[UA] [REVIEW] Invisible Monsters

[Patrick O'Duffy]

Last review for the day, and for a while.  Gotta focus instead on the
short HUNTER game I'm running this weekend.  This time, it's the novel
INVISIBLE MONSTERS by Chuck Palahniuk, author of FIGHT CLUB.  As usual,
there are a few spoliers.  There's also a bit of a rant at the end;
you've been warned.

SYNOPSIS
A model (the narrator, unnamed for most of the book) has her jaw shot
off while driving.  Hideously mutilated by the accident, she can no
longer speak or eat solids.  Furthermore, she becomes 'invisible'; to be
'polite', people simply refuse to acknowledge her existence.  She meets
a pre-op transexual named Brandy Alexander, and together with her
ex-boyfriend, they go on a months-long road trip, stealing medicine and
drugs to make ends meet.  The plot is a whirlwind of fragmented images;
surgery, gender, gay sex practices over Thanksgiving dinner, female
hormones in Coca-Cola, dead futures, fire, fashion, false names,
childhood memories and pharmaceutical larceny, leading finally to a
showdown between the narrator and her ex-best-friend.

BOOK AS BOOK
Palahniuk established himself with FIGHT CLUB as a strong writer; his
forte is not plot, but the creation of memorable and absurd characters,
plus the confronting is hideous and hilarious imagery.  INVISIBLE
MONSTERS has all of that - and if it never reaches the heights of FIGHT
CLUB, it still manages to satisfy.  Rather than the 'culture of
victimhood', this time the target is the culture of beauty, of image, of
the ideal - contrasted with the images of plastic vaginas, facial
surgery, hormone treatments, and our willful blindness to the bizarre
and the ugly.  There isn't the urgency or the fever-sick heat of FIGHT
CLUB, which is a shame; but INVISIBLE MONSTERS still manages to stand on
its own merits and put in a credible performance.  Not a book for those
who prefer plot over style; for the rest of us, this is worth checking
out.

BOOK AS UA
There's a serious Mystic Hermaphrodite riff going on here; not just via
the trannie Brandy Alexander, but also through all the major characters
in some way.  The narrator could also qualify as some sort of Avatar
through her deformity.

But you know what.  Fuck all that.  That's not the point.

[RANT MODE]
See, UNKNOWN ARMIES isn't _about_ avatars or magic - anymore than it's
about vampires, Dirk Allen or Mak Attax.  The game _contains_ these
things, but it's not _about_ these things.  It's about characters.
About monsters.  About freaks.
Every UA character is a freak and a wierdo; even the most normal,
well-adjusted PC is a monster.  Because they have an obsession, and
that's not normal in this society.  Not at all.  Because they walk with
one foot in another world, and know things we aren't _supposed_ to think
about.

Take a UA character.  They were (probably) born a normal baby.  Lived
life as a normal kid.  Thought normal thoughts.  And then one day, they
wake up and they're up to their nuts in the guts of Something Else.
Whether it happens suddenly or slowly, UA PCs move out of the mainstream
and into a secret culture, a secret world - and they're forever
seperated, in full or in part, from the world they used to live in.

_That's_ what UA is about.  Unique characters, straddling the secret and
the obvious world; the old vs the new, the strange and the normal.
Freaks.  And invisible monsters, undetected by those around them.

And that's where this book, and everything else I review, slots in.
Unique characters, acting as a bridge between the known and the
unknown.  And on that level, INVISIBLE MONSTERS is perfect UA material.

--
RANT over.  Big ol' disclaimer time.  Of course, the above is just one
guy's opinion.  For you, maybe UA _is_ about the Invisible Clergy, or
pornomancy, or magic or whatever.  In which case, more power to ya.  I
ain't here to tell you how to play your game.  I'm just getting my cards
off my chest and onto the table (to mix metaphors).  And now you know
the way in which I approach my review material.  Ignore (or pay
attention) at your discretion.

--
Patrick O'Duffy, Brisbane, Australia

I want to be President because I hate you.  I want to fuck with you.
I want to make you shut up and do things properly.  Get through your
doomed little lives quietly.
I want to be President because I think I should be.

 - Gary Callahan (President of the USA), TRANSMETROPOLITAN #23



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