Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk
Last Thursday Chuck Palahniuk visited Burnaby, BC during his Pygmy tour and I was front row not quite centre for the whole thing! Thanks to Kim for getting up silly early the previous Saturday and standing in line to get the wristbands needed to go to this wondrous event and to Chuck himself for being awesome to his fans!
The event began with a signing of his new release Pygmy. My copy says “To Total Best Comrade Bree” while Kim’s is so much cooler and says “To Most Beautiful Devil Agent Kim”. If you’re curious, the language of the messages mirrors the language used in the book – more on that in a bit. It was while watching Mr. Palahniuk sign approx. 400 books that I realized being awesome requires fantastic wrist muscles.
The signing was followed by an interview, a game and three “bedtime” stories. The interview was hilarious, he told a number of stories about his travels, including the inspiration of Pygmy, and a few about some eccentric fans. I did observe, however, there were a few questions that were never actually answered. The question would be asked and he’d start telling a story that didn’t relate to the question. No one minded however, it was Chuck F***ing Palahniuk! We were just happy to be in his presence.
The “bedtime” stories were his take of the classic Faerytales Goldilocks & the 3 Bears, Hansel & Gretel and Red Riding Hood. Each story was written in the same broken English Pygmy is written in with the same nationalist, anti-American tone. Chuck states “These are stories Pygmy would have be read as a child”. In each story there were the proud citizens of the state – 3 Bears, Witch, Red Riding Hood and the American interloper – Goldilocks, Hansel & Gretel, Wolf. The story would similar to the original, but in all stories the American would get eviscerate by the members of state. It was hilarious!
Chuck Penguins
During all of this, breaks would be taken to play a little game – 3 times in total. Chuck would get out of his chair, move over to a cardboard box to reveal deflated inflatable penguins then proceed to toss them out into the audience. Whomever could blow their penguin up the fastest would win a signed copy of Choke (the movie, not the book). I have to admit, I really didn’t care about the movie. I already watched it and wasn’t that impressed, but getting a autographed Penguin was totally awesome!!
At the end of the event the crowd got on their feet and cheered and I was lucky enough to have him come directly toward me to shake my hand. I started reading Pygmy that night.
I finished it last night.
Now, throughout this post I’ve mentioned the language of the book. Well, the story is about a 13 year old undercover agent who goes to American under the guise of an exchange student. It’s never revealed where Pygmy is from, but you know it is a militaristic anti-American nation that trains their best children to become robotic killing machines. Because Pygmy comes from a non-English speaking nation the book is written from that point of view. Pygmy knows a set number of English words and the challenge of the book is to tell the story using only those words. During the interview Chuck relates the book to his own experience in Germany where he managed to upset a country by mispronouncing the language and from then on has limited himself to words he definitely knows. The dialect, for example, is absent of the words “tomorrow”, “yesterday” & “then”. Instead it would be “next today”, “last today” & “next now”.
It was the language of the book that really caught my attention when I began reading it. At first it was a bit challenging to wrap my brain around the wording, but very quickly I was right there with Pygmy in his world. There were even moments after I stopped reading my brain would still be thinking in the Pygmy dialect. That was neat.
Once you’ve got the language, the story will suck you in. The journey this young boy takes during his stay in American will have you laughing, and cringing until the very end. There are great sentimental moments, great gross Palaniuk moments – the second chapter does not disappoint in this area – and absolutely fantastic story.
My only complaint – from the description of the Jesus statue in the church the thing had to be about 50 feet tall. What normal building could house a 50 ft Jesus? That would have to be the biggest retail outlet, converted into a church EVER!
Tags: Books, Chuck Palahniuk, event
Pygmy sounds super cool, il definitely have to check it out. Also that penguin date picture made my day!