choke
by P
Victor Mancini’s mother is a hell-raiser, a Harold-and-Maude, a wild woman, bad mother, and all around Troublemaker. But she has a lot to tell the world (and her son). I am reading CHOKE by Chuck Palahniuk, off Fightclub fame. Some similarities in the characters and the self-help groups, but this one is meaner. Great book!
Random quotes –
Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and the glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can’t deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can’t be explained and understood.
People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and addressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. On a roller coaster. At a movie. Still, it would always be that faux excitement. You know the dinosaurs aren’t going to eat the kids. The test audiences have outvoted any chance of real disaster, real risk, we’re left with no chance for real salvation. Real elation. Real excitement. Joy. Discovery. Invention.
If you can change the way people think, she said. They way they see themselves. The way they see the world. If you do that, you can change the way people live their lives. And that’s the only lasting thing you create.
At her last trial, before this last time she went to jail, the Mommy had sat up next to the judges and said, “My goals is to be an engine of excitement in people’s lives.”