I liked reading Chuck Palahniuk’s stuff it was interesting and straightforward. No holds barred for anyone or anything. Kinda of when someone gets drunk at the bar and tells that girl next to the door what they really think of her. I thought to myself, okay I could read some more of this guy. To the bookstore! Or better yet just ask Brian (Carney) if he has any of his stuff and would loan it to me. He does, but once again he forgets it at his house in Spokane.
Then we watched the clip of him. And I thought, “Wow, not only is he trying to promote himself, he seems like a tool.” I wouldn’t pay to see him; I might go to one of his readings if there was free refreshments or free beer.
As for the feeling of the need to prove yourself, that was something we talked about in class. As a writer you need to be new, or something different, or well I can’t remember the last option. If as a writer if you are not new or different you end up being on the shelf in grocery stores falling under the genre of crap. By that I mean the genre of generic horror, thrillers, romance, sex and the city chick lit, Tom Clancy-ish , all books which have been done over and over again.
I’ll sit there in the store buying my six pack of Coors, wondering if it will get me drunk enough and stare at the covers of these books designed to sucker people into buying them based solely on their artwork. I’ll also be wondering why anyone would buy them and low and behold, a middle-aged housewife comes up and gets a romance novel for herself and a Tom Clancy for her husband.
In other words Chuck is new and falls under the category of transgressive fiction. He looks at sex, crime, drugs and rock and roll. Out the door is everything he or we knows about conventional fiction. He is new and different, and doesn’t deserve a place next to crappy fiction and he is proving himself by doing something different.
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2 comments:
I love Chuck Palahniuk. I definately recommend him. Fight Club is the best one to get you sucked into his writing. Then try Lullaby. It's fun to see just how weird people can get.
So you like Palahnuik, and think that his work deserves a better place then next to the gum and candy at the cash register, but you wouldn't go see him at a reading?
I really think you are holding "originality" in too high of a regard, here. You make it sound as if a novelist needs to create his or her own genre to have any worth at all. I think I understand your point about grocery store novels, but I believe there is middle ground between supermarket doom and complete innovation--like the middle ground between a militant teetotaler and someone whose entire personality is based around alcohol, for example.
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