Novelist Chuck Palahniuk seems to have a predilection for pithy titles that invoke death. Two of his works—Choke, the film adaptation of his 2001 book by the same name, and Snuff, his latest novel, offer glimpses into characters who appear soulless, heartless, and thus, lifeless, but are merely hiding behind a chilly demeanor.

Both Choke and Snuff present a series of sordid sex scenes, graphic details and improbable scenarios. They are also cynically hilarious Pynchon- and Easton-Ellis-esque satires about romantic and platonic love, family and sacrifice, reunion and redemption.

Palahniuk stuffs his work with wit and irony, literary leitmotifs, stunningly researched facts, neuroses and truly touching hijinks—which are elegantly directed and performed by Choke director Clark Gregg and Sam Rockwell respectively.

Choke, which opened September 26th, centers around Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a thirty-something sex-addict med school drop-out. Like Fight Club’s unnamed protagonist (played by Ed Norton), Victor frequently sits in on support group meetings to fulfill a need not conforming to that group’s intended goal. In his case, Victor trolls sex-related 12 Step programs for tail. When he’s not venturing into the self-help world, he earns most of his money playing an Irish indentured servant in a recreated 18th century American setting and gets the rest of his living as a con-man.

Victor spends much of his life choking. That is, and without giving much away, he has a fear of facing intimacy, his shortcomings and potential and anything else that will actually make him experience an emotion other than wry disdain.

But that commitment-spawned paralysis isn’t the only choking Victor indulges in. He regularly visits restaurants and forces himself to choke mid-meal. He does so in order to get a (preferably wealthy) fellow patron to use the Heimlich on him, forcing that individual into the unique position of forming one half of a bond between a savior and the saved. The way Victor sees it, it is not the person who is choking who should be grateful to the Heimlich-performer, but the other way around. That one act forces the innocent diner into a heroic role he or she would never have otherwise filled, thus priming him/her up for an endless pattern of future extortion. Struggling to pay his demented mother’s medical bills, Victor turns to his scheme often. When strapped for cash, he successfully enlists the aid of one of his many benefactors, relying on the generosity he will evince in his rescuer.

Because of her deteriorating mental state, his mother, Anjelica Huston, never knows who he is. She tends to confuse him with everyone but himself, confiding in those she thinks he is (her old lawyer Fred, for example) that she’s appalled by her son’s negligence.

Her portrayal of Ida J. Mancini is reminiscent of the quirky roles she played in The Addams Family, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. After all, she is the queen of what I call “Bombay Sapphire Cinema” (dry, fun and nicely packaged).

Both Ida and her doctor turn out to be very important figures in Victor’s life and path to emotional recovery. It’s the complicated relationship he has with his batty mother that plunges Victor into his unfeeling state in the first place, but it’s also that relationship—as well as a specific one that develops with that doctor—that allows him to take that fourth step of the 12 to self-repossession.

Similarly, Snuff takes a troubled child-mother and common law husband-wife relationship and upends it until its altered state is best for all concerned.

The book revolves around the making of a “high priestess of porn’s” presumed best and last work: a serial fornication involving 600 lay (smirk) men who, with their possible embolism-causing thrusts, could be unintentionally involved in the production of a snuff film.

Narrated by four people, Mr. 600, Mr. 137, Mr. 72 and Sheila, the talent wrangler orchestrating the whole thing, the reader never really hears porn star Cassie Wright’s side of things but through their memories, lurid descriptions and the constantly streaming videos from her portfolio (e.g. World Whore One: Deep in the Trenches).

The numbers Palahniuk gives the men are, in most cases, arbitrary, but their presence in that green room is not. Through them, and through Sheila, we find out who Cassie Wright really is, what she means to those waiting and they to her, what this movie could really be doing for her and those closest to her and how it could be seen as an absolution for all such parties.

Two scenes stand out as particularly poignant. The first involves Mr. 600, Branch Bacardi’s, famous pornstar-“woodsman,” loss of innocence, the second with Cassie Wright’s meeting with Sheila as the latter pitches the serial fornication film to Ms. Wright in the first place. The scenes, when read retroactively, convey heartbreak and vendetta but also set the stage for that aforementioned reunion and redemption.

Behind the absurdist, life-lampooning bravado and gasp-worthy shocking punchlines, these stories are as much about humanity as something as treacly as Love, Actually: they concern sons and mothers, fathers and sons, and mothers and sons and daughters, as well as mistaken identity. Palahniuk’s people, stripped of all their costumes and crutches, reveal a pathos all too familiar to us all.

Tags: anjelica huston, bret easton ellis, cassie wright, choke, chuck palahniuk, clark gregg, fight club, mr. 137, mr. 600, mr. 72, porn, sam rockwell, serial fornication, sheila, snuff, thomas pynchon, victor mancini