Terrible Analogies

You’ll excuse me if this post seems short, curt, and stunted.  Ya see, I’m busy reading Chuck Palahniuk’s newest book Pigmy.  If you keep up with the works of Chuck (Survivor, Choke, Rant, Snuff, etc…), then you know exactly the type of ride he offers.  Once you’re on, baby, you’re on until the damn thing ultimately jumps the tracks and explodes into flaming, smoldering bits of regret and sickening, grating remorse.

Chuck has the unique ability to make life seem so dangerously simply and absolutely unavoidable.

“I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived.  I see all this potential.  And I see it squandered.  Goddamn it, an entire generation pumping gas. Waiting tables. Slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.  We’re the middle children of history.  No purpose or place.  We have no Great War.  No Great Depression.  Our great war is a spiritual war.  Our great depression is our lives.  We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars.  But we won’t.  We’re slowly learning that fact.  And we’re very, very pissed off.”  

                                                                                              - Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

I’m glad to see that Tyler Durden is still around, but the irony of his promoting a product seems to go against the very nature and spirit of the character.

I have a habit of reading multiple books at once.  

In the past two days (thanks to a wicked cold/flu) I’ve managed to finish Evan Wright’s Generation Kill.  On the nightstand sits my pile of current reads; Ken Follett’s The Pillars Of The Earth, Kurt Andersen’s Turn Of The Century, and Chuck Palahniuk’s Snuff.

To put it mildly, Chuck Palahniuk is my literary God.

Snuff is Chuck’s latest endeavor, which details the death wish of a porn star (don’t tell me how it finishes!).  If I had to list my top Palahniuk books in order they would have to be Survivor (please, oh please, make this into a movie!), Fight Club, Rant, Diary (the last two pages made the entire book), and Lullaby.  If you’re into raw, gritty writing that pulls no punches and aims to offend everyone at least once during each novel, than give Chuck Palahniuk a shot.  He has a unique knack to make the abnormal seem so joyously abnormal.  

I’m such a whore for his writings that I even paid a bit of cash to score a first print of Fight Club, an amazing book that served as the basis for an amazing movie.  Scan of the cover provided below.  Click to embiggen…

I can only hope that someday I’ll manage to write something that deserves to stand in Palahniuk’s shadow.  What I’m writing now reads well as a first draft, but there’s another idea that I’d like to pursue.  I guess I’ll throw it, and my notes, onto one of my many slowly smoldering back burners until my current effort goes through a few more drafts.  So many thoughts, so little time.

In Tyler we trust…

I’d like to to catch Chuck Palahniuk during one of his book tours.  His new novel, Pigmy, is due out in May.  Perhaps I’ll get lucky and catch him during his promo tour for Pigmy…