Lit Crit

One of the more interesting facts about living in a big city are the publicity events and tours that are more available to you.  This is especially more relevant when you receive numerous newsletters from retail outlets, bookstores, record stores, bands, online retailers, and whatever else you're interested in. 

For instance, this past Monday a few of us headed out to Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena to check out an appearance by the most popular American author Chuck Palahniuk in celebration of his latest novel, Rant.  If you're not familiar with his work, you'd know him most from the movie adapted from his novel, Fight Club.  The plan was for him to sign a few books, say a few words, and perhaps even sign some more books as time permitted.

We figured there'd be no way we could arrive early enough to score a spot in line, or a cushy seat for the talk, so we showed up with the intention of picking up some books and hear him speak.  Turns out our predictions were right as there were plenty more people there far more interested in Mr. Palahniuk than ourselves.  It was an eclectic crowd to say the least.

Mr. Palahniuk took a short break and proceeded to take a few questions, look for answers to trivia questions, and even read a couple of unpublished "tour-exclusive" short stories titled "Cold Call" and "Love Nest."  While very interesting, I'd characterize them as quite typical of his work - I'll get back to that in a second.  What struck me the most was how intense his followers were in their lines of questioning, devotion to the obscure and provocative, and most of all, their youth.  Quite interesting from my perspective.

Let me step back for a second here.  The content of his stories is very much like his audience, obscure, provocative, blahblahblah. Often, Mr. Palahniuk litters his prose with graphic anecdotes and half-truths close enough for them to be urban parables.  Well, parables closing in on platitudes.  As critical as I am of his audience and some of his writing, I think he's a fascinating author whose hard-headed addiction to transgressional fiction and satire are quite inspiring.  Truly, reading many of his stories can be quite shocking, which eventually lead to further discussion over dinner about the themes in his work and the truth behind sarcasm and satire.  Let's take a look at a few of his themes:

Choke:  A young man pretends performs a series of choking cons in crowded restaurants to take advantage of strangers.
Invisible Monsters:  A former model has to come to terms with horrible disfigurement.
Lullaby:  Two people join together and search for an elusive book of spells containing a horrid secret.
Survivor:  The last living member of a suicide cult is transformed into a paragon of commercialism and suffers from newfound fame.

Reading deeper into each of these books touches on a recurring theme within his work: identity-crises framed by the bizarrely grotesque and borderline offensive.  Even though the books tend toward the obscene and mysterious, I think there is good reason.  There's a hint of subversiveness that's appealing - a giant middle finger if you will - which is so apparent that the author himself even mentioned he'd love to have one of his books be the center of controversy for its violent imagery since he couldn't recall such a fervor about books in recent history. 

Listening to him proselytize a bit did drive the point home that literature is dying slowly.  I admire the talent and raw-ness of his work, but there's something to be said of his passion for the art of it.  Each time I saw one of his fans yearning for attention, I wondered how many of them really tried to read his books for the subtext versus how many were more turned on by the provocation.

So we left early, during the "lightning-round" of trivia and the gangly arms of men dressed in wedding gowns, hungry.  His words inspire me to keep working at crafting more than just a "clever story."  Perhaps it will show its face one day either here or somewhere else.

We'll see.