Based on the book

Last week­end, we met to dis­cuss Invis­i­ble Mon­sters. Only five peo­ple showed up, but that was under­stand­able.  Sunday’s snow was mov­ing in, and a few peo­ple were sick as well.  We ate junk food while dis­cussing the new things we’d learned from the book about plas­tic surgery, sex change oper­a­tions, and parental aban­don­ment.   While not every­one really loved the book, we all found it inter­est­ing.  Dis­cussing the dif­fer­ent grades of vagino­plasty over straw­ber­ries and pizza was def­i­nitely a new expe­ri­ence for me.

After­wards, we watched Choke, based on another of Palahniuk’s nov­els.  Every­one had already seen Fight Club, after all.  As I men­tioned in the com­ments for the pre­vi­ous post, Choke is the book that won me to enjoy­ing Chuck Palah­niuk.   It is writ­ten from the per­spec­tive of Vic­tor Mancini, a sex­ual com­pul­sive who dropped out of med­ical school to pay to keep his mother in an expen­sive nurs­ing home.  Dur­ing the day, he works locally in a setup sim­i­lar to our local Amer­i­can Vil­lage. His real liv­ing, and the name of the novel, comes from his scam artistry at local restau­rants.  Dur­ing the ten sec­onds the movie was out in 2008, I looked every­where for it locally, but never found it listed.  If it did make the cut, it must not have been for very long, and it cer­tainly never made it to the dol­lar the­ater.  I espe­cially enjoyed watch­ing Anjel­ica Hus­ton play Vic­tor Mancini’s mom.

I also decided on next month’s book.  Due to eco­nomic and polit­i­cal cli­mates right now, I had con­sid­ered Atlas Shrugged.  We’ve been hav­ing an issue with peo­ple find­ing time to read, though, and Ayn Rand does go on a bit longer than nec­es­sary at times.  I also thought about Ender’s Game or The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Clas­sic Tale of True Love and High Adven­ture, but I’ve already read both of them.   I also con­sid­ered Lolita by Nabakov and Tru­man Capote’s Break­fast at Tiffany’s because I should have read them already.  (Plus, the Sein­field episode where George goes to all that work not to sim­ply read the book is one of my favorites.  So typ­i­cal of how many peo­ple would do any­thing not to have to read!)

Finally, I set­tled on A Clock­work Orange. The book has been nom­i­nated sev­eral times for a Prometheus Award, put out by the Lib­er­tar­ian Futur­ist Soci­ety to pro­mote lib­er­tar­ian sci­ence fic­tion.  Last year it won their Hall of Fame Award.  More­over, I love the Stan­ley Kubrick movie, though on my first watch I was hor­ri­fied at the vio­lence and the fact that I empathized with Alex, even a tiny bit.  It was chill­ing and thought-provoking, and the sec­ond time through I was able to watch it while know­ing what was com­ing next, see­ing the bril­liance of the movie.  We will def­i­nitely have plenty to dis­cuss, both here and when my group meets to dis­cuss it.