Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
men and reincarnations of Jesus Christ: picture their
creator as a modern-day Dr Frankenstein if you will,
grabbing DNA strands from the Shroud of Turin, a dash
of homicidal vigour, the conceit of a Ronnie Biggs and
smearing them through a contemporary narrative.
Choke (2000), his fourth novel, was a screaming
page-turner, his narrator, Victor Mancini, one of the
greatest scam artists of all time. While his mother (God
bless her) languished in the local hospital, he devised a
new occupation and a great way to make bucks.
Go to a restaurant, (make sure it’s full, of course),
choke on a piece of food, wait for a good samaritan to
come and save you, and knowing humanity the way it
is, you can be sure that the hero who ‘saves you’ will
feel indebted to you for the rest of their natural lives.
Money of course won’t be a problem again. If they’ve
saved you once, you can damn well expect they will do
it a thousand times! Add into the equation a few shifts at
the local theme park and the occasional night out at an
intimate, little sex addiction group (one of Palahniuk’s
favourite haunts), and you’ve got a very fulfilling life.
Brett Easton Ellis pondered the question: ‘Has our
generation finally found its Don DeLillo?’ The New York
Times bestseller list confirms Palahniuk as an author of
importance, yet regardless of platitudes, this Portland
native retains a low key. His latest novel, Lullaby (2002)
hit bookshelves in the quietest of fashions, and, again,
deals with the darker underbelly of American life. This
BUY Chuck Palahniuk books online from and
time around the microscope falls upon two topics – a
serial killer and ‘psychic infection’. “Imagine a plague
you catch through your ears … Imagine an idea that
occupies your mind like a city…”
It’s too good an offer to refuse…
On the eve of Fight Club’s release in 1995, Palahniuk
and I chatted. He was an easy and natural conversationalist.
He spoke of working as a glorified technical writer
at the city’s Freight Terminal and of how he churned
out manuals on trucks, service and cars in the industrial
heartland of blue-collar America. He also spoke
of cruising along the Portland Freeway one morning
when a car pulled up alongside him. “A freeway sniper
pointed a gun directly at my head,” he remembered.
Palahniuk’s writing is a backlash. It’s about embracing
disaster and using it as a platform from which to
mirror society back upon itself. In Palahniuk’s own
words: “I figure if you can play on the basis of something
that really scares people like fights or terminal
illness. If you go right up to it and laugh at it, and have
fun around it, and really disempower it by doing that,
then that’s the greatest thing you can do. I can make
people laugh about death, laugh about fights, laugh
about pain, then I’ve done my little thing for the world.
I finally feel complete and liberated.”
Chuck Palahniuk is a product of his environment, but
more importantly, he is THE product of his generation.
He is the coroner of the millennium. If there is a ‘self-
396
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z