Essay About Victor Mancini And Little Bit Of Tom Robbins

Victor Mancini
Essay Preview: Victor Mancini
Report this essay
Victor Mancini is a ruthless con artist. Victor Mancini is a med-school dropout whos taken a job playing an Irish indentured servant in a colonial-era theme park in order to help care for his Alzheimers-afflicted mother. Victor Mancini is a sex addict. Victor Mancini is a direct descendant of Jesus Christ. All of these statements about the protagonist of Choke are more or less true. Welcome, once again, to the world of Chuck Palahniuk. “Art never comes from happiness.” So says Mancinis mother only a few pages into the novel. Given her own dicey and melodramatic style of parenting, you would think that her sons life would be chock-full of nothing but art. Alas, thats not the case. In the fine tradition of Oedipus, Stephen Dedalus, and Anthony Soprano, Victor hasnt quite reconciled his issues with his mother. Instead, hes trawling sexual-addiction recovery meetings for dates and purposely choking in restaurants for a few moments of attention. Longing for a hug, in other words, hes settling for the Heimlich. Thematically, this is pretty familiar Palahniuk territory. It would be a pity to disclose the surprises of the plot, but suffice it to say that what we have here is a little bit of Tom Robbinss Another Roadside Attraction, a little bit of Don DeLillos The Day Room, and, well, a little bit of Fight Club. Just as with Fight Club and the other two novels under Palahniuks belt, we get a smattering of gloriously unflinching sound bites, including this skeptical bit on prayer chains: “A spiritual pyramid scheme. As if you can gang up on God. Bully him around.” Whether this is the novel that will break Palahniuk into the mainstream is hard to say. For a fourth book, in fact, the ratio of iffy, “dude”-intensive dialogue to interesting and insightful passages is a little higher than we might wish. In the end, though, the authors nerve and daring pull the whole thing off–just barely. And whats next for Victor Mancinis creator? Leave the last word to him, declaring as he does in the final pages: “Maybe its our job to invent something better. What its going to be, I dont know.” –Bob Michaels –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.