NSN: Not So News: The World as it Could Be

NSN Propaganda - Media Against Society - Authors:
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The books that these authors create are not evil, they do not purposefully set out to change your mind set. They merely exploit things that people miss as they carry about their lives, they show us problems in places we would never expect them.

1. Chuck Palahniuk

"Palahniuk's real skill however, is his ability to pack subtext into every little phrase and loop. Rattling about beneath the surface are themes of isolation, identity, free will and false security. Those loops and repetitions aren't just there for show, however -- they have something to say about the plot itself as well as the themes. Palahniuk's built a very clever maze here. Most readers will find themselves going from beginning to end and back to the beginning"

Works:
Choke
Fight Club
Survivor
Invisible Monsters

Choke:

Review:
"Caustic" isn't the right word, but its the only one that comes to mind. From the author of "fight club", "survivor" and "invisible monsters", choke is "a stupid story about a stupid little boy," or so says the first chapter. Victor mancini emerges from a childhood of searing terror and wonder under the tutelage of a deranged and extremely socially conscious mother. His adulthood is the story of Victor as drop-out med student, a paid employee of historical re-enactment and a sexaholic.
Victor supports his mother’s institutional living costs with self-employment of a most unusual kind: choking. The idea is to be rescued while choking and the benefactor will feel responsible (economically) for the well-being of the victim for the rest of their life. The sub-stories that unfold around victor's life and conception are surprising.
P alahniuk's prose is sharp, rhythmical and weighted. Palahniuk has all the makings for a cult hero. Choke explores adulthood, sex and the anti-hero in a satirical, humorous way. "Funny" isn't the right word, but it's the only one that comes to mind.
Review by Mary Abshire

Survivor:

Review:
The messy plot of Survivor (the second book by the author of the cult novel Fight Club) is redeemed by surreally outrageous satire. As Survivor begins, our hero, Tender Branson, has hijacked a plane that he intends to crash into the Australian outback. By the end of the book, one can hardly blame him. In chapters and pages numbered backward, we follow Branson from his childhood in a death cult through a period of loneliness after the cult commits suicide and into cynical superstardom as a kind of guru/ evangelist. Palahniuk throws way too much into this brief novel, including a Kevorkianesque suicide hotline and a murderous twin brother. Nevertheless, there's real brilliance in the tension between his faux-innocent language and the wry nihilistic bleakness of his protagonist's gaudy odyssey.
Review by Michelle Goldberg

Invisible Monsters:

Review:
Chuck Palahniuk, author of "Fight Club," just doesn't look at the world like most people, and he doesn't cut his readers any slack. His characters are complicated and their lives disturbing. If you are looking for light entertainment and a storybook ending, avoid Palahniuk at all costs. If you want to be challenged by re-examining estimations of beauty and ugliness, dissecting the complications of gender and relationships, and meet characters you aren't sure whether to hate or sympathize with, then read his work. It's as satisfying as something you know you really shouldn't eat, but it's just too good not to.

Watching her friend-enemy bleed to death, a woman whose name you shouldn't know unless you read the book says, "It's not that I am detached lab animal conditioned to ignore violence, but my first inclination is maybe it's not to late to dab club soda on the bloodstain… What I tell myself is that shotgunning anyone in this room would be the moral equivalent of killing a car, a vacuum cleaner, a Barbie doll. Erasing a computer disk. Burning a book. Perhaps that goes for killing anybody in the world. We're all such products."
by Carla Field