General Information
===================
 Title:                  Snuff
 Author:                 Chuck Palahniuk
 Read By:                Todd McLaren
 Copyright:              2008
 Audiobook Copyright:    2009
 Genre:                  Speech
 Publisher:              Tantor Media
 Abridged:               No

Original Media Information
==========================
 ISBN:                   9781400127337
 Media:                  Library Download
 Number:                 5
 Source:                 Library
 Condition:              Good

File Information
================
 Number of MP3s:         5
 Total Duration:         5:00:03
 Total MP3 Size:         137.40
 Parity Archive:         No
 Ripped With:            Easy CD - DA Extractor
 Encoded With:           LAME 3.98
 Encoded At:             CBR 64 kbit/s 44100 Hz Mono
 Normalize:              MP3Gain, Track 89dB
 Noise Reduction:        None
 ID3 Tags:               Set, v1.1, v2.3

Book Description
================
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly

Palahniuk (Fight Club) delivers another entertaining and cynical social commentary 
on American materialism and gluttony. In her final pornographic performance, 
Cassie Wright has decided to be on the receiving end of a 600-man gangbang. 
Neither Cassie nor the men waiting for their chance with her expect 
her to survive. But some of the men have very different ideas about 
what this encounter will mean for them in their personal and professional 
lives. Todd McLaren does an excellent job voicing the many different 
first-person accounts. Whether reading the accounts of Cassie's assistant, 
an aging stud or the Cassie's presumptive abandoned son, McLaren finds 
a complementary voice for each and keeps them consistent throughout. 
Given the raunchy discussions of sex and the sinister elements that 
are often associated with the porn industry, McLaren's gritty voice 
adds the needed edge to this seedy but interesting novel. A Doubleday 
hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 11). (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. 
All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Palahniuk has followed his tendency towards sensationalism to its logical 
conclusion and written a novel about a pornographic film, to mixed reactions. 
Naysayers wrote that Snuff either failed in its satirical role or, worse, 
Palahniuk has simply run out of ideas and only wants to make readers 
cringe. Yet other reviewers felt that, as in previous novels, Palahniuk’s 
strong, character-driven explorations of the unseemly actually reveal 
a great deal about our society. Certainly, he riffs cleverly on Cassie’s 
cinematic history (“Gropes of Wrath,” for example). But Palahniuk’s 
play on movies and literature in the context of this novel perhaps points 
to an important question raised by the New York Times Book Review: “What 
the hell is going on? The country that produced Melville, Twain and 
James now venerates King, Crichton, Grisham, Sebold and Palahniuk.”
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to 
the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Palahniuk has made a career out of exploring alienation and depicting 
sex addicts, suicides, serial killers, and suffering artists. So it’s 
not surprising to learn that his new novel is set in the sad world of 
sex cinema. Aging porn legend Cassie Wright is making one last film, 
a record-setting gang bang in which she will copulate with 600 men. 
But, as the title foreshadows, the grotesque simulation of love will 
prove fatal—for someone. As with Rant (2007), Palahniuk employs an oral-history 
format, with the story recollected by three men—Messrs. 72, 137, and 
600—and Ms. Wright’s handler, Sheila. (These passages are obviously 
very explicit, and not only does the porn not look pretty, the Palahniukian 
prose may cause readers’ interest in all sex to flag for a while.) While 
Palahniuk’s strengths—acerbic humor and bold ideas—are present here, 
his weaknesses are, too: indistinct voices and characterizations, repetitivenes-
-
s, and research that’s not integrated but quoted from one character 
to another. That said, he’s an original, and there is something heady 
about the risks he takes as a writer. But, ultimately, his ideas are 
more interesting than his writing—some readers are bound to ask why 
they’re hanging around someone who keeps beating them up. --Keir Graff 
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
“Humorous, unsettling and ultimately thought-provoking.... Snuff is 
an erotic dream. It builds and builds, delivering new heights of bliss 
with each new revelation.”
—Rocky Mountain News

“Often biting, often hilarious, often awful, but always compelling.... 
Palahniuk has crafted a world of sex devoid of titillation, where human 
suffering is shelved for a few moments when the cameras begin to roll.”--
—Los Angeles Times

“An absurd dark comedy about damaged people.... [Palahniuk's] descriptive 
skills, his love of language and his weird humor are in top form.”
—The Seattle Times

“Chuck and porn. Porn and Chuck—the two go together like fists and brass 
knuckles, moth and flame: a fatalistic coupling that happens to be, 
also, a perfect match.”
—The Washington Post

“Spare and effective.... Snuff is not only a comment on the utter unsexiness 
of the porn industry; it also manages to imply that any culture that 
produces such an unappealing industry must also be awash in unsexy, 
mechanical and pointless copulation.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition 
edition.

Review
“Humorous, unsettling and ultimately thought-provoking.... Snuff is 
an erotic dream. It builds and builds, delivering new heights of bliss 
with each new revelation.”
—Rocky Mountain News

“Often biting, often hilarious, often awful, but always compelling.... 
Palahniuk has crafted a world of sex devoid of titillation, where human 
suffering is shelved for a few moments when the cameras begin to roll.”--
—Los Angeles Times

“An absurd dark comedy about damaged people.... [Palahniuk's] descriptive 
skills, his love of language and his weird humor are in top form.”
—The Seattle Times

“Chuck and porn. Porn and Chuck—the two go together like fists and brass 
knuckles, moth and flame: a fatalistic coupling that happens to be, 
also, a perfect match.”
—The Washington Post

“Spare and effective.... Snuff is not only a comment on the utter unsexiness 
of the porn industry; it also manages to imply that any culture that 
produces such an unappealing industry must also be awash in unsexy, 
mechanical and pointless copulation.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune --This text refers to the Paperback edition.--

Product Description
From Chuck Palahniuk, the master of literary mayhem and provocation, 
a full-frontal Triple X novel that goes where no American work of fiction 
has gone before.


About the Author
Chuck Palahniuk, whose latest novel is Haunted is the author of the 
best-selling and critically praised novels Invisible Monsters, Diary, 
Lullaby, Choke, and Survivor. He lives in Washington State.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Mr. 600


One dude stood all afternoon at the buffet wearing just his boxers, 
licking the orange dust off barbecued potato chips. Next to him, a dude 
was scooping into the onion dip and licking the dip off the chip. The 
same soggy chip, scoop after scoop. Dudes have a million ways of peeing 
on what they claim as just their own.

For craft services, we're talking two folding tables piled with open 
bags of store–brand corn chips and canned sodas. Dudes getting called 
back to do their bit—the wrangler announces their numbers, and these 
performers stroll back for their money shot still chewing a mouthful 
of caramel corn, their fingers burning with garlic salt and sticky with 
the frosting from maple bars.

Some one–shot dudes, they're just here to say they were. Us veterans, 
we're here for the face time and to do Cassie a favor. Help her one 
more dick toward that world record. To witness history.

On the buffet, they got laid out Tupperwares full of condoms next to 
Tupperwares of mini-pretzels. Fun-sized candy bars. Honey-roasted peanuts. 
On the floor, plastic wrappers from candy bars and condoms, bit and 
chewed open. The same hands scooping M&M's as reaching into the fly 
and elastic waistband of boxers to stroke their half-hard dicks. Candy-colored 
fingers. Tangy ranch-flavored erections.

Peanut breath. Root-beer breath. Barbecued-potato-chip breath getting 
panted into Cassie's face.

Tweakers scratching their arms bright red. High-school virgins wanting 
to lose it on camera. This one kid, Mr. 72, is looking to get deflowered 
and into history in the same shot.

Skinny dudes keeping their T-shirts on, shirts older than some other 
performers here, sent out for the launch of Sex with the City a lifetime 
ago. Fan-club shirts from back when Cassie was starring in Lust Horizons. 
T-shirts older than Mr. 72, silk-screened before he was born.

Loud dudes talk on cell phones, talking stock options and ground-floor 
opportunities at the same time they pinch and milk their foreskins. 
All the performers, the wrangler Magic Marker–ed their biceps with a 
number between one and six hundred. Their haircuts, a monument to gel 
and patience. Tans and fogs of cologne.

The room full of metal folding chairs. To set the mood, dog-eared skin 
magazines.

The talent wrangler is some babe, Sheila, with a clipboard, yelling 
for number 16, number 31, and number 211 to follow her up the stairway 
to the set.

Dudes wearing tennis shoes. Top-Siders. Bikini briefs. Wingtips with 
navy-blue calf-high socks held up with those old-time garters. Beach 
flip-flops still coated with sand, every step gritty with it.

That old joke: The way to get a babe to act in a blue movie is you offer 
her a million dollars. The way to get a dude is you just have to ask 
him…That's not actually a joke. Not like a ha-ha joke.

Except maybe us industry regulars, most of these nobodies saw the ad 
that ran in the back of Adult Video News. An open casting call. A hard-on 
and a doctor's release to show you're clean, that was the audition. 
That, and nobody's shooting kiddie porn, so you had to be eighteen.

We got shaved pecs and waxed pubes standing in line with a Downs-syndrome 
softball team.

Asian, black, and spic dudes. A wheelchair dude. Something for every 
market segment.

The kid, dude 72, he's holding a bouquet of white roses starting to 
curl, droop, the petals slack and starting to brown. The kid's holding 
out one hand, words written on the back in blue ballpoint pen. Looking 
at them, the kid goes, "I don't want anything, but I've always loved 
you…"

Other dudes carry around wrapped boxes fluffy with bows and trailing 
ribbons, boxes small enough to fit in one hand, almost hidden inside 
their fingers.

The veteran talent wear satin bathrobes, prizefighter robes tied with 
a sash, while they wait their call. Professional woodsmen. Half them 
even dated Cassie, talked marriage, becoming the Lunts, the Desi and 
Lucy of adult entertainment.

Wasn't a performer at that shoot who didn't love Cassie Wright and want 
to help her make history.

Other dudes ain't dicked anything but their hand, watching nothing but 
Cassie Wright videos. To them, it's a kind-of fidelity. A marriage. 
These dudes, clutching their little gifts, for them today is their kind-of 
honeymoon. Consummation.

Today, her last performance. The opposite of a maiden voyage. Up those 
stairs, to anybody after the fiftieth dude, Cassie Wright will look 
like a missile crater greased with Vaseline. Flesh and blood, but like 
something's exploded inside her.

To look at us, you'd never guess we were making history. The record 
to end all records.

The talent wrangler comes around, calling out, "Gentlemen." The Sheila 
babe pushes the glasses up her nose and goes, "When I call you, you'll 
need to be camera-ready."

By that she means fully erect. Condom-ready.

The closest thing that comes to how the day felt is when you wipe back 
to front. You're on the toilet. You're not thinking, and you smear shit 
on the back of your hanging-down wrinkled ball skin. The more you try 
to wipe it clean, the skin stretches and the mess keeps getting bigger. 
The thin layer of shit spreads into the hair and down your thighs. That's 
how a day like this, how it feels to keep secret.

Six hundred dudes. One porn queen. A world record for the ages. A must-have 
movie for every discerning collector of things erotic.

Didn't one of us on purpose set out to make a snuff movie.


2
Mr. 72

It was a lamebrainplan, bringing roses. I don't know. The first step 
inside the door, they give you a brown paper shopping bag with a number 
written on the side, some number between one and six hundred. They say, 
"Put your clothes in here, kid." And they give you a wood clothespin 
with the same number in black pen. They say, "Clip it to your shorts. 
Don't lose it or you won't get your stuff back." The crew girl, she 
wears a stopwatch on a cord, hanging on her chest where her heart would 
be.

Taped to the wall behind the table where you undress, they got a sign 
done in the same black pen, on brown paper; it says how the production 
company isn't responsible for anybody's valuables.

Another sign they got says "No Masks Allowed."

Some bags, guys put their shoes in with a sock balled inside each. Their 
belt coiled tight and nested in one shoe. Their pants folded, the creases 
matched, and laid on top the shoes. Their shirts tucked under their 
chin while they match up the arms and fold the collar and tails so as 
to make the least wrinkles. Their undershirt, folded. Their necktie 
rolled and tucked in a pocket of their suit jacket. Guys with good clothes.--

Other guys pull off their jeans or sweatpants, balled up, inside out. 
Their T-shirts or sweatshirts. They peel off their damp underwear, and 
stuff it into the bags, then on top they drop their stinking tennis 
shoes.

After you undress, the stopwatch girl takes your bag of clothes and 
puts it on the floor, against the concrete wall.

Everybody, they're standing around in their shorts, juggling their wallets 
and car keys, cell phones, and whatnot.

Me bringing a bouquet of roses, wilting and all, more junk to juggle, 
it was just plain stupid.

Getting undressed, I was unbuttoning my shirt, and the stopwatch girl 
giving out paper bags, she points at my chest and says, "You planning 
to wear that on camera?"

She's holding a bag marked with the number "72." The clothespin clipped 
to one paper handle. My number. The stopwatch girl points her gun finger 
at my chest, and she says, "That."
Tucking my chin, I look down until it hurts, but all I can see is my 
crucifix on the gold chain around my neck.

I ask if that's a problem. A crucifix.

And the girl reaches out with the clothespin, squeezing it open. She 
jabs to pinch it on my nipple, but I pull back. She says, "We've been 
doing this a long time." She says, "We know to look out for you Bible 
thumpers." From her face, she could be a high-schooler, about my age.--

The stopwatch girl says how the actress Candy Apples, when she set her 
record with 721 sex acts, they used the same group of fifty men for 
the entire production. That was in 1996, and Candy only stopped because 
the LAPD raided the studio and shut down the production.

She says, "True fact."

When Annabel Chong set her early record, the stopwatch girl says, performing 
251 sex acts, even with eighty men showing up for the cattle call, some 
66 percent of them couldn't get their dicks hard enough to do their 
job.

That same year, 1996, Jasmin St. Claire broke Chong's record with three 
hundred sex acts in a single shoot. Spantaneeus Xtasy broke the record 
with 551. In the year 2000, the actress Sabrina Johnson took on two 
thousand men, fucking until she hurt so bad the crew had to pack ice 
between her legs as she sucked off the remainder of the cast. After 
her royalty checks started to bounce, Johnson went public with the news 
that her record was bogus. At most, she'd done five hundred sex acts, 
and instead of two thousand men, only thirty-nine had answered the casting 
call.

The stopwatch girl points at the crucifix, saying, "Don't try to save 
anybody's soul here."

The next guy down the table, he pulls off a black T-shirt, his head 
and arms and chest the same even suntan brown. A ring shines gold, hanging 
from one nipple. His chest hair lies flat, every hair cropped down to 
the same stubble size. Looking at me, he says, "Hey, buddy…" He says, 
"Don't save her soul before they call me for my close-up, okay?" And 
he winks big enough to wrinkle half his face around one eye. His eyelashes 
big enough to fan a breeze.

Up close, he's smoothed a layer of pink all over his forehead and cheeks. 
Three colors of brown powder around his eyes, folded ... --This text 
refers to the Paperback edition.

From AudioFile
FIGHT CLUB author Chuck Palahniuk's latest novel is an X-rated story 
suitable for adults only. A actress in the porn industry is looking 
to create her magnum opus by creating a movie featuring her and 600 
other men. The story is told by three of the men in the waiting line, 
Mr. 72, Mr. 137, and Mr. 600. As steady and skilled as narrator Todd 
McLaren is known to be, he seems disengaged in this production, never 
jumping firmly into any of the roles. His reading is confident, but 
listeners will be hard-pressed to tell one character from another. This 
weakness considerably reduces what little impact there is to be found 
in this story. L.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © 
AudioFile, Portland, Maine

