Houston Southard

Chuck Palahniuk - not forever, but for now

I'd follow Chuck into the gates of hell if there was one, but this is one of the few tales where he trolled a tad too hard.

His ability to get under society’s skin through pitch black parody and commentary on hidden subcultures has sustained a singularly storied career. This one was a brutal experiment where two siblings compete to take over the family business, a decades’ worth of murders and sex crimes. A power struggle within a family of serial killers over their future’s direction.

The siblings are willing to tear down the world and get drunk on delusion in order to stay together and avoid the inevitability of adulthood. There’s a toxic nature to them, one as teacher, the other as student, as in many of Palahniuk’s stories, as they orbit one another and critique masculinity, queer culture, and high society. 

They spend their days lost in recreations of their grandfather’s past instead of forging their own stories. The ultimate example of legacy and being destined to repeat the sins of the past, graduating in a shakespearean war. They plot to kill their grandfather, while he does the same and tries to pit them against each other.

Most of their time is spent comparing low-status people and one-percenters to prey and predators, believing execution of the weak is the greatest form of fealty. It's a hannibal thesis on the public’s disdain for entitled one-percenters who feel they don’t just run the world, but have the power to casually change it on a whim.

It's painted as a symbiosis between humanity and existence where people are the toxin-consuming belly-feeders who soak up corruption so that the world is safe for the next generation of narcissists. An egotistical circle of life that looks like a noose, culminating in the launch of a predatory app where the middle-class gain the “privilege” to do themselves in instead of something purely experienced by the one-percenters. It's "The Lottery" reinterpreted as a social media influencer millennial.

This is still an ultra-timely story that holds a funhouse mirror up to modern society, but it’s not the comeback novel that many fans are hoping it will be. The lull won't last. Not forever, but for now.