Soup of blood and corn, shit and sperm and peanuts

There are maybe four authors whose new books I hunt down as soon as possible; Kinky Friedman, Irvine Welsh, George Pelecanos and Chuck Palahniuk.


Bought Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted today, it was rather expensive a purchase, but I try to make do without food the next two days. Haunted is a collection of stories or, as said by the author himself, a novel of stories. And the word is, that while doing a promotional tour for this book, them book signings and readings, Chuck Palahniuk made people faint by reading excerpts from his text. No hype this, it’s been witnessed by several people at many places – there even was a mention of a total of 68 people passing out while attending to the Chuck Palahniuk readings, probably untrue and what-have-you urban legends, but still. I guess if you are an impressive speaker, which Palahniuk no doubt is, you can make a pretty bewildering an effect, but I believe in this case there’s a little more to it than his gift of speech.
He read his short story called “Guts”.
It’s not a new story, an abridged version of it was already in one his novels, but, naturally, it's more effective as its own little entity. I don’t spoil all the fun here, but let’s just say that it’s a pretty disgusting story and a well-grounded initiator for people to turn stomachs or pass out on their heels. And the worst part is that it’s based on a true course of events.
You could assume that anyone can write gory stuff – what you need are the proper ingredients; blood, sperm, guts, brain matter, a gun or two, more blood, fucking much more hot sticky blood, death, dying, misery, sadomasochism and Satanism, right? Put the words together, think of a situation – put the gun in a mouth, pull the motherfucking trigger, blow the head clean off, etc. How hard is it? How gore is that?
But no. I think there are only two authors worth a mention who can write this kind of twisted fiction - and, hey, definitely not only in-your-face shit-gore stuff, but brilliantly nasty piece of literature - and they are Chuck Palahniuk and Bret Easton Ellis (I don't know why I'm leaving out Irvine Welsh, particularly his books Filth and Porno, somewhat different genre I guess). And Palahniuk makes Bret Easton Ellis’ books look like lullabies. Mind you, I like B.E. Ellis, read all his books, fucking loved Glamorama, but for one, Chuck Palahniuk is a better writer, technically he’s a better writer, methinks, and his prose is more insidious, creepier and darker. And the humour – and you gotta take it as humour otherwise you are an institutionalised fuck – is blacker, probably blacker you can ever imagine, seriously black. And the prose is trying its hardest to fuck up with your mind. Reading Ellis’ text you can clearly see the fiction and react accordingly, but in Palahniuk’s case you can feel it but don't know how to react. He leaves just enough leeway for your own imagination to play around and then – BANG – he writes something that could be possible to happen, but something that wasn’t really there within the boundaries of your imagination.

Here’s an excerpt of Chuck Palahniuk interview, unfortunately I cannot mention the source because initially I just copied it for my own collection and forgot where it was from:

Question: What's the strangest confession you've heard?
CP: [Laughs.] This is one of my favorites. I was in London last summer, and a guy came up at one of the readings, beforehand, and he said, "I loved what you wrote [in Fight Club] about doing stuff to celebrities' food, because I work at a five-star restaurant, and we do stuff to celebrities' food all the time." That's no surprise to me, because all my friends have stories. And I go, "Who? Tell me somebody," and he says, "I can't, it's a five-star restaurant." I refused to sign his book until he would tell me one person. And he gets really quiet, and then he says, "Margaret Thatcher has eaten my sperm." I was just stunned. It must have been the look on my face, but he got this little smile, and he goes, "At least five times." That is a story that—my God, you can make a whole room full of people put down their forks when you tell that story.