Book Review: "Not Forever But For Now" by Chuck Palahniuk

robertmcgrath

Oct 1

Not Forever But For Now by Chuck Palahniuk

Palahniuk just keeps coming at us. The cover blurbs compare him to Vonnegut and Poe, which I I'm not going to do. But I am going to praise his latest.

While Not Forever isn't my favorite (I think I liked Damned (2013) and Doomed (2013) better), it's yet another story I hated but couldn't stop reading.

Look. Palahniuk holds up a mirror to our contemporary world. The worse we all behave, the worse it looks in Palahniuk's novels. That's all there is to it.

We've been acting pretty horribly recently, so Palahniuk's novels are getting more, well Palahniuk-ian. (Adjustment Day, Invention of Sound, and now Not Forever--the trend is definitely spiraling down).

Not Forever But For Now is a story about an amazingly horrible family, from the viewpoint of an amazingly horribly abused and amazingly horrible young man. Cecil is mad in many dimensions, and we are made to understand and even slightly sympathize with his madness.

Cecil is a wicked little boy, grown to be a wicked young man. But it is an innocent wickedness, and some of his victims surely deserve what he gives them.

But still. This is not an innocent book, and not a healthy bit of entertainment.

Palahniuk never is.

Bad attitude, Palahniuk is thy name.

The worst thing is that some people seem to take Palahniuk as an inspiration and instruction, not as satire and shamiing. Just as Fight Club has generated a whole culture, ideas spouted by the lunatics in this novel will surely show up in various forms on the Internet and in the wilder corners of politics. Like we really need more paranoid conspiracy theories about the decline of masculinity.

Sigh.

But, unlike real world conspiracy theorists, Palahniuk's visions are actually darkly humorous and even humane. We feel sorry for the dangerously crazy people, because they are so clearly people. Twisted, damaged, lonely people. And I think that's why I keep reading.