Flight 2039
Flight 2039 (in the original: Survivor ) is a novel by the author Chuck Palahniuk . The book, published in 1999, is about the last survivor of a suicidal sect. This tells his life story in the flight recorder of an airplane he hijacked. In his satire, Palahniuk deals in particular with the American mass media, their amorality and their ideal of beauty. There have been several attempts to film the book, which has been translated into various languages, but no film has yet been released.
action
The protagonist, Tender Branson, tells life from a first-person perspective in flashbacks. Branson grew up in a sect, the Credisten (originally Creedish ), until he was released into the modern world to serve others. While Branson tries to cope with the realities of life in the 1990s, the remaining sect members commit suicide one after another. After all, the public believes that Branson is the last survivor of the sect. Above all, pushed by the mass media, this gives him a sudden place in American prominence, from religious cult Branson to the star cult of the American mass media. Branson, who himself has no experience with the media, becomes a blank slate on which managers, advertisers, television makers and others can create a star out of nothing. In this process, Branson uses numerous drugs, especially steroids , to improve his publicity. The romantic interest and opponent of Branson is Fertility Hollis, who, unlike him, actually has extraordinary abilities, but refuses to accept the media cult. While the plot tends to suggest that the plane will crash on the Australian continent, the book ends before that moment with the description of the beautiful sight of the sun and a countdown that ends at two in the book. On his website, Palahniuk wrote that Branson had already left the plane at this point, the story is told to the flight recorder by a prefabricated tape.
Themes and design
The main topics of the book include religious sects, American celebrity worship and doping in everyday life, three aspects that are of paramount importance to the protagonist's life for times in his life. While Branson is initially shaped by religious absolutes, the media-savvy Branson of the book often seems like a Nietzsche adept who sets amorality as absolute. In contrast to Nietzsche's Übermensch , Branson is weak and easy to influence. Branson himself does not develop a moral standpoint, but rather reflects what others give him, embodied in parts of the book by a teleprompter . More overarching, Palahniuk poses the question of beauty in American culture, which on the one hand is set absolutely, on the other hand is recycled, reproduced, exploited, simulated and the like on a daily basis. Both Branson's original cult and his media advisors put much of their energies into maintaining physical beauty despite the decline with age. Branson himself goes through numerous improvements from gym training to wigs and tanning beds, ineffective pseudotherapies and doping drugs.
The pages and chapters of the book are numbered in descending order. In contrast to normal numbering, which indicates a developing plot in novels, counting down is intended to suggest that the story is one of decline and that of degeneration. Palahniuk integrates numerous seemingly obsessive descriptions and explanations of everyday and cleaning activities. Often these deal in seemingly harmless and superficial language about how to remove blood from various materials or otherwise remove the traces of acts of violence. In the satire irony and black humor greatly responsible elements.
Reviews
Journalist Daniel B. Roberts describes the book as poorly written, but entertaining if you're a Palahniuk fan. The sentences in Flight 2039 are short and simple and written with little variety. While the characters remained flat and clichéd, they still functioned as symbols for social constellations. While the book is disappointing by linguistic standards, it is also a biting criticism of the American media landscape and its commercialism, which degrades people to victims.
reception
The novel has been translated into German, Finnish, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian and Polish. 20th Century Fox planned to make a film version of the book shortly after its publication, as the Palahniuk film adaptation of the novel Fight Club , which began in 1999, was a surprising worldwide hit. Fight Club director David Fincher was instrumental in the project. When the terrorist attacks took place on September 11, 2001 in the casting phase , Fox put the filming on hold. In 2008 Warner tried a new film adaptation with Francis Lawrence as director and Albert Torres as scriptwriter, but this has not yet manifested itself. A quote from the book was used by the SuicideGirls website as inspiration for their name.
Remarks
- ^ A b Daniel B. Roberts: Seeing Palahniuk's Survivor through lit theory , December 2, 2010
- ↑ a b Kavadlo p. 18
- ^ A b Daniel B. Roberts: Page no longer available , search in web archives: Survivor - A less-than-Tender satire of commercialism , October 3, 2008
- ↑ Kavadlo p. 15
- ↑ a b Mendieta p. 397
- ↑ The Cult: Survivor
- ↑ Simon Reynolds: Lawrence circles Palahniuk's 'Survivor' , Digital Spy August 16, 2008
- ↑ Frosty: Curious What's Up with Chuck Palahniuk's SURVIVOR , Collider.com, August 12, 2008
- ↑ Missy Suicide: SuicideGirls Feral House, 2004 ISBN 1932595031 p. 8
literature
- Eduardo Mendieta: Surviving American Culture: On Chuck Palahniuk . In: Philosophy and Literature 29, Heft 2, 2005, pp. 394-408.
- Jesse Kavadlo: The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist . in: Stirrings Still. The International Journal of Existential Literature 2, Issue 2, 2005, pp. 3–24 ( online as PDF ).
- Antonio Casado de Rocha: Disease and Community in Chuck Palahniuk's Early Novels . In: Literature 29, Heft 2, 2005, pp. 394–408.
- Jesse Kavadlo: The Fiction of Self-destruction: Chuck Palahniuk, Closet Moralist . In: Stirrings Still. The International Journal of Existential Literature 2, Issue 2, 2005, pp. 105-115.