“Great book, quick, unexpected turns, and the ending has a feel to it that I haven’t gotten from a book in a bit.
Okay, I have a funny story about this book that I don’t know how to tell, so I’m just going for it.
Several months ago I was reading Fangoria’s relaunch issues, and in one there was an interview with Barbara Crampton, I think. In it, she talked about recording screams for movies, and how sometimes she agreed to be tied up and so on, to make it more real.
This gave me a brief story idea: What if people were really being killed to get these sound effects? What if the screams in Disney films were actual deaths?
And then, less than a month after this idea started cooking, I saw the premise for Mr. Palahniuk’s new book, and I was like, “Goddamnit!”
Chuck’s book is obviously better than mine would be. No comparison. Also, he’d written an entire book on something, and all I had was a starter, a premise, that wasn’t even committed to paper. That’s certainly not what I’m trying to say, that I’d do better, or that he stole this idea or something. Those are the things that kept me from saying any of this because the last thing I want is for someone to think that I’m comparing myself to multi-million-copy-selling Chuck Palahniuk in any way, on any level. He took a vaguely similar idea and used it as a jump-off, and he took it places I couldn’t have imagined. And he did it probably like 5 years before I did, based on publishing times.
It’s just funny on my part. It’s like if I’d come up for an idea for an asteroid movie in 1998. Or a deadly volcano movie in 1997. Or an undersea terror movie in 1989 (underrated genre of competing, simultaneous movies, but The Abyss, Leviathan, and Deep Star Six all came out that same year. In fact, me and my partner, intending to watch Leviathan, accidentally watched 45 minutes of The Abyss before we realized we were watching the wrong movie, mostly prompted by the lack of Peter Weller and the presence of Ed Harris, and the question “Does a movie need Peter Weller AND Ed Harris?”). Anyway, ideas fly around.
Of course, there’s really no reason for anyone to believe me. I guess I could go on the Goodreads pages of books I like and just say this shit all the time. I had an idea for a guy stuck on Mars…I had an idea for a book based on tweets of Things My Dad Says Sometimes That Are Sorta Inappropriate Nonsense.
And I guess I’m doing a bit of a disservice by telling MY story in a review of this book. But I don’t know where else to put it. And I’m not doing the original story, but damn it, I want to tell the story of the story. Besides, it’s not like Chuck Palahniuk is a small, unknown author who really needs the signal boost that can be given by Pete, whose claim to fame is writing book reviews that go nowhere.
And hey, it’s my life. My reviews. If you don’t like reviews that ramble off and barely address the book, then skip all of mine. Trust me on this one. I know. I wrote them. And they’re barely ever about the book.”