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A review by kandicez
Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread by Chuck Palahniuk
1.0
I must admit to flipping through most of the stories in this volume past the first three. I can really only review one, with any sort of knowledge or intelligence, because I just didn’t care for any of the others, so I’ll review Zombies and leave it at that.
Zombies was a terrific story! I wish a YA writer would have come up with this idea and written a novel, because that’s a novel I’d like to read. There is an epidemic of sorts among the teens of the United States. When they become overwhelmed with life, and let’s be honest, what teen hasn’t at some point, they check out by zapping their temples with the defibrilators found in emergency AED kits.
What an amazing basis for a story. They don’t commit suicide, they just give themselves this permanent, mental vacation knowing they may not remember their name or how to use the toilet, but they will still be alive. They will need to be cared for the rest of their lives, but that’s no skin off their nose.
I think this is a terrific allegory for a lot of youth today. Never have there been as many adults living with their parents indefinitely. Career college students. Deadbeat dads. Absentee, young moms. It’s ridiculous. Yes, being an adult in today’s society is hard. You can’t make more than minimum wage without college degrees, housing is out of this world, both parents have to work to have any hope of ends meeting, etc., etc., etc. You can’t live on minimum wage. Not even in squalor, but this doesn’t excuse the despondency of youth of today. They need a wake up call.
I love how Palahniuk treats the subject and presents it in such a matter of fact voice. Why, oh why, couldn’t he have done that will all the stories here? Too many of these installments felt “gimicky” and forced. I know that Palahniuk uses shock as a story telling tool, and I’m ok with that, but even the first story, which is a sad remembrance of a young man losing his father was just too much. Shock I can handle. Profanity I can handle. I can even handle racism when it’s handled in a realistic way, but this was simply too much.
I think I will be leaving good old Chuck on the shelf for a while now. I have been disappointed by him too many times in the recent past to give him a fair chance anytime soon.
Zombies was a terrific story! I wish a YA writer would have come up with this idea and written a novel, because that’s a novel I’d like to read. There is an epidemic of sorts among the teens of the United States. When they become overwhelmed with life, and let’s be honest, what teen hasn’t at some point, they check out by zapping their temples with the defibrilators found in emergency AED kits.
What an amazing basis for a story. They don’t commit suicide, they just give themselves this permanent, mental vacation knowing they may not remember their name or how to use the toilet, but they will still be alive. They will need to be cared for the rest of their lives, but that’s no skin off their nose.
I think this is a terrific allegory for a lot of youth today. Never have there been as many adults living with their parents indefinitely. Career college students. Deadbeat dads. Absentee, young moms. It’s ridiculous. Yes, being an adult in today’s society is hard. You can’t make more than minimum wage without college degrees, housing is out of this world, both parents have to work to have any hope of ends meeting, etc., etc., etc. You can’t live on minimum wage. Not even in squalor, but this doesn’t excuse the despondency of youth of today. They need a wake up call.
I love how Palahniuk treats the subject and presents it in such a matter of fact voice. Why, oh why, couldn’t he have done that will all the stories here? Too many of these installments felt “gimicky” and forced. I know that Palahniuk uses shock as a story telling tool, and I’m ok with that, but even the first story, which is a sad remembrance of a young man losing his father was just too much. Shock I can handle. Profanity I can handle. I can even handle racism when it’s handled in a realistic way, but this was simply too much.
I think I will be leaving good old Chuck on the shelf for a while now. I have been disappointed by him too many times in the recent past to give him a fair chance anytime soon.