Survivor (novel)
Survivor is a novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It's a cynical book about a man named Tender Branson who is in the Creedish death cult. In this cult, every member learns how to be a servant for the human race—most of them are butlers and maids—and fear most human pleasures. They await a sign from God to tell them to deliver themselves unto Him, that is, commit suicide. The sign finally comes, and a good ten years later, Tender becomes the last surviving member of the cult. He's thrown into mainstream culture and becomes a personal icon for many people.
An excerpt from chapter 25:
- "This one time, the agent asked me where I saw myself in five years. Dead, I said. I see myself dead and rotting. Or ashes, I can see myself burned to ashes. I remember I had a loaded gun in my pocket. Just the two of us were standing in the back of a crowded, dark auditorium.
- 'I see myself dead and in hell.'
- I remember I was planning to kill myself that night. It was the night of my first big public appearance. I told the agent, I figured I'd spend my first thousand years in hell in some entry-level position, but after that I wanted to move into management. Be a real team player. Hell is going to see enormous growth in market share over the next millennium, and I wanted to ride the crest.
- The agent said that sounded pretty realistic."
Film adaptation
When the film rights to Survivor were first sold no movie studio was willing to commit itself to cinematizing the novel. This was due to the fact that the protagonist of Survivor kills himself by crashing a civil airplane into the Australian outback. After the attacks on The Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 the movie studios apparently deemed the novel too controversial. However, in mid 2004 a studio decided to commit itself to the film. Not much is known about the movie at this time.
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