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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
Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com help’ group gathered in the dark of night, Palahniuk is sure to be there playing the ‘tourist’. His voice is one that refuses to be tempered. It is devoid of diplomacy and rife with a quiet anger. Palahniuk’s voice is a shrill scream trumpeting for the revolt against order and conformity, but it is also filled with pain and satire. When two of Fight Club’s main characters meet it all becomes abundantly clear why its author has already made his notch in society’s belt: “I want to have your abortion,” Marla drawls. Suddenly everything sacred between men and women tumbles into a psychotic heap. It’s a challenging and confrontational statement. A little on the bolshie side, sure, but necessary. If the world is in the process of undergoing a ‘collective identity crisis’ then Palahniuk is writing a thesis on how to bring it on. His characters travel the dark road from isolation back out into the arms of communal existence. BUY Chuck Palahniuk books online from and They are battle-worn and scarred and their trajectory crude and uncompromising. Both the characters and their creator shy away from compromise. It is as alien to them as subtlety is to Anna Nicole Smith. They are holding up a mirror to each and every one of us and reflecting back something both ugly and desperate. It’s daring. It’s sexy. And it sneers at redemption. This is what sets Palahniuk aside. He’s prepared to play the messenger and the Devil’s Advocate, simultaneously, regardless of the price… Yes, our generation has found its Don DeLillo and he comes armed with a scalpel. His literary instrument hacks deep into the malignancy eating away at our society, but still the tumour continues to grow, feeding on pessimism, fatality and dark, dark satire. This is all Chuck Palahniuk needs to continue. It was all he ever needed, and if the hunger pains should start to growl he only needs to look to the news 24/7… � 397 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
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