Damned
(Sprache: Englisch)
Adolescence is hell? You have no idea ... Welcome to the Inferno by way of The Breakfast Club, from the mind of American fiction's most brilliant troublemaker.
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Adolescence is hell? You have no idea ... Welcome to the Inferno by way of The Breakfast Club, from the mind of American fiction's most brilliant troublemaker.
Klappentext zu „Damned “
"Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison," declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk's subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose-and the next thing she knows, she's in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone's favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won't buy them off. This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on endless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.
Lese-Probe zu „Damned “
I.Are you there, Satan? It s me, Madison. I m just now arrived here, in Hell, but it s not my fault except for maybe dying from an overdose of marijuana. Maybe I m in Hell because I m fat--a Real Porker. If you can go to Hell for having low self-esteem, that s why I m here. I wish I could lie and tell you I m bone-thin with blond hair and big ta-tas. But, trust me, I m fat for a really good reason.
To start with, please let me introduce myself.
How to best convey the exact sensation of being dead . . .
Yes, I know the word convey. I m dead, not a mental defective.
Trust me, the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part. If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
The closest way I can describe death is to compare it to when my mom boots up her notebook computer and hacks into the surveillance system of our house in Mazatlan or Banff. Look, she d say, turning the screen sideways for me to see, it s snowing. Glowing softly on the computer would be the interior of our Milan house, the sitting room, with snow falling outside the big windows, and by long distance, holding down her Control, Alt and W keys, my mom would draw open the sitting room drapes all the way. Pressing the Control and D keys, she d dim the lights by remote control and we d both sit, on a train or in a rented town car or aboard a leased jet, watching the pretty winter view through the windows of that empty house displayed on her computer screen. With the Control and F keys, she d light a fire in the gas fireplace, and we d listen to the hush of the Italian snow falling, the crackle of the flames via the audio monitors of the security system. After that, my mom would keyboard into the system for our house in Cape Town. Then log on to view our house in Brentwood. She could simultaneously be all places but no place, mooning over sunsets and foliage
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everywhere except where she actually was. At best, a sentry. At worst, a voyeur.
My mom will kill half a day on her notebook computer just looking at empty rooms full of our furniture. Tweaking the thermostat by remote control. Turning down the lights and choosing the right level of soft music to play in each room. Just to keep the cat burglars guessing, she d tell me. She d toggle from camera to camera, watching the Somali maid clean our house in Paris. Hunched over her computer screen, she d sigh and say, My crocus are blooming in London. . . .
From behind his open business section of the Times, my dad would say, The plural is crocuses.
Probably my mom would cackle then, hitting her Control and L keys to lock a maid inside a bathroom from three continents away because the tile didn t look adequately polished. To her this passed for way-wicked, good fun. It s affecting the environment without being physically present. Consumption in absentia. Like having a hit song you recorded decades ago still occupy the mind of a Chinese sweatshop worker you ll never meet. It s power, but a kind of pointless, impotent power.
On the computer screen a maid would place a vase filled with fresh-cut peonies on the windowsill of our house in Dubai, and my mom would spy by satellite, turning down the air-conditioning, colder and colder, with a tapping keystroke via her wireless connection, chilling that house, that one room, meat-locker cold, ski-slope cold, spending a king s ransom on Freon and electric power, trying to make some doomed ten bucks worth of pretty pink flowers last one more day.
That s what it s like to be dead. Yes, I know the word absentia. I&r
My mom will kill half a day on her notebook computer just looking at empty rooms full of our furniture. Tweaking the thermostat by remote control. Turning down the lights and choosing the right level of soft music to play in each room. Just to keep the cat burglars guessing, she d tell me. She d toggle from camera to camera, watching the Somali maid clean our house in Paris. Hunched over her computer screen, she d sigh and say, My crocus are blooming in London. . . .
From behind his open business section of the Times, my dad would say, The plural is crocuses.
Probably my mom would cackle then, hitting her Control and L keys to lock a maid inside a bathroom from three continents away because the tile didn t look adequately polished. To her this passed for way-wicked, good fun. It s affecting the environment without being physically present. Consumption in absentia. Like having a hit song you recorded decades ago still occupy the mind of a Chinese sweatshop worker you ll never meet. It s power, but a kind of pointless, impotent power.
On the computer screen a maid would place a vase filled with fresh-cut peonies on the windowsill of our house in Dubai, and my mom would spy by satellite, turning down the air-conditioning, colder and colder, with a tapping keystroke via her wireless connection, chilling that house, that one room, meat-locker cold, ski-slope cold, spending a king s ransom on Freon and electric power, trying to make some doomed ten bucks worth of pretty pink flowers last one more day.
That s what it s like to be dead. Yes, I know the word absentia. I&r
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Autoren-Porträt von Chuck Palahniuk
CHUCK PALAHNIUK s eleven best-selling novels Tell-All, Pygmy, Snuff, Rant, Haunted, Lullaby, Fight Club, Diary, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke have sold more than five million copies in the United States. He is also the author of Fugitives and Refugees, published as part of the Crown Journey Series, and the nonfiction collection Stranger Than Fiction. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Chuck Palahniuk
- 2012, Internationale Ausgabe, 256 Seiten, Maße: 10,6 x 17,6 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Penguin Random House
- ISBN-10: 030795045X
- ISBN-13: 9780307950451
- Erscheinungsdatum: 04.09.2012
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Praise for Damned:"Palahniuk's 12th novel is just as gleefully, vividly, hilariously obscene as you'd expect and it's also a hell of a lot of fun. [He] has always been known for his pitch-dark satire, and it's evident here in his depiction of the underworld.... As a young adult novel, it's surprisingly sweet, hopeful and empowering; as a satire, it's funny, irreverent and hugely entertaining. 'Hell is other people,' mused Sartre. Leave it to Chuck Palahniuk to tell us that might not be such a bad thing after all." Michael Schaub, NPR
"Damned is as lively as a book about the dead can be....the Judy Blume book from hell, just as Mr. Palahniuk intended." Janet Maslin, the New York Times
"And now, from the Well, What Did You Expect file: Chuck Palahniuk imagines a great hell. His matter-of-fact underworld is the charming setting of Damned, a...very funny coming-of-age (after-you're-dead) novel....Palahniuk's descriptions of hell are inspired, crafted with great comic flair and the brilliant satirical stipulation that the Christian fundamentalists are right: Hell is literal, dinosaur bones were faked by Satan and among the unspeakable demons slurping about is Robert Mapplethorpe....[A] winning and funny book, and near the end, when Maddie seems to be ascending toward a sequel (Purgatory, anyone?), you'll likely want to read that one, too." Jess Walter, Washington Post
"Damned is gross, sick, nasty, silly, all the things you want from the merry madman of American letters, Chuck Palahniuk. How can you not be instantly transfixed by an opening like this?: 'Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I'm just now arrived here, in Hell, but it's not my fault except for maybe dying from an overdose of marijuana.'
And so begins the kind of goofy, but hypnotically endearing tale of a 13-year-old girl who, completely lost in life, finally starts to discover herself in
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Palahniuk's demented version of the afterlife....With Damned, [he] opens the fire hose to full bore again, stripping away the veneer on American society and showing us the yucky parts we don't want to see." Chris Talbot, AP
"...[T]horoughly original...satiric and horrifying, enough so you'll want to repent after you read." Christian DuChateau, CNN
"Some Fight Club trademarks--youthful disaffection, violence, gross-out humor, a dystopic setting, cultural satire as an extreme sport, a decent helping of third-act pathos--can be seen in...Damned. Even prepubescent Madison Spencer, the protagonist of Damned, has traits that could be seen as Tyler Durden-esque. She's disaffected from society (i.e., those still alive), she kicks serious butt and is a cultural critic who becomes an unlikely leader....It's hard to pitch the broadly satirical Damned as a useful replacement narrative of life after death, but it's a rollicking adventure of Swiftian proportions, a Valleyfair of the Underworld that, incidentally, shows an overweight teenage girl bringing Satan himself down a peg." Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Damned is typical of Palahniuk's work: a scathing satire that is unfiltered, caustic and smart....[His] descriptions of hell are priceless." Rege Behe, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
"Even just its first few chapters reveal several layers of satiric humor, social commentary, Grand Guignol violence and heartbreaking insight....The narrator's blend of snark, precocious wit and unconcealed vulnerability and need is a combination as refreshing as the book is hard to put down." Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper
"...[T]horoughly original...satiric and horrifying, enough so you'll want to repent after you read." Christian DuChateau, CNN
"Some Fight Club trademarks--youthful disaffection, violence, gross-out humor, a dystopic setting, cultural satire as an extreme sport, a decent helping of third-act pathos--can be seen in...Damned. Even prepubescent Madison Spencer, the protagonist of Damned, has traits that could be seen as Tyler Durden-esque. She's disaffected from society (i.e., those still alive), she kicks serious butt and is a cultural critic who becomes an unlikely leader....It's hard to pitch the broadly satirical Damned as a useful replacement narrative of life after death, but it's a rollicking adventure of Swiftian proportions, a Valleyfair of the Underworld that, incidentally, shows an overweight teenage girl bringing Satan himself down a peg." Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"Damned is typical of Palahniuk's work: a scathing satire that is unfiltered, caustic and smart....[His] descriptions of hell are priceless." Rege Behe, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
"Even just its first few chapters reveal several layers of satiric humor, social commentary, Grand Guignol violence and heartbreaking insight....The narrator's blend of snark, precocious wit and unconcealed vulnerability and need is a combination as refreshing as the book is hard to put down." Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper
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