Author | Chuck Palahniuk |
---|---|
Cover artist | Rodrigo Corral Bob Larkin |
Language | English |
Genre | Satire, Black comedy |
Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | May 22, 2001 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 304 |
ISBN | 0-385-50156-0 |
OCLC | 44905122 |
813/.54 21 | |
LC Class | PS3566.A4554 C47 2001 |
Preceded by | Invisible Monsters |
Followed by | Lullaby |
Choke is a 2001 novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk. [1] The story focuses on Victor, a sex addict and con man [2] who also works at a colonial reenactment museum. [3] The novel was later adapted for film by Clark Gregg. [4] [5]
Choke follows Victor Mancini and his friend Denny through a few months of their lives with frequent flashbacks to the days when Victor was a child. Victor had grown up moving from one foster home to another as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. During his childhood, his mother would kidnap him from his various foster parents, though every time they would eventually be caught and he would again be remanded over to the child welfare agency.
In the present-day setting of the book, Victor has left medical school to support his feeble mother, who is now in a nursing home. In order to pay for elder care for his mother, he resorts to being a con artist. Victor goes to various restaurants and purposely causes himself to choke midway through his meal, luring a "good Samaritan" into saving his life. He keeps a detailed list of everyone who saves him and sends them frequent letters about fictional bills he is unable to pay, causing them to send him money out of sympathy.
Victor works at a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, where most of the employees are drug addicts or, in Denny's case, a fellow recovering sex addict. He spends most of his time on the job guarding Denny (who is constantly being caught with "contraband" items that do not correspond with the time period of the museum) in the stocks. The two met at a sex addiction support group and later applied together for the same job. Denny is later fired from the museum, and begins collecting stones from around the city to build his "dream home".
While growing up, Victor's mother taught him numerous conspiracy theories and obscure medical facts, which both confused and frightened him. This and his constant moves from one home to another have left Victor unable to form lasting and stable relationships with women. As a result, Victor finds himself getting sexual gratification from women on a solely superficial level. Later on, he starts talking to his mother again for the first time in years.
A film adaptation directed by Clark Gregg, starring Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston, was released commercially on September 26, 2008. [4] Palahniuk makes a cameo appearance in the film. [6]
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books, as well as several short stories. His first published novel was Fight Club, which was adapted into a film of the same title.
Choke may refer to:
Survivor is a satirical novel by Chuck Palahniuk, first published in February 1999. The book tells the story of Tender Branson, a member of the Creedish Church, a death cult. The chapters and pages are numbered backwards in the book, beginning with Chapter 47 on page 289 and ending with page 1 of Chapter 1.
Victor B. Cline (1925–2013) was a University of California, Berkeley Ph D in Psychology, a research scientist with the George Washington University’s Human Resources Research Office, and an Emeritus Professor in Psychology at the University of Utah. His private clinical practice was in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Lullaby is a horror-satire novel by American author Chuck Palahniuk, published in 2002. It won the 2003 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 2002.
Sam Rockwell is an American actor. He is known for playing distressed police officer Jason Dixon in Martin McDonagh’s crime drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He was nominated in the same category the following year for portraying George W. Bush in Adam McKay's political satire Vice (2018). In 2019, he portrayed Bob Fosse in the FX biographical miniseries Fosse/Verdon, earning a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award, and in 2022, he received a Tony Award nomination for his performance in the Broadway revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo.
Haunted is a 2005 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The plot is a frame story for a series of 23 short stories, most preceded by a free verse poem. Each story is followed by a chapter of the main narrative, as told by a character in main narrative, and ties back into the main story in some way. Typical of Palahniuk's work, the dominant motifs in Haunted are sexual deviance, sexual identity, desperation, social distastefulness, disease, murder, death, and existentialism.
The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon is a 1991 novel by American author Tom Spanbauer set at the beginning of the 20th century. Told primarily in flashback by its protagonist, a biracial Native American named Out-In-The-Shed, most of the action occurs in the late 19th century in the fictional town of Excellent, Idaho, as Shed grows up, learns about his parents, and falls in love. The work is Spanbauer's second novel.
Robert Clark Gregg Jr. is an American actor, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for playing the original character Phil Coulson in films and television series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from 2008 to 2021. Gregg also voiced Coulson in the animated television series Ultimate Spider-Man (2012–2017) and the video games Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013), Marvel Heroes (2013), and Lego Marvel's Avengers (2016).
Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey is a novel by Chuck Palahniuk released on May 1, 2007. Palahniuk has indicated that Rant is the first in what will become a three-book series.
Snuff is a novel by Chuck Palahniuk that was released on May 20, 2008.
Holy Wood is an unpublished novel by Marilyn Manson, written between 1999 and 2000. Initially envisioned as a companion piece to the album Holy Wood , it remained unreleased after a series of delays, alleged by Manson to have been caused by a "publishing war".
Choke is a 2008 American black comedy film written and directed by Clark Gregg, based on the 2001 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It stars Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. It tells the story of a man who works in a colonial theme park, attends sexual addiction recovery meetings, and intentionally chokes on food in upscale restaurants so his "rescuers" give him money out of sympathy and thus cover his mother's Alzheimer's disease hospital bills.
Pygmy is an epistolary novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It was released on May 5, 2009.
Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It was Palahniuk's first published novel, and follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. The protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups, after his doctor remarks that insomnia is not "real suffering" and that he should find out what it is really like to suffer. The protagonist then meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.
Kelly + Victor is a 2012 romantic drama film written and directed by Kieran Evans, based on Niall Griffiths's 2002 novel of the same name. Starring Antonia Campbell-Hughes and Julian Morris, the film follows a young couple embarking on a passionate love affair. The film won the BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer in 2014. It was released in the United Kingdom on 20 September 2013 by Verve Pictures.
Addicted is a 2014 American erotic thriller drama film directed by Bille Woodruff from a screenplay by Christina Welsh and Ernie Barbarash, based on Zane's novel of the same name. It stars Sharon Leal, Boris Kodjoe, Tasha Smith, Tyson Beckford, Emayatzy Corinealdi, and William Levy. The film was released in the United States on October 10, 2014, by Lionsgate. It received generally negative reviews from critics.
Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread is a collection of short stories published on May 26, 2015, and written by Chuck Palahniuk.
Lidia Yuknavitch is an American writer, teacher and editor based in Oregon. She is the author of the memoir The Chronology of Water, and the novels The Small Backs of Children,Dora: A Headcase, and The Book of Joan. She is also known for her TED talk "The Beauty of Being a Misfit", which has been viewed over 3.2 million times, and her follow-up book The Misfit's Manifesto.
The Narrator is a fictional character and the protagonist and main antagonist of the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club, its 1999 film adaptation of the same name, and the comic books Fight Club 2 and Fight Club 3. The character is an insomniac with a split personality, and is depicted as an unnamed everyman during the day, who becomes the chaotic and charismatic Tyler Durden at night during periods of insomnia.