 ___________ Clear! Sometimes, just as a tease, I’ll flip to the very last page of the book I’m beginning, and with saccadic eyes scan the page for just one word, one word for my eyes to land on. On the final page of SNUFF my eyes settle on the word defibrillator. So, with no way of knowing how the book will end, the word defibrillator lay dormant in my mind like a puzzle piece waiting to be set in place. “Didn’t one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.” So states one of the many literally numbered men waiting his turn to ejaculate himself into the porn history books by adding to Cassie Wright’s ambitious attempt to perform the most sex acts in a single film shoot. “True Fact” Throughout SNUFF we are pleasured by a constant stream of “true facts” in the form of vividly drawn Hollywood myths and legends. All of which, no matter how gruesome or depraved, we so want to be true. But, the “true facts” are not all of the Hollywood variety. Some are reamed from the history books and some from, SCIENCE! As with the best story that lies in the stories within the stories within the novel that is SNUFF. Page 23: Art in Utero According to Sheila (SNUFF’s most interesting character) there was a British anthropologist who came to believe human beings first masturbate in the womb, a month before birth. (Talk about an oedipal complex!) All I know is, there’s a whole ‘nuther story just waiting in utero, an ink pen in one hand and a penis in the other. Cut! When I was a young man I traveled around shopping malls, flea markets, Kmarts, and many other working-class repositories convincing parents and their children to sit atop a giant plastic unicorn and have their polaroids taken. $10 a pop. Who were the ones that believed having their picture taken steals their soul? Might it be possible the one that takes the picture, loses his soul. My cohort in this venture was a middle-aged artist friend of my father’s who took me under his wing. One morning bright and early, my Yogurt Yanking Yoda awoke me to the pulsating sounds of wa-wa guitars and boom-boom basses. When my eyes adjusted to the light I was swallowed whole by the lovely Miss Linda Lovelace in DEEP THROAT. Followed by one classic after another, after another, after another. Soon, eyes blood-shot and soul-deadened, I began to feel like the foreman of a meat-processing plant, watching the same assembly line on a continuous loop. Over and over. Until. One scene. A freeze-frame frozen in my mind, haunting my memory forever. !!WARNING!! CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ABOUT THE SCENE !!EXPLICIT!! And I think something in the soul-stealing legend got lost in the translation. The person that looks at the picture, loses his soul. SNUFF. SNUFF longs to be a Samuel Beckett play wrapped in candy-colored cellophane. An absurdist family drama. 2 rooms. One a dark and damp basement, the other an artificially lit, air-conditioned film set scented with roses. Separated by a tall, narrow staircase. A conspiracy of death melds the 2 rooms together. Sex & Death. A defibrillator. Mother and Father come together. The End. Review by M.G. Wood
Chuck Palahniuk
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