Writing to reach you

What the hell?! Merc reads books?! Uhuh, he does. I'm a big Palahniuk fan. Who? Chuck Palahniuk, but that name probably doesn't ring a bell, let's try something else, Fight Club. That rings a bell right ? A huge fucking ding-a-dong bell I'm sure. Fight Club was his first real publication and immediatly picked up by David Fincher to be made into a movie. His books are filled to the brim with stuff that really happened to him or people he knows. The latest I read is called Non-Fiction, and you guessed it, it's not fiction. Non-Fiction is a collection of short stories written as articles for papers and magazines (you might know Palahniuk as a story writer for...Playboy...) Normal everyday things are turned into interresting stories, stories you can't stop reading, strange but true. There are three main parts in the book, People Together, Portraits and Personal. The introduction to this book starts with a line that defines Palahniuks writing, "If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people" This book will show how people reach out, though really it looks like "normal every day" behaviour. Most of all, he uses details, details, details. Some funny, some interresting, most gruesome. In Diary he spends a couple of dozen pages on the muscles in your face, and which one moves with each expression... People Together starts of with something many Americans know, and something most male internetters know, Mardi Gras/Springbreak. A daring way to start of a book, it's a report of your general (nasty) day during springbreak in Florida. Sex, blowjobs, stripping, bumping and grinding, it's all there. Next up are wrestlers. He tells about a wrestling contest, a dying sport, about young men trying for their first Olympics and old men trying for their last. A diverse group of wrestlers ranging from highschool kids to middle-aged men competing for a few spots on the Olympic team. They tell about the addiction, the broken bones and the reason they all have weird looking ears. It's a sad story filled with glory, darn that rhymes nicely. Yet another story tells about book, theatre and screenplay writers trying to get published or noticed by Hollywood. Hundreds flock to a ballroom in a hotel, carrying their gameplan, their liveswork, their break from the drag that is their life. Seven minutes is all they get to convince a representative from a publisher or a Hollywood producer. And they only paid 20-50 bucks to get in... Next up are a Demolition Derby, a day dressing Furry, modern day castle builders, using steroids, life on a submarine, seeing ghosts. All focussed on people and their weird lifestyles and hobbies. Portraits focusses on some celebrities. First of is Juliette Lewis, someone we all know from the movie Natural Born Killers. She tells about how her life went, what her plans were and how she ended up doing something totally different. She tells about her acting and how she does what she does. How people think she's a psycho by nature, while really she's really shy. In the end, she is doing what she started off looking to do, singing. The second story is that of Andrew Sullivan. Who? He's a well known writer, columnist, political critic, and most of all, defender of gay rights. He talks about how he always stood inbetween Democrats and conservatives, how they all hated his guts for telling the truth instead of the truth their party sided with most. He talks about how he got to where he is, including how he got HIV positive and how he deals with it. Other portraits are about Amy Hempel, a writer Palahniuk says about "You go beyond this point, and almost every book you'll ever read will suck". Marilyn Manson, giving a tour of his house while laying his own tarrot. Michelle Keating, a woman that travels from disaster to disaster with her sniffing dogs to help find people burried under buildings and dirt. Brian Walker, a.k.a Rocket Guy, first guy to build his own rocket. Ira Levin, writer of books that deal with issues in society years before they happen, Womens Rights in '67, Men fighting Womens Rights in '72, Spy Cam abuse in '91. Personal tells about stuff Palahniuk went through himself. He tells about his carreer as an escort for a hospice. How he went with the dying to places they wanted to see one last time. How he visited LA for screenplay negotiations for Fight Club. His experience with "The Lip Enhancer", something he bought on TellSell to outlip Brad Pitt, all he ended up doing was sounding silly. How kids did stuff from Fight Club for real, not the fighting, the other bits... "Margaret Thatcher has eaten my sperm atleast five times", the Una-Pooper smearing walls with his own crap, projectionists putting bits of porn in Disney films. His visits to stripbars that had hundreds of cockroaches and 5 people in it. How he passed a kidney stone. How his father was murdered. Stories remembered after opening his box of creditcard receipts. Did I like it ? I loved it! It's a great read, and very much unlike anything else I've read before. It's the 4th book by him I've read, I bought another one today and am already reading my 5th. | posted by merc, 10:59 AM