Not really. I need to watch more of it. I've been killing a lot of time with City of Heroes in the late night, and trying to read two (The God Delusion, Haunted) and a half (The Making of Modern Japan) books at once isn't helping.
I really don't know how I got to doing that, except that 30% off coupons were involved. The book on Japan is great, but it's really losing the fight. Lately so is Haunted. Palahniuk treads a fine line between splatter with a point and splatter for splatter. I think it works as an anthology, but he's using the short stories inside a frame that doesn't do much for me. It's sort of like a locked room mystery without the mystery. I really like each short story, and he flirts with magical realism in interesting ways, but when we cut back to the writers he drops the ball. He developed his technique a lot between this and Rant.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I'm unsure why Palahniuk appeals to your age group. I know its trendy to be disconnected from the "older" generation (because, some how they're ruining your life by thinking maybe you should grow up), but I find his writing to be pretentious at best, and down right pandering to group of guys who have no vision os their future, and take umbrage when people point that out.
I think Palahniuk is mainly writing about failure, and it's not very glamorous depictions either. His characters are mostly broken people limping through life.
But mostly I read it for the black comedy and the bizarre. I live a relatively weird life, so I relate to weird situations.
Much like Bret Easton Ellis, who writes almost about the same thing, today's youth (gosh, I'm old) seem to think failure, drug abuse, misogynism and violence are galamorous.
That's the point, Roamer. Palahniuk does have a weirdness to his work, but these antiheroes, these lost souls seem to resonate with your generation. Its almost like you respect failure more than success.
"Its almost like you respect failure more than success."
Isn't that what they said about F. Scott Fitzgerald or Allen Ginsberg? It's absolutely true that Palahniuk writes almost entirely about people who have failed in life and that he's talking about dissatisfaction with society. But failure is a pretty common topic in writing. Shakespeare's tragedies are about failures. Antigone is about a woman who is going to be totally screwed regardless of what she does. Flannery O'Conner wrote a short story where an escape killer murders a whole family, and he's clearly meant as the hero of the piece.
I don't think it's too unusual for popular authors to be writing about the unsuccessful. Books about people who achieve everything they want and live happily ever after don't have a lot of story potential. Where's the conflict? I don't think writing about misery, suffering, and failure inherently glamorizes them and I don't see Palahniuk glamorizing the subject matter any more than Shakespeare was glorifying teen suicide in Romeo & Juliet.
Now Wuthering Heights... That really is glamorizing an extremely dysfunctional relationship. Wow was that guy crazy.
Post a Comment