I had a spate of buying these books in my very early 20’s, and they hold a particular place in time for me. When I loved reading and critique, but before thinking of the notion that I could write. It was before I’d even considered the thought, let alone seriously. Not a good writer, and I was told my poetry was poor very clearly in class. Well, this series will be part of testing whether that is the case (and I leave it to you as to whether I’m a poet or not, I use the title but I’ve never been fully convinced).
They are revolting it’s true, a cover of Invisible Monsters genuine nightmare fuel which I wish to Heaven I’d never seen owning a different copy when the time came to buy.
Seedy sexualisation is usually placed in story, merely to titillate. I find that starting with this author, of all mediums, but far the most sexually graphic encounters are quite readily found in books, their innocent pages and furtive nature of being tucked away from the popularity of cinema or gaming providing advantage in certain areas. What’s nestled away certainly pre-occupies Palahniuk. What happens in the strange places in the world, that human beings are certainly not mundane, we are all mad, often quite unpleasant, and myth makers of the strangest proclivities, horror stories waiting to be discovered rather than told.
Exhaustion is very much the enemy in life, and an exhausting narrative or lifestyle, I believe pervades contemporary fiction, particularly magical realism or ‘stranger than fiction tales.
If anything, in a shifting world that has progressed from 90’s ‘heroin chic’, to the rising emergence of new movements, new STD’s, the boundaries of postmodernist experimentation stretched; Palahniuk can be newly interpreted as less of a shock appeal, and more contemplation of things stripped away, a truly nihilistic exercise. Many forget that philosophical nihilism may invite the dismissal of convention, never the less it restores the enlightened individual to bedrock. In the case of these novels, the bedrock of sex persists. Of self-disgust certainly. It’s an anti-parable in many ways, not proselytising virtue, but rather speaking plainly of the wretched nature of those who are frankly unpleasant, and the seedy truths of life as they are.
Palahniuk’s works remain uniquely creative, memorable, and hard not to resonate in the head. And listening to interviews with the soft-spoken author himself, it is clear that a as much as his stories are designed to intrigue, part of the comedy and drama of life he takes directly from the mad nature of the world and the kind of people living in the same places and reading the same pages.
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