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Choke
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Choke (2001) (edit title/settings)

by Chuck Palahniuk (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons... read more

Summary edit see section history

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. He had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. Several times throughout his childhood,... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

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. He had grown up moving from one foster home to another, as his mother was found to be unfit to raise him. Several times throughout 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 governmental child welfare agency.

In the present day setting of the book, Victor is now a man in his mid-twenties who left medical school in order to find work to support his feeble mother who is now in a nursing home. He cannot afford the care that his mother is receiving so he resorts to being a con man. He consistently goes to various restaurants and purposely causes himself to choke mid-way 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. The people feel so sorry for him that they send him cards and letters asking him about how he's doing and even continue to send him money to help him with the bills. He works at a re-enactment museum set in colonial times, where most of the employees are drug-addicts or, in his friend Denny's case, a fellow recovering sex addict. Most of the time Palahniuk spends describing Victor's job, Victor is guarding his friend Denny in the stocks (who is constantly caught with "contraband", items that don't correspond with the time period of the museum). Victor first met Denny at a sexual addiction support group (he was there as a guy who masturbates too much), and they later applied together to the same job.

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. Victor looked up to a man he saw on a porn site because he knew exactly what he wanted, and decided that he had enough of something he would never need it, ergo if he was loved by enough people he would never need to love anyone. Victor therefore finds himself getting sexual gratification from women in sexual addiction support groups.

Characters edit see section history

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “I do this, this, because it feels good...Maybe I don't really know why I do it. In a way, this is why they execute killers. Because once you've crossed some lines, you just keep crossing them.”
  • “I just want one person I can rescue. I want one person who needs me. Who can't live without me. I want to be a hero, but not just one time. Even if it means keeping her crippled, I want to be someone's constant savior.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “So be the aggressive victim, the big loser. A professional failure. People will just through hoops if you just make them feel like a god. It's the martyrdom of Saint Me.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel so strong. You save people by letting them save you.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “Get through the moment. Avoid confrontation. Run away. That's pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our own attention. Jacking off. Denial.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “The hook is you can't just save somebody's life one time... The same as real life, there no is happily ever after...These people sending money, they're paying for heroism in installments.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own. I used rebellion as a way to hide out. We use criticism as a fake participation. It only looks as if we've accomplished something.”
    Ida Mancini
  • “Parenthood is the opiate of the masses!”
    Ida Mancini
  • “I'm tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy. I mean, how many times can everybody tell you that you're the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy. I mean, a male chauvinist pig isn't born, he's made, and more and more of them are being made by women.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “I'm terrified of losing her, but if I don't, I may lose myself.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “every time we burn a gallon of gas or an acre of rain forest, aren't we killing the future to preserve the present?”
    Victor Mancini
  • “I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything...I wish, just once, I could say, "This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it."”
    Ida Mancini
  • “Those who remember the past tend to get the story really screwed up.”
    Paige
  • “In my opinion, those who remember the past are paralyzed by it.”
    Ida Mancini
  • “What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “If it comes down to a choice between being unloved and being vulnerable and sensitive and emotional, then you can just keep your love.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “I spent my life attacking everything because I was too afraid to risk creating anything...”
    Ida Mancini
  • “Denny says, the longer we can keep building, the longer we can keep creating, the more will be possible. The longer we can tolerate being incomplete. Delay gratification.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “This is about a process. This isn't about getting something done.”
    Victor Mancini
  • “And there's no escaping from constant escape. Distracting ourselves. Avoiding confrontation. Getting past the moment. Jacking off. Television. Denial”
    Victor Mancini
  • “The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.”
    Ida Mancini
  • “Without access to true chaos, we'll never have true peace.”
    Ida Mancini
  • “Unless everything can get worse, it won't get any better.”
    Ida Mancini
  • “Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only if you choose to suffer.”
  • “It's funny how when somebody saves you, the first thing you want to do is save other people.”
  • “Sometimes a euphemism is more true than what it's supposed to hide.”
  • “You can't deny the goodness of your true nature. It's shining for everyone to see.”
    Mrs. Tsunimitsu
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • How torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.
    Highlighted by 194 Kindle customers
  • You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel so strong. You save people by letting them save you.
    Highlighted by 186 Kindle customers
  • We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heros or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it’s our job to invent something better.
    Highlighted by 174 Kindle customers
  • Without access to true chaos, we’ll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won’t get any better.
    Highlighted by 161 Kindle customers
  • “Anything you can acquire,” she says, “is only another thing you’ll lose.”
    Highlighted by 153 Kindle customers
  • What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
    Highlighted by 139 Kindle customers
  • Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and the glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can’t deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can’t be explained and understood.
    Highlighted by 134 Kindle customers
  • Even after all that rushing around, where we’ve ended up is the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. And maybe knowing isn’t the point. Where we’re standing right now, in the ruins in the dark, what we build could be anything.
    Highlighted by 104 Kindle customers
  • “In my opinion, those who remember the past are paralyzed by it.”
    Highlighted by 103 Kindle customers
  • The magic of sex is it’s acquisition without the burden of possessions. No matter how many women you take home, there’s never a storage problem.
    Highlighted by 101 Kindle customers
Show all 37 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

  • St. Anthony's: The elderly care center where Victor's mother is a patient.
  • Victor's mother house: Victor lives in his mother's house on his own. Later his friend Denny stays with him
  • The Church: Victor's sex addiction meeting are held at a church.
  • The Strip club: Victor and Denny visit a strip club and Denny falls for one of the dancers.
  • The Chapel: Victor has many liaisons here with Dr. Marshall.
  • Victor's work: Victor works at a tourist attraction trying to recreate the 18th century.

First Sentence edit see section history

If you're going to read this, don't bother.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 79 of 1286 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Chuck Palahniuk (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Doubleday
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2001
ISBN: 0385501560
Page Count: 304

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3566.A4554 C47 2001
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Adult content. Definitely for the mature mind.

Movie Connections edit see section history

  • Choke (IMDb): Choke is a 2008 black comedy film directed by Clark Gregg. The film stars Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston. Production took place in New Jersey in 2007. It premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was purchased by Fox Searchlight Pictures for distribution. The film was released on September 26, 2008 and the DVD was released on February 17, 2009.The film is based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. It tells the story of a man who works in a colonial theme park, attends sexual addiction recovery workshops, and intentionally chokes on food in upscale restaurants so his "rescuers" would give him money out of sympathy and thus cover his mother's Alzheimer's disease hospital bills.

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