The Author Provocateur

I have a bone to pick with Chuck Palahniuk.

This man has written many a novel chock-full of the absurd and grotesque.  Listening to him speak, you understand that he writes provocatively not for provocation's sake, but because the format of the novel allows for this flexibility.  If you've seen Fight Club, you are only scratching the surface of what he is truly capable of.  Having not read the novel, I can only imagine that there were some depravities omitted by Hollywood, but I've heard that it is also his most mainstream novel.  Reading Haunted, I can now understand why.

OK, myself, I've done a few exercises in trying to write with a different voice.  I don't think I've always been successful, given that my blog tone tends towards repetition, but I can understand the challenge.  There's an immense challenge to find a different point of view, and I commend Mr. Palahniuk for attempting to do so, but his devotion to minimalist fiction hampers his prose.  I mean, really hampers it.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy his writing.  I always feel like I've come away from reading one of his books having learned a thing or two about writing.  What kills me in particular about this book is how far Mr. Palahniuk is willing to go to push the envelope.  Yes, he presents this book as a horror novel, and most of what you find inside isn't any worse than anything else on the shelf (medically even), but it appears each story really is an exercise for him; an exercise in "what can I get away with today?" 

Barring any sort of plot summary, I will say that each character is somewhat dimensional, but mostly 2-dimensional.  Mr. Palahniuk has professed that the novel is part satire of reality television, and the pigeonholing of his cast fits that bill in their colorful nicknames, but I feel it prohibits him from fully examining the depths of his foray into horror.  It does make for some graphic drama in pieces, but there's something of a barely missed bullseye.

So what's my beef?  My beef is that Mr. Palahniuk is talented enough to do otherwise than publish a collection of his practice papers.  The entire book reads similar to exactly what he writes about: A Writers' Workshop.  It's interesting, it's shocking, but the substance really doesn't kick in until the last quarter of the book.

However.

However, I do realize that no one else could write such nervy literature aside from this author.  Mr. Palahniuk shows once again that he is most devoted to honing his craft and attempting to find a new take on an old genre.  In a way, the horror of this novel is really the horror that we see in the papers and on television and not the horror we imagine in abandoned houses and dark forests.