#311 Zombies- Chuck Palahniuk

#311 Zombies- Chuck Palahniuk

The world has gotten so messed up, the Kardashians and the Baldwins are breeding uncontrollably and the smartest kids in school are seeking an out. Not suicide but de-evolution, a way to take the “great leap backwards.”

They achieve this “Brain trauma nirvana” by taking the ubiquitous wall defibrillators and zapping themselves back to a happy, drooling-idiot phase where childish ignorance and no responsibilities will haunt them anymore.

Unlike the animals, humans have the stain of misery and sadness, the consciousness to contemplate life and death. “To be or not to be. God’s greatest gift to animals is they don’t get a choice.”

And in a world quickly turning into a cartoon factory farce—“No offense to Jesus, but the meek won’t inherit the earth. To judge from reality TV the loudmouths will get their hands on everything”—why not choose ignorant bliss?

Palahniuk has a long history of writing about extreme social reaction to modern triviality. He takes an inevitable human response to a logical, but single-minded, end-game to the point that we’re all staring at ourselves in a fun-house mirror, usually giving us a bit of hope at the end.

Notable Passage: “It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up whatever you’re trying to say.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#160 Panikhida- Anton Chekhov

#160 Panikhida- Anton Chekhov

This could be both a satire of religion and conformity or one on the conformity of religion. Andrei Andreich gets in hot water with Father Grigory when he misuses a passage in the bible about Mary Magdalene.

“Don’t get too clever! Yes, brother, don’t get too clever! God may have given you a searching mind, but if you can’t control it, you’d better give up thinking…Above all don’t get too clever, just think as others do.”

He has just lost his daughter. They were separated for most of her life and do not know each other. When she visited once as an adult he was embarrassed to find she had become a low-moral actress, a famous actress so far removed from his religious life that he likened her to the harlot in the bible needing redemption upon her death.

“Terrified though he was of going for a stroll with his actress daughter in broad daylight, in front of all honest people, he yielded to her entreaties…”

The Father and the Deacon help perform a ritual, a Panikhida, for his daughter, but it is actually him that needs redemption.

Notable Passage: "Bluish smoke streams from the censer and bathes in a wide, slanting ray of sunlight that crosses the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seems that, together with the smoke, the soul of the departed woman herself hovers in the ray of sunlight. The streams of smoke, looking liker a child’s curls, twist, rush upwards to the window and seem to shun the dejection and grief that fill this poor soul.”

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total= 24