Illustration by JASON CHEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
By Antero Garcia
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Don’t write off Chuck Palahniuk’s latest book “Choke” as just another clichéd tale of a guy who cruises for chicks at Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings.
“It’s a dark romantic comedy about sexual compulsives, but more importantly it’s about coming to the point where you can decide for yourself what you are instead of letting the world tell you what you are,” Palahniuk said from his home near Portland, Ore.
Best recognized as the author of the dark novel “Fight Club,” Palahniuk has recently finished his fourth book, “Choke,” for which he will be making a promotional appearance at the store Book Soup on June 8. While the book took approximately six months to write, Palahniuk is quick to point out that he does not spend the time sitting in front of a computer screen or even in a small office.
“I don’t cram myself in a room – everywhere I go I write,” he said. “When I go to the gym I’m working on it. When I’m at the grocery store I’m working on it. Working at the computer is such a sterile place. I run dry really fast if I sit at a computer.”
In addition to not writing in a traditional environment, Palahniuk finds that he needs to be in a certain mood to capture the dark tone that runs throughout his stories. In order to find this feeling, Palahniuk listens to music.
“We spend so much of our time forgetting why we should be angry and listening to Trent Reznor, or to Manson, or to Korn, or to Prodigy just gets me back into that frame of mind where I can write angrily so that people will notice,” he said.
Palahniuk wanted to capture this dark music genre in the movie version of “Fight Club,” but ran into a few problems.
“David Fincher really wanted a noise based soundtrack and I had been really pushing for Trent Reznor because I love Nine Inch Nails,” Palahniuk said. “I later found out that Reznor would have done it except he was so wrapped up in his latest CD, ‘The Fragile.’ It broke his heart that he couldn’t do ‘Fight Club.’”
While Reznor was unable to compose the soundtrack for “Fight Club,” he is planning on working on the film version of another one of Palahniuk’s novels, “Survivor.” Besides his input on the soundtrack, Palahniuk avoided as much of the movie production of “Fight Club” as he could. He said that he enjoyed seeing the differences between the book and the movie and was happy with how the film turned out.
With the release of the film, Palahniuk has seen a large increase in his fan base. These fans are intrigued with Palahniuk’s strange story ideas.
For “Choke,” Palahniuk said that he was inspired to write the book because people seemed fascinated with the dark comedy and violence of “Fight Club,” and this feeling could only increase with the addition of sex and romance.
As for the novel’s title, it relates to an idea that Palahniuk had that he allowed the book’s main character, Victor Mancini, to try out.
“I was at a bar with my friends having a few beers,” Palahniuk said. “I realized that I didn’t have any money so I started looking around for things that I could possibly swallow and pretend to choke on so that maybe I would get enough pity that I wouldn’t have to pay the tab.”
With such perverse characters and storylines, Palahniuk is often considered one of the leaders of nihilist literature and ideas.
“It’s funny because I don’t see the books as nihilistic,” Palahniuk said. “I see them as dark but this darkness is just a way to get through to a very big romantic breakthrough. My books have been about that darkness but they always end in light.”
In addition to this response, Palahniuk is also distressed when readers criticize the morals and behaviors of his novels’ characters.
“When people say they are dark, unloveable characters, it hurts my feelings because they are all based on my friends,” he said. “I just don’t want my friends to see those reviews. I don’t want them to be hurt.”
However, before Palahniuk could even worry about his friends feeling hurt, he was in search of someone willing to publish his daring stories.
“I started writing and no one would publish my stuff because I was just trying to write exactly like Stephen King and Amy Tan and we already have both those people,” he said. “So, I wrote this really outrageous book called ‘Invisible Monsters’ and it got so much attention because everyone loved it, but no one would buy it because it is too weird.
“Out of reaction, I was so angry about that that I wrote ‘Fight Club’ and said, ‘They haven’t seen weird and dark yet,’” Palahniuk continued. “I made it just as dark and weird as I could, knowing they would reject it too. And then they ended up buying it three days after I sent it off.”
Being so “dark and weird,” Palahniuk’s novels have helped many people rediscover the joys of leisure reading. Palahniuk is impressed with the response he has gotten from his publications.
“It’s funny how many letters I get that say ‘I thought reading was for losers until I found your book,’” he said. “That’s so great. I’ve also gotten an amazing number of letters from guys in Christian schools where my books are banned.”
Palahniuk sees improvements in his writing with the completion of each of his novels; this improvement merely inspires him to write more.
“I want to think I’m getting better with each one,” Palahniuk said. “I personally think that ‘Lullaby,’ the one I finished for next year is my best one. It’s a horror novel. I wanted to really sit down over the next year and write three horror novels. ‘Lullaby’ is the first one.”
Besides the three horror novels, Palahniuk is working on a dark comedy TV series for HBO. Like all of his works, these new projects will reflect Palahniuk’s basic outlook on America.
“I see our whole culture coming up really fast on a big romantic breakthrough,” he said. “We’ve been so cynical and sarcastic and critical for decades now. We are finally going to realize that we have to do something with our lives and we have got to create something. We can’t just tear things down for the rest of our lives.”