Book Log 2009 #58: Pygmy by Chuck Pahlaniuk

The title character of Pahlaniuk's 10th novel is a smallish high schooler from an unnamed foreign country who is ostensibly sent to the US as an exchange student. He is really here to participate in Operation Havoc, as are a number of other "exchange students" from his country. They are all sent to the same nameless American location, which is where Pahlaniuk starts to have fun, going after the more mockable aspects of American culture at full throttle.

Two things slow this down. The first is the highly broken English of the contact reports that make up the chapters of the book. It does allow for some humorous wordplay, but I found it very hard to deal with in the early going. The other are dispatches that provide insight into Pygmy's training, which involves being taken from one's parents at a very early age and heavy doses of brainwashing.

I'm not sure this book worked as well in practice as the idea did in theory. It's pretty relentless in its satire, but in a way that can get tiring, especially when the language is suffering from multiple compound fractures. There's also a cartoonish quality to the action that makes it hard to take seriously. I suppose that could be part of the point, but there's enough going on here to make it difficult to determine. I can't say that I'd recommend it, but I can't say I wouldn't, either.