Books
‘Not Forever, But For Now’ Book Review – Serial Killer Satire Is Chuck Palahniuk’s “Succession”
Chuck Palahniuk’s latest meditation on the haves and have-nots struggles to take a promising premise beyond surface-level shock value.
“It doesn’t matter so much who does what. The predators must prey. The prey must be predated. They only wish to be preyed upon by someone who will do the job properly.”
Chuck Palahniuk has been a top voice in subversive, satirical storytelling since the late ’90s through generation-defining texts like Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, and Choke. Palahniuk’s ability to get under society’s skin through pitch black parody and commentary on hidden subcultures has sustained a rich career that can be very hit or miss, but is at least always odd and interesting. 2007’s Rant might be Palahniuk’s last great novel, while there’s still plenty to appreciate in his works across the last decade. Not Forever, But For Now is deeply in the pocket and Palahniuk at his most ruthless and unrepentant. It’s a bold, brutal experiment that may be too much for some of Palahniuk’s most seasoned readers. That being said, it’s still a fascinating look into one of the most fearless minds in fiction.
Succession’s series finale only aired a few months ago, but rampant parodies and pastiches of this prestige program persist. Not Forever, But For Now puts its similarities to the HBO drama front and center as two siblings, Otto and Cecil, compete to take over the “family business,” which just so happens to be decades’ worth of murders and sex crimes. A power struggle within a family of serial killers over their future’s direction could be compelling. Palahniuk doesn’t do enough with this rich premise beyond its earliest ideas. In the end, Not Forever, But For Now is ultimately more The Idol than it is Succession. There’s so little story here that Not Forever, But For Now would only cover two or three episodes of television–not a full season–if it were actually a series like Succession. Intense plotting and a moving story aren’t always necessary for a good novel, which is part of the power of prose. Palahniuk has arguably done more with less in the past (Pygmy, Adjustment Day, Tell-All), but it’s not enough to properly elevate Not Forever, But For Now.
Brothers, Otto and Cecil, are terrified to be apart from one another, yet are steadily outgrowing the other and in need of independence. Despite this, they’re willing to tear down the world and get drunk on delusion in order to stay together and avoid the inevitability of adulthood. Otto and Cecil are the best and worst people for each other. There’s a toxic nature to these two–one as teacher and the other as student, like in many of Palahniuk’s stories–as they orbit one another and critique masculinity, queer culture, and high society, but never as adeptly as Palahniuk’s done in the past.
These two spend their days endlessly lost in recreations of their grandfather’s past instead of forging their own stories. It’s the ultimate example of legacy and being destined to repeat the sins of the past because in this case they’re clung to like a security blanket. This all graduates into a familial war that’s practically Shakespearean. Otto and Cecil plot to kill their grandfather, while he does the same and tries to pit these two siblings against each other, while they simultaneously fight for control of the family.
Otto and Cecil are reprehensible characters, but intentionally so. They’re written to make the reader wince and it’s difficult to spend too much time with these characters without starting to feel ill. Not Forever, But For Now anticipates that the audience will need to take short breaks in the story, which is likely part of the reason that each chapter is so short. They rarely go beyond six or seven pages, which seems to reflect the shallow nature of these characters and the repetitive cycle that consumes their lives. This approach is occasionally effective, but at 256 pages, Not Forever, But For Now is just far too long. This could have been an extremely powerful novella or short story that distills the cumbersome narrative down to one of its many similar passages rather than letting these ideas fester and spoil.
Much of Not Forever, But For Now is content to compare low-status people and one-percenters to prey and predators from a National Geographic special. These twisted siblings believe that execution of the weak is the greatest form of fealty and submission. In doing so, this family helps elevate these wasted lives into something greater in the process. It’s a thesis that has all of the pretension of Hannibal without any of the corpse art. On the contrary, these executions are blunt, messy, horrid affairs.
Not Forever, But For Now effectively taps into the public’s disdain for entitled one-percenters who feel that they don’t just run the world, but have the power to casually change it on a whim. This gets explored to exaggerated effect where the world literally bends over backwards for every one of Cecil and Otto’s selfish whims. Palahniuk’s novel even argues that there’s a parasitic relationship between humanity and existence where people are the toxin-consuming belly-feeders who soak up corruption so that the world is safe for the next generation of narcissists. It’s an ultra-egotistical circle of life that looks a lot like a noose if you squint your eyes hard enough.
Not Forever, But For Now is often evocative of A Clockwork Orange through its intense sexual acts and violence that are normalized through juvenile names and kid-speak to mask their true terrors; where rape gets reduced to playing “Winne-the-Pooh.” This can sometimes be cringe-inducing, like the detail where Otto and Cecil keep the “pussy fingers” of their celebrity psy-op executions as mementos. However, Palahniuk occasionally taps into an odd beauty with its endless sex and violence. There’s a really evocative chapter about a body of water that’s full of endless women and discarded corpses that’s mounted up over time like a subterranean sandcastle. Like any actual sandcastle, Not Forever, But For Now has too weak of a foundation that begins to crumble the more that Palahniuk plays with it.
Otto and Cecil’s regressive acts spin their wheels until Not Forever, But For Now culminates with the advent of a predatory app, Tyger, where middle-class ordinary people gain the “privilege” to do themselves in instead of this being an exit act that’s purely experienced by the one-percenters. It’s almost like if Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery was reinterpreted by a social media influencer millennial. Not Forever, But For Now is easily the most alive in this final part (the novel is divided into three sections) when Otto and Cecil finally go off and embrace the family business.
Palahniuk, like in many of his novels, teases his audience through unreliable narrators who omit major parts of the story so as to alter the reader’s perception of Otto and Cecil. That being said, Not Forever, But For Now becomes that much more interesting if the audience is left to wrestle with these probable suspicions throughout the story. Instead, readers are forced to dispose of these thoughts almost immediately after they’re introduced due to the structure that the novel does take. It sacrifices a novel’s worth of tension for a quick lark and surprise.
Despite all of this free-floating nihilism, Not Forever, But For Now does end on an optimistic, encouraging note. One that doesn’t necessarily redeem this work of fiction, but does still leave the reader with positive values rather than a sick taste in their mouth. Many may view this as too little too late, but it’s an important distinction that changes the novel’s themes and values in crucial ways that will hopefully make the audience want to re-read the novel from the beginning rather than never pick it up again. Not Forever, But For Now is vintage Palahniuk, for both better and for worse. It’s not the comeback novel that many fans are hoping it will be, but it’s still an ultra-timely story that holds a funhouse mirror up to modern society–one just needs to look past all of the blood, guts, and bodily fluids that are caked onto the reflection.
‘Not Forever, But For Now’ is published by Simon & Schuster and available now.
It took nearly five decades for it to happen, but the tide has turned for Jaws 2. Not everyone has budged on this divisive sequel, but general opinion is certainly kinder, if not more merciful. Excusing a rehashed plot — critic Gene Siskel said the film had “the same story as the original, the same island, the same stupid mayor, the same police chief, the same script…” — Jaws 2 is rather fun when met on its own simple terms. However, less simple is the novelization; the film and its companion read are like oil and water. While both versions reach the same destination in the end, the novelization’s story makes far more waves before getting on with its man-versus-shark climax.
Jaws 2 is not labeled as much of a troubled production as its predecessor, but there were problems behind the scenes. Firing the director mid-stream surely counts as a big one; John D. Hancock was replaced with French filmmaker Jeannot Szwarc. Also, Jaws co-writer Carl Gottlieb returned to rewrite Howard Sackler’s script for the sequel, which had already been revised by Hancock’s wife, Dororthy Tristan. What the creative couple originally had in store for Jaws 2 was darker, much to the chagrin of Universal. Hence Hancock and Tristan’s departures. Hank Searls’ novelization states it is “based on a screenplay by Howard Sackler and Dorothy Tristan,” whereas in his book The Jaws Log, Gottlieb claims the “earlier Sackler material was the basis” for the tie-in. What’s more interesting is the “inspired by Peter Benchley’s Jaws” line on the novelization’s cover. This aspect is evident when Searls brings up Ellen’s affair with Hooper as well as Mayor Larry Vaughan’s connection to the mob. Both plot points are unique to Benchley’s novel.
The novelization gives a fair idea of what could have been Jaws 2 had Hancock stayed on as director. The book’s story does not come across as dark as fans have been led to believe, but it is more serious in tone — not to mention sinuous — than Szwarc’s film. A great difference early on is how Amity looks and feels a few years after the original shark attack (euphemized by locals as “The Troubles”). In the film, it seems as if everything, from the townsfolk to the economy, is unaffected by the tragedies of ‘75. Searls, on the other hand, paints Amity as a ghost town in progress. Tourism is down and money is hard to come by. The residents are visibly unhappy, with some more than others. Those who couldn’t sell off their properties and vacate during The Troubles are now left to deal with the aftermath.
Image: As Martin Brody, Roy Scheider opens fire on the beach in Jaws 2.
It is said that Roy Scheider only came back to fulfill a three-picture deal with Universal (with Jaws 2 counting as two films) and to avoid having his character recast. Apparently, he was also not too pleased (or pleasant) after Szwarc signed on. Nevertheless, Scheider turned in an outstanding performance as the returning and now quietly anguished Martin Brody. Even in the film’s current form, there are still significant remnants of the chief’s psychological torment and pathos. Brody opening fire on what he thought to be the shark, as shocked beachgoers flee for their lives nearby, is an equally horrifying and sad moment in the film.
In a candid interview coupled with Marvel’s illustrated adaptation of Jaws 2, Szwarc said he had posted the message “subtlety is the picture’s worst enemy” above the editor’s bench. So that particular beach scene and others are, indeed, not at all subtle, but neither are the actions of Brody’s literary counterpart. Such as, his pinning the recent deaths on Jepps, a vacationing cop from Flushing. The trigger-happy drunk’s actual crimes are breaking gun laws and killing noisy seals. Regardless, it’s easier for Brody to blame this annoying out-of-towner than conceive there being another great white in Amity. Those seals, by the way, would normally stay off the shore unless there was something driving them out of the ocean…
Brody’s suspicions about there being another shark surface early on in the film. For too long he is the only one who will even give the theory any serious thought, in fact. The gaslighting of Brody, be it intentional or otherwise, is frustrating, especially when considering the character is suffering from PTSD. It was the ‘70s though, so there was no intelligible name for what Brody was going through. Not yet, at least. Instead, the film delivers a compelling (and, yes, unsubtle) depiction of a person who, essentially, returned from war and watched a fellow soldier die before his very eyes. None of that trauma registers on the Martin Brody first shown in Jaws 2. Which, of course, was the result of studio interference. Even after all that effort to make an entertaining and not depressing sequel, the finished product still has its somber parts.
Image: A page from Marvel’s illustrated adaptation of Jaws 2.
How Brody handles his internal turmoil in the novelization is different, largely because he is always thinking about the shark. Even before there is either an inkling or confirmation of the new one. It doesn’t help that his oldest son, Mike, hasn’t been the same since The Troubles. The boy has inherited his father’s fear of the ocean as well as developed his own. Being kept in the dark about the second shark is also detrimental to Brody’s psyche; the local druggist and photo developer could have alleviated that self-doubt had he told Brody what he found on the dead scuba diver’s undeveloped roll of film. Instead, Nate Starbuck kept this visual proof of the shark to himself. His reasons for doing so are connected to the other pressing subplot in the novelization.
While the film makes a relatively straight line for its ending, Searls takes various and lengthy detours along the way. The greatest would be the development of a casino to help stimulate the local economy and bring back tourists. Brody incriminating Jepps inadvertently lands him smack dab in the middle of the shady casino deal, which is being funded with mafia money. A notorious mob boss from Queens, Moscotti, puts a target on Brody’s head (and his family) so long as the chief refuses to drop the charges against Jepps. In the meantime, the navy gets mixed up in the Amity horror after one of their helicopters crashes in the bay and its pilots go missing. A lesser subplot is the baby seal, named Sammy by Brody’s other son Sean, who the Brodys take in after he was wounded by Jepps. Eventually, and as expected, all roads lead back to the shark.
In either telling of Jaws 2, the shark is a near unstoppable killing machine, although less of a mindless one in the novelization. The film suggests this shark is looking for payback — Searls’ adaptation of Jaws: The Revenge clarifies this with a supernatural explanation — yet in the book, the shark is acting on her maternal instinct. Pregnant with multiple pups, the voracious mother-to-be was, in fact, impregnated by the previous maneater of Amity. Her desire to now find her offspring a safe home includes a body count. And perhaps as a reflection of the times, the author turns the shark and other animals’ scenes into miniature wildlife studies; readers are treated to small bits of infotainment as the story switches to the perspective of not only the killer shark, but also the seals and a navy-trained dolphin. The novelization doesn’t hold back on the scientific details, however weird as it may sound at times. One line sure to grab everyone’s attention: “There, passive and supine, she had received both of his yard-long, salami-shaped claspers into her twin vents.”
Image: Roy Scheider’s character, Martin Brody, measures the bitemark on the orca in Jaws 2.
Up until the third act, the novelization is hard to put down. That’s saying a lot, considering the overall shark action borders on underwhelming. There is, after all, more to the story here than a fish’s killing spree. Ultimately though, Szwarc’s Jaws 2 has the more satisfying finale. Steven Spielberg’s film benefitted from delaying the shark’s appearance, whereas the sequel’s director saw no need for mystery. The original film’s reveal was lightning in a bottle. So toward the end, Jaws 2 transforms into a cinematic theme park ride where imagination isn’t required. The slasher-at-sea scenario is at full throttle as the villain — wearing her facial burn like a killer would wear their mask — picks off teen chum and even a pesky helicopter. And that’s before a wiry, go-for-broke Brody fries up some great white in the sequel’s cathartic conclusion. That sort of over-the-top finisher is better seen than read.
It would be a shame to let this other version of Jaws 2 float out to sea and never be heard from again. On top of capturing the quotidian parts of Amity life and learning what makes Brody tick, Hank Searls drew up persuasive plot threads that make this novelization unlike anything in the film franchise. If the Jaws brand is ever resurrected for the screen, small or big, it wouldn’t hurt to revisit this shark tale for inspiration.
Image: The cover of Hank Searls’ novelization for Jaws 2.
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