Choke

Personal salvation is easy to find with religion. But what if you are a religion unto yourself? What if you are the Son of God? This is the ironically anarchist construct that Chuck Palahniuk creates in his fourth novel, 'Choke,' which has since been adapted into a film that director Gregg Clarke painfully reimagines.

Sticking to the book, the potentially divine protagonist, Victor, suffers from an identity crisis. He contends with his insane mother, Ida, the pretend doctor at the hospital, Paige Marshall, and God, which might be Victor himself (he's not sure), for control over his own identity and destiny.

Victor is a med-school dropout, but only because his mother fell ill and couldn't afford the care she needed. As a result, he works at a theme park that recreates 1734 Colonial Dunsboro as an Irish indentured servant. In order to afford his dying mother's care at the mental facility, St. Anthony's, he also pretends to choke to death at a new restaurant every night. He then waits for that day's poor sap to send in the get-well cards and any accompanying money. While it pays the bills, making a hero out of a stranger also satisfies his scarred psyche.

Victor's best friend is Denny, a chronic masturbator-turned daily rock collector who attends Wednesday sexaholic meetings with Victor. The few seconds of euphoria achieved at orgasm gives Victor his only release from . . . well, life. And that's why he is a sex addict and gets it on with a long list of women, including Nico in the broom closet, bathroom or hallway outside their weekly sexaholic meetings, which Palahniuk goes over in insatiable detail the way a teenager would to his buddies.

Victor allows his addiction to define him because he wants something to hold on to. The neurotic Paige Marshall gives him just that when she tells him his mother's diary says he was conceived with the sacred foreskin of Jesus Christ. Convinced he isn't, Victor tries to become the anti-Christ, applying the mantra, 'What would Jesus NOT do,' to every situation, which makes for great comedy.

The clash between religion and science is evident in the plot, yet only mentioned when Victor and his sex partners occasionally rant that there is nothing beyond this life, no God, no heaven. It is never about right or wrong, but rather the implications of that reality, as perceived by the characters. Unfortunately for Victor, his reality hinges on someone needing him, needing his love, needing his sacrifice, which is another reason he intentionally chokes on his food.

The one person who does need him is his mother; however, she suffers from Alzheimer's and doesn't remember him. Each time he visits, he is somebody else to her; whether it's her old lawyer, Fred Hastings, or the battery of other personalities he has created intricate life stories for, Victor is never himself.

Eventually, every other mental patient at St. Anthony's projects their own unresolved issues onto Victor, who takes all the guilt on his shoulders and admits to every crime and injustice committed against them. He is their messiah. He's just not Victor Mancini; not anymore, he says.

Stylistically, Palahniuk reflects the anarchist overtures of Victor's mom in his writing. Everything is fractured. The innovative author deconstructs paragraphs, sentences and thoughts alike as Ida Mancini deconstructs reality for her son, who really isn't her son, but a child she stole from his foster mom. Because of short stints in jail, she stole him several times, which current day Victor's reflections of reveal why he doesn't want her to recover or die. Oedipal complex isn't the right word, but it's the first that comes to mind ? another mantra that peppers the book.

The fifth and final time she stole Victor back, she picked him up in a rented school bus and they drove off together on the open road. She threw the road map out the window and told him to draw a new map ? his own road map ? and to name the rivers and the mountains something that doesn't yet exist, and he did. The lesson was that he could create the world as he wants it and not to accept things the way they are, something he achieves later in life by pointlessly piling rocks in an empty lot with Denny.

As Ida's only coherent lesson, it both puts a bow on the novel and raises questions about whether her reckless parenting, what Ida would call adventurous, was harmful or instructive on how to live life.

While the payoff is sweet enough, 'Choke' is less about the destination and more about the journey, and it is slapstick, sexually charged and ultimately a clich?d journey that I couldn't get enough of.