In
Chuck Palahniuk’s world, an ancient African lullaby can kill
a grown man just by being read out loud. A suicidal husband leaves
behind scrawling messages on the insides of walled-up rooms in houses
on an East Coast vacation island, in effect speaking to his wife
from beyond the grave. Palahniuk has even written a short story,
“Guts,” that contains events so unnerving to imagine
that faintings have been reported at his readings when he includes
it. (I have read this story and I can attest: It is mightily disgusting.)
Language doesn’t just have the power to upset or soothe in
Palahniukland. Words can cause actual, physical discomfort, fainting,
even death. And you thought words would never hurt you.
Of course, Palaniuk's first novel, Fight Club, was made
into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. A book of his
short nonfiction, Stranger than Fiction, was recently released,
and he is at work on his seventh novel. The author will read at
Shaman Drum this month.
Ann Arbor Paper: Is your reputation as a nihilist
deserved?
Chuck Palahniuk: If you don’t believe what
other people believe, they call you a nihilist. I’m not a
nihilist. I’m a romantic. All of my books are basically romances;
they’re stories about reconnecting with community.
A2P: What is the relationship of your nonfiction
work to fiction? Are the articles in Stranger than Fiction
really “raw material,” as the press materials say?
CP: Non-fiction is what I do between working on
fiction. I give myself permission to get out and reconnect with
people and get out of my head. It gives me stuff for when I go back
into hibernation.
A2P: Most of your characters are unsympathetic;
even Misty, the protagonist of Diary, is an “idiot”
with “trite” dreams. And the communities they find are
not especially appealing. It doesn’t seem very romantic.
CP: Diary was written in a judgmental,
caustic third-person voice, but in the end you realize it was Misty
saying these things about herself. It’s like when Marla Singer
[in Fight Club] says awful things about herself, she’s
yelling “the girl in 8A is a terrible person...” Misty
comes to terms with who she is. I find it hard to write victims.
My quote-unquote victims have created their own circumstances. They
trap themselves.
A2P: How do you feel about your characters? What
is it like to spend time with them while you’re writing? Do
you like them?
CP: My characters are not people. They are machines
that do a job. They are machines designed to destroy themselves.
I think it was Derrida who said a book is the ‘software that
plays in the hardware of your mind.’ Characters are just vehicles
for telling a story. Devices. Mechanisms.
A2P: What about creating sympathetic characters
to connect with the reader?
CP: I think that used to work, but it became formulaic,
and it got stale. I think my work resonates with young people because
it breaks those rules. So many people are writing beautiful stories
or sympathetic characters, and nobody notices.
A2P: And, to be sure, your books are compelling
without sympathetic characters; what is it then that keeps the reader
interested?
CP: People want to see a lot of verbs on the page.
They want to see a lot of action. There have been studies that suggest
that when you read something about performing a physical action,
the part of the brain lights up that would if you were to actually
perform the action. It only happens when you read. If you’re
watching TV, and a character walks on, the motor cortex doesn’t
light up. But it does when you read the word “walk.”
Things should happen on the page. People should not think, believe,
expect. There should be enough physical things happening that the
reader then thinks, or believes, or expects.
A2P: You have an extremely devoted and almost fanatical
following. What do you think about such devotion?
CP: I don’t think about it. I can’t.
You can’t write honestly, or riskily, if you’re thinking
about who’s listening. If you start thinking about your fans,
or about your living relatives who might read it, you start withholding.
A2P: And what do your relatives think about your
work?
CP: I’m not entirely sure most of them have
read it. I did get cards after Diary was published—that one
seemed to be a hit with aunts and uncles.
A2P: Houses figure prominently in many of your
books—the Wilmot house and other houses in Diary,
Tyler’s house in Fight Club. For that matter, the
longest piece in Stranger than Fiction is about people who have
built castles in the United States. Why is this such an important
theme in your work?
CP: I wanted to be an architect when I was little.
Also architecture, like anatomy, tells a story. Architecture is
a language, like anatomy, but it tells a story most people can no
longer read. I’m always looking for a way to tell a story
within the story, and architecture and anatomy can do that.
A2P: What’s your house like?
CP: The house in Oregon I had when I started writing
was a 300-square-foot shack with no foundation. Right now I’m
in a two-bedroom apartment that’s like a hotel room. In the
way you can have your adventure on the page, you don’t have
to actually live in the house. It’s on the page.
A2P: You are frequently compared to writers like
Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard; what do you think of them?
CP: I really love Vonnegut. It wasn’t until
I re-read Slaughterhouse-Five earlier this year that I
realized so many choruses and devices and techniques that I consider
good came from that book. Ballard I never really read; I saw the
movie Crash but didn’t get very far into the book.
A2P: What writers did you read growing up?
CP: When I was really young, I read [the mystery
magazine] Ellery Queen. The stories gave you all the clues,
and if you paid attention you could figure it out. I also read a
lot of science fiction short stories, a lot of Ray Bradbury. I gave
up reading in high school and didn’t read any fiction in college
that I wasn’t forced to.
A2P: What about all this talk about the death of
the novel? Do you think the novel is a dying form or is that all
bunk?
CP: Reading and writing have become status acts
for a lot of young people. I mean, my god, the crowds that show
up at the readings. Maybe writing was out of style and being in
a band was in, but writing, and reading, has that outsider status
that is drawing people to it now.
A2P: Any advice for young writers?
CP: The one thing that really breaks my heart about
young writers is that they can tell a story and they’re in
school learning to write, but they just don’t have a lot to
write about. I wish they would go out and find stories. Once you
gain success you lose your anonymity and you can’t do that
anymore. I fucked around for 10 years. OK, 15 years. Oh, all right,
20. And I’m really glad I did.
A2P: And what will you be reading at Shaman Drum?
CP: You know I’m going to be reading “Guts.”
[“Guts” first appeard in Playboy in March 2004
and reportedly causes audience members to pass out when they hear
it.] Fifty-two people have fainted so far. I try to give a little
warning.
A2P: Who passes out?
CP: Oh, everybody. More men, which makes sense,
because it’s more of a men’s story. It’s maybe
60 percent men, 40 percent women. They tend to be angry —they’ll
shake their fists during the Q&A. They passed out in Italy,
when an actor read it in Italian—a man got up during the Q&A
and asked, “Did you read that story to humiliate me?”
I said, “Hey, mister, I got seven minutes to make you laugh,
make you feel queasy, and break your heart.” And that’s
what a short story should do. A2P
Chuck Palahniuk reads on September 25 at RC Auditorium, 701
E. University. The event has been moved from Shaman Drum bookstore
to accomodate a large anticipated crowd.
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