“I dug it.
On the one hand, not a perfect book. But I wanted to know what happened, and I wanted to keep reading, and there was a really interesting (to me) narrative voice that co-mingled a third-person omniscience with a first-person voice. Which is why I sometimes wonder if Chuck Palahniuk is unfairly maligned for the contents of Chuck Palahniuk’s books.
Let me explain a bit.
Have you ever heard of the Fregoli delusion? It’s kind of hard to explain. Let me explain it through the idea of mocking Nicholas Sparks.
When you read a Nicholas Sparks book, I think you get a Nicholas Sparks narration. It’s through the lens of a character, maybe a cowboy or something, but basically it’s Nicholas Sparks in a cowboy hat.
The Notebook: A vet comes home, restores a house, is haunted by a girl he loved.
A Walk To Remember: Boy falls in love with cancer girl.
Dear John: A “rebel” who “rebelled” by joining the army meets a girl he really likes.
The Lucky One: Marine finds a picture of a woman while he’s in Iraq, falls in love with her.
Message In A Bottle: Lady finds a literal message in a bottle, some kind of love quest ensues.
Okay, so when you read a Nicholas Sparks book, you’ve got a narrator that’s good-hearted but perhaps a bit scarred in some way (war experience, bittersweet love experience, and so on) who meets another character, and their love is made difficult in some way, but is ultimately achievable because they are all good inside.
For the most part, when you read one of these books, it’s easy to flip to the back flap and see Sparks’ toothy smile and think, He must be a real good guy. It’s easy to confuse the man writing the books with the men in the books. To think, Nicholas Sparks really believes in love and the kinder, gentler things in life.
And what Sparks engages in is a little bit of literary Fregoli delusion.
Fregoli delusion is an odd disorder where the sufferer thinks that several people in her life are being played by one person. For example, if I had the disorder, I might think that my five friends were really one person who showed up in disguise every time. I have my friends, Jimmy, Johnny, Jeremy, Josiah, and Alec. Because I suffer from Fregoli delusion, I think that Alec is a real person, and Jimmy, Johnny, Jeremy, and Josiah are all Alec in disguise. He has a bunch of masks and outfits that obscure his real identity. Maybe he affects a British accent when he’s Johnny. But because I suffer from this delusion, I 100% believe that all of these people are one.
Back to Nicholas Sparks. When we’re talking Sparks, it’s really not a problem when people assume that the writer is within these characters. That the characters and narrators in his stories are speaking Sparks’ words, his truths. That, basically, Sparks wears a mask that makes him look like a war vet, but from behind that mask he’s speaking all of his truth. It’s not a problem because what he says in his books is, generally, pleasant.
For a writer like Chuck Palahniuk, this literary Fregoli delusion is a big, big problem.
Because when you read his books, you are almost always presented with characters who make bad decisions. Who do things you absolutely would not do. The trick of his books, and what separates the ones that work for me from the ones that don’t, is that he makes it seem like those characters make awful choices, but you sort of understand why. You don’t like the choices, oftentimes you don’t like the characters, but you feel sympathetic towards them.
So while Nicholas Sparks has these lovelorn vets, what do you get with Palahniuk:
Fight Club: Men who brutally beat each other.
Choke: Man who chokes in restaurants just to be touched.
Diary: Woman who questions whether her artistic talent has totally fizzled as her life falls to pieces.
Survivor: Man who is extremely confused about spirituality and does not find answers.
Haunted: Chronic masturbator.
Rant: Someone who purposely infects people with a disease.
And when you round up those traits and flip to the back picture, I can understand why someone would say, “Chuck Palahniuk is a bad guy.” Or “Chuck Palahniuk hates women.” Or “Chuck Palahniuk hates humanity.”
Dear readers, I think that it’s time to grow up and dissuade ourselves of this notion. The notion that every character is the creator in disguise.
I don’t think Chuck Palahniuk is a bad guy. Or that he hates women. Or that he hates humanity.
I DO think his characters are bad guys. That some of them hate women or are women who are not very positive about themselves. I think a lot of his characters and narrators express a deep hatred for some of the trappings of humanity.
And I do believe that, to an extent, fiction is autobiographical.
But, BUT, I also believe that true autobiography is about expressing dark sides, things that are wrong, and things we’re not proud of. True autobiography, and true fiction for that matter, aren’t about making the good guys good, the bad guys bad, and that the bad guys get punished. It’s not about putting aside negative thoughts. It’s not about shying away from saying something because it will hurt someone’s feelings or because it’s not accurate or because it’s not an accurate depiction of statistical data in the real world, or an accurate representation of a poll on HuffPo, which seems to be what passes for reality now.
I believe that an author who can express darkness and doesn’t have to write about heroic characters is a good author, and I think this is the key to Palahniuk’s success. It’s pretty rare, in my opinion, to read about characters that you don’t like, that you don’t want to be friends with, who don’t have a lot of redeeming qualities. It’s even rarer for those characters to be the NARRATORS of the story, the guides that take you through the events.
I think it’s a test of one’s humanity to read a character who makes brutal, violent choices and to identify with that character, to empathize with how broken and sad that character is. To say that you can really hate certain things about a person, but goddamn it, that person is still a person. And you wish they were different. You wish that Tyler Durden would stage his rebellion against corporate America without anyone having to die. You wish Misty Wilmont from ‘Diary’ took more control of her life, but she doesn’t. You wish that Penny from ‘Beautiful You’ viewed women’s needs and wants differently, you wish that instead she would be more progressive. But she isn’t. Penny is not. Penny, that character, that person, is not.
I want books with fucking characters. With honesty. If I want to read a book that consists of everyone being careful all the time, of saying the right things so as not to hurt a career, of always saying what will please everyone, of talking about real-life issues in a way that’s fair to everyone and values the current idea of being progressive over story, if I want that, I’ll read that. I DO read that! But I want characters too, I want writing, I want voice, and I want a voice that says something, even if I don’t agree with what that voice says.
Fuck, I want characters who explore parts of the world that I can’t, that are closed off to me because I behave myself, I call my mom, and I think about a retirement fund. That’s me, and I don’t want to read about me all the time!
Let’s put the icing on the cake.
As of now, Chuck Palahniuk has zero criminal record. He’s not a guy who beats up other guys. He’s yet to hijack a plane. As far as I know, he still possesses the entirety of his lower GI tract, has not lost it to a masturbatory incident with pool suction. So he certainly writes about some weird shit, and bad things happen to his characters and his writing is unusual in that his main characters so often express views outside the norm of polite society. But is he actually doing these things? It would appear not.
In the interest of fairness for what’s coming, I’ll link to this (http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/chuck-palahniuk-dead-wrong-marginalization-men/). In this article, dailydot shows their evidence for the sexism of Chuck Palahniuk. I think it’s a very narrow vision of what he’s saying, and it’s telling to me that he provides several examples when he makes his point, but dailydot does not.
I have to say, I’ve been to a lot of author readings. Like dozens, poets, non-fiction, straight, gay. Chuck Palahniuk is the only one I’ve ever seen purposely alternate Male/Female during the Q&A period. The ONLY one. Seems pretty fair and even-handed to me. Seems that this is a man who is going at least a small, extra length to be fair in real life.
Nicholas Sparks?
Well, it just so happens that Mr. Lovelorn veteran, who was never enlisted, by the way, is currently being sued for a number of things that, if the suit is legit, boil down to saying black people are poor and can’t do academic work, and his response to a group of LGBT students: “Whatâs with this gay club?” Read for yourself, decide for yourself: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/03/lawsuit-claims-author-nicholas-sparks-is-a-racist-anti-semitic-bully.html
Continue to see characters as pure extensions of authors if you’d like. Thankfully we live in a society that allows you to choose who you want to listen to, even if what you’re listening to is the inauthentic pandering of a jerkoff.
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