating for Pygmy [With Earbuds] based on 2 reviews is 1 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-11-21 00:00:00 Amy Naramore May 2009 Begins here account of reader me, Agent Jacob, located rural area _____, date _____. For official record, here review novel "Pygmy," tenth fictional account written master of mediocrity Chuck Palahniuk, borrowed community literature repository of city _____. Pygmy novel written strange style, uneducated broken English like dumb child. Much time reading, but eventual comprehension. Still not like. Other authors try, much mocking critics. However Chuck much genius, many hipsters want fellate, so this voice narrative much celebrated. Reader me...oh, fuck it, I can't go on like this. There's no way I'm writing an entire review in the same stupid gimmicky voice Chucky P. uses in his latest crapfest. I suppose I have to give the man credit for maintaining this charade for 241 fucking pages, coming up with new and exciting and mostly tired ways to poke fun at American institutions, but that's all the credit he gets. Ooh, his narrator speaks in hideously broken English, what a novelty. It reminds me of Rant, in a way: the only way Chuck can keep recycling his favorite nihilist-outsider-rebel-type-infiltrates-and-subverts-system storyline and not get called out on it is to change his style: on one hand, we have a jumbled and distracting oral biography, on the other, a jumbled and distracting game of let's-mock-the-foreigner. It doesn't help that our English-challenged narrator, an undercover terrorist agent shipped to America in the guise of a foreign exchange student, is supposed to be a super genius, the best of the best, having memorized the periodic table and other things by the time he was four (we know this because he lists the elements, in good ol' Chuck fashion, periodically--ha!--throughout the book), yet he somehow can't grasp the workings of a second language. Better reviewers have already commented on this, but the way I see it, this is just Chuck trying and failing to make astute and ironic observations about America by giving everything a funny description: Church is a religion propaganda distribution outlet, classes are structured compulsory education sessions, Wal-Mart is a retail product distribution facility, etc. etc. The jokes feel old before they even shuffle off the page, but luckily Chuck manages to fill in the rest of the book with even more wit and insight: Americans are fat and stupid, ha-ha! Teenaged girls are promiscuous! Flowers resemble genitalia, giggity-giggity. And there are many exciting and fascinating names for breasts--almost as many, say, as there are fun porn movie titles and slang terms for masturbation, eh, Chuck? And now for a quote from Hitler! How droll. There really isn't anything else to say about the book: without the narrative style, which starts to feel tired and forced after the tenth page, this isn't anything new: Chuck took an idea with potential--a novel about America told from the observations of someone sent to destroy it--but watered it down with weak jokes about vibrators, shallow and faceless (but quirky!) characters, a violent male-on-male rape (in the second chapter, probably a personal gross-out record for Chucky Boy) and plenty of other bits of name-brand Pahlaniukshock!™, and mixed it with one of his weakest endings ever. Had this been written with his usual Fight Club/Survivor/Diary/Snuff narrative voice, no one would give a shit. At least, it wouldn't feel so pretentious. EDIT: Apologies for those first two paragraphs. This guy did it better.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-09 00:00:00 Terje G. Simonsen 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 Edgy™ and Against the Grain™ 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.