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

[juushika]

Title: Not Forever, But For Now
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: Simon & Schuster, 2023
Rating: 1.5 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 558,785
Text Number: 2103
Read Because: again Isa frereamour's non-definitive gay incest book list, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The problem with dialing everything to max volume is that it just becomes the new baseline. Even when it's a family of codependent homosexual incestuous assassins; even then. Interesting to read between the stylized repetition and edgy content for theme or unreliable narration; but, on the whole, this is surprisingly boring.

(Didn't mention this on Goodreads because it's the least useful comparison of all time, but the only other place I've so consistently seen the "this one goes up to eleven" deadening effect was Tokyo Ghoul. It feels particularly striking as I've been reading a lot of Porpentine Charity Heartscape lately, who's turning the volume up to shrimp colors, and yet never has this deadening effect. All three operate and succeed/fail differently; Not Forever has extensive stylistic repetition alongside the content, so doubles down on same-ness; Tokyo Ghoul has a variety of content but fails to moderate its tone to suit content, so stubbing one's toe and doing a cannibalism elicit equal emotion registers; Heartscape is highly stylized but specific and modulates tone, more often laterally than vertically: everything oversized, sized to eclipse these other comparisons, but what & how varying greatly.)

Comments

[starshipfox]

I've never thought of Palahniuk writing anything other than 'Fight Club,' but of course he did. Interesting to read this review -- the concept sounds so cool, yet I can see why it wouldn't work.

[juushika]

He's so prolific! He has great titles and I would probably dig the summaries/content of a lot of his books! I now want to read approximately zero of them.