“I will always give Chuck a 5 because I consider him a mentor and friend. He almost certainly does not consider me a friend, and that’s cool.
I went to a workshop with him for 3 months. Every week I flew from Denver to Portland to meet up with some really great people and work with Chuck and Lidia Yuknavitch.
I was thinking I’d go see him when he came to Denver this last April, but signings are weird. I never know what to say. And I’ve made an idiot out of myself more than once. And I was wondering if Chuck would remember who I was. Should I bring up that we were in the workshop together? Would that just be embarrassing? Would he not remember me and then feel bad for not remembering, which would make me feel bad because that’s who I am? What did I wear to the workshops? Could I dress the same and maybe that’d cue him?
Then COVID happened, and the visit didn’t, and I was spared the decision.
After working 12 weeks with him, I can say that he’s a nice guy, and he knows a lot about writing fiction. Don’t make the mistake so many others have of thinking that Chuck is Tyler Durden, because he’s not. We paid…it was a small amount for the workshop, split between Chuck and Lidia. I don’t know what Lidia did with her half, I think it went to charity, but I know Chuck sent his half to the Pixie Project, and animal rescue in Portland, which is also referenced a few times in Fight Club 3.
Fight Club 3 was pretty confusing for me. But I read it fast. And I think, like Fight Club 2, it’s pretty heavy allegory that blends the fictions of Fight Club with Chuck’s real life. It’s interesting. It works. It warrants another more careful reading on my part.
I really think Chuck’s works will make for interesting study someday. He leaves a lot of unresolved questions in readers’ minds, and he talks a lot about reality as it is to him, not as he’d like it to be.
I was just reading something about The Matrix being allegory for the Wachowskis’ transitions (from male to female? I’m not sure if that’s how you say that correctly. I mean no offense). One of the Wachowski’s confirmed this, which I think may ultimately hurt the movie’s popularity in the long run. Not because people “don’t want” a movie about that, but because left open, it can really be about anything. It could be about any eye-opening change that, once seen, can’t be unseen. It can mean different things to different people, and it can also mean different things to the same people at different points in their lives. I think an ongoing critical debate would’ve kept that movie alive, given it new life with a completely new audience, and I think that there would’ve been a pretty good amount of debate of what the Matrix “really” means initiated by lots of different groups. But I think saying it’s definitively about one thing or another means there’s not much point debating it anymore. We can debate its effectiveness as an allegory for living as a trans person, but there’s really no more debate about what it “really” means. Its intent is no longer debateable. Only its impact.
Chuck’s works are different. They work on a simple, story level, but his place in the cyclical world of books and stories is mostly unexplained. His motivations for writing most of his books are stated here and there, but you’ll notice he mostly talks about the germ of the idea and its development, not a “lesson” he was trying to share.
Anyway, this book is his most abstract, and I’ll admit I had a harder time following it than I did any of his others. But I blame myself. For now. It needs a deeper dive. And I wonder if this is part of his legacy. Does writing some things that are a little more obtuse, alongside those things that are more direct, keep things interesting and relevant?”