Chuckfull of Shit

Published writing: a struggle for permanence. Developing thoughts and ideas of life to the level of coherency, clarity and consideration required for a poem, essay, novella or a novel reaps the reward of seeing the writing on a printed page. Thus, having one’s writings bound in a book, published and spread through trade is a proverbial chance to aim for immortality. For despite the freedom created by the Internet to spurt out inane ramblings, a printed page can potentially sail from here to eternity.

Yet, a printed book guarantees no ticket to eternity. Re-printing is not guaranteed. Furthermore, to increase the tones of pretension, in today’s literal world, several novelists deserve to pass away, and their works perish out of print. Brown’s Da Vinci Code or Rowling’s Harry Potter-saga are prime examples of works that, if recalled at all, should be remembered for their surrounding phenomenon of popular culture, not literary qualities. The social impact of said works is discussed more than the content. This suffices for proof. However, a more complex species of discussion are authors who are deemed literally significant and thematically profound. Who of these has communicated about contemporary life poetically enough to pass through to readers of tomorrow? Picking up a copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s novelistic works, such as Fight Club (yes, the one dramatised in a film starring Brad Pitt), it seems that some sort of longevity is expected from said works. Reading the quotes on the cardboard back covers of the works, I am left with a badly itching doubt of the accuracy of said statements.

Holding Palahniuk’s works in my hand, I remind myself that it is ill advised to judge a book by its covers. However, simultaneously, my mind tells me the said covers make it hard to avoid judgement. It is not the illustrations that cause the concern, but rather the quotes from various publications. For an example, an edition of Fight Club presents a citation from the Big Issue that reckons that “Palahniuk’s debut novel reads like Franz Kafka updated to modern day New York”. Franz Kafka’s great works are commonly appreciated for their multi-layered styles of expression of an individual’s conflict with an opposing mass, usually a bureaucratic monstrosity, where the ambiguities of the style reveal an abundance of possible interpretations and messages. Most importantly, Kafka’s works manage to capture the emotional feeling, instead of an intellectual speculation of the concerns of a modern man. The more we consider Kafka, the less his works seem similar to a novel about frustrated white collar anti-hero plunging into a world of violence and anarchy, both in terms of subtleties of style and importance of the thematic qualities. My irritation with Palahniuk’s writings begins with these faulty comparisons.

It expands as the eye wanders to another citation. It informs me that Fight Club tells us: “this is how we live now”. Thus, Palahniuk not only discusses something universally pertinent like Kafka did, but he also manages to talk about the modern man. Yet, I am unconvinced. Certainly, any one who has even done as little watched the film version of Fight Club could point out obvious points of the film where Palahniuk places critique to the modern life-style, such as consumerism. He is both direct and blunt with highlighting this, as the narrator of the novel tell the reader: “you buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life…then the perfect bed” (44).

Yet, one begs to question whether this is direct expression, amplified by using the second person, is truly a way of telling us of our lives? Surely, a cold statistic such as the fact that the Ikea-Catalogue is printed more than The Bible affects us in equally profound proportions. Choosing to directly accuse the reader, Palahniuk misses out on considering the complexities of modern man’s existential crisis. By a contrasting example, in Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, the main characters climbs down to a dried-up well in order to be able to concentrate on thinking. This simple image portrays the more subtle side of the oppressing twenty-first century, where it is impossible to even think clearly. It succeeds in conveying the emotion without resulting to the literal equivalent of shouting at the reader, which Palahniuk fails in performing. It seems increasingly doubtful that Palahniuk’s quest to discuss man’s state of being at the moment would communicate something both profound, beautiful and sincere to the reader. It is an excruciatingly challenging task to be poetic and ‘pissed-off’, and Palahniuk seems unable to perform according to the expectations.

Palahniuk’s impotency as a profound writer only becomes more apparent when we examine his literary styles with closer attention. In Fight Club, aside from the depictions of the physical damage done during the club meetings, one of the most vivid stylistic choices of narration is the rhythm. Many paragraphs consist of only one, short sentence, such as “death will commence in five./ five, four./Around her, parasitic life spray paints her heart./four three” (36). The tempo, even in passages not involving counting, follows a similar pace for much the novel. The result is a tedious rhythm. It is reminiscent of reading your own heartbeat. This steady beat renders the reading dull. As Milan Kundera expresses the idea when discussing rhythm in his Art of the Novel, the rhythm of the heartbeat is a “relentless reminder that the minutes of my life are numbered” (Kundera, 150). Kundera goes on to mention how a finely crafted rhythm is recognized by the ability to avoid the numbing predictability of the beating. Palahniuk’s abundant use of such amplified heartbeat throughout Fight Club’s syntax convinces me the author lacks means of controlling his rhythm, and the fine crafting expected from a great author appears absent.

Other elements of the style in Palahniuk’s works serve as further proof of his inadequacies as a writer. His choice of imagery is reflective of his chosen form of crassness and blunt depictions. Fight Club contains images of the narrator’s black eye and a face “swollen from the stitches” (47) inside the cheek, or the image of a “lunging red penis” (30) flashing on a movie screen. However, one of the most pertinent depictions of Palahniuk’s choice of imagery is in his short-story Guts, where the lead character has to sever his large intestines using his teeth, or he’ll die of a perverse masturbation activity gone wrong. The image of Guts, in addition to the fact that the story was introduced to me with the warning “see if you can read this without feeling sick”, highlights the weakness of Palahniuk’s craft. His depictions are stylistically crass and rely on shock value. From the detail given to the effects of a beating, to the taboo of nudity, to the obscene perversity of the predicament in Guts, Palahniuk’s writing resembles, in my mind, a teenager with a t-shirt adorning profanities. The sole purpose of the poetic devices seems not to communicate any profound feeling, or a message of human existence, but to make the reader gasp “Oh my” while reading of the sickness of today’s world. Such shock-tactics are futile. A browse of a newspaper is equally profane. Palahniuk, so keen on shocking the status quo, manages to communicate nothing much of the “way we live”. He communicates as much about our existence as a t-shirt that says “Jesus was a cunt”. Are we to regard this statement as a deep expression of the way we live as well?

To clarify, the question is not about banning vulgar content in modern literature. Considering the world we live in, it is inevitable. The argument at hand seeks to express that Palahniuk’s vulgarity is not effective, simply because the seemingly pre-pubescent desire to be shocking renders his savage poetic devices devoid of meaning. Murakami’s depiction of a man being skinned alive in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is far more effective, because the clinical precision the savage act is committed receives a depiction that is exactly that: clinical and precise. Linking the skinning-scene to the metaphysical rapes committed by Noboru Wataya in the novel, the result communicates of the atrocities of war, and sadistic inclinations of people in power. Thus, shocking vulgarity can enrich the novel. However, as the depiction of the swollen cheeks of Fight Club’s narrator during his day at the mundane office signifies little more than an interest to be shocking while pointing out how mundane a cubicle job appears. What of the culminating scene in Guts? Is Palahniuk perhaps warning his audience of the dangers of too much masturbation? Is he, by any chance telling us that we should not try to satisfy every one of our perverse desires? It might reflect badly on my responsiveness as a reader, but I fail to find myself moved by such messages. In fact, it seems that through his stylistic devices, as well as his thematic messages, Palahniuk’s main concern is appearing gross, in all the mundane glory ‘gross’ provides.

Gross shock values represent no adequate aim for longevity. I hold the belief that Palahniuk’s works are unlikely to continue receiving the pardon of re-printing, and he will eventually be remembered as an appendix to the film Fight Club, rather than the novel, or any of his other works. How could it happen otherwise? To phrase my sentiments in a style representative of his works, how could Palahniuk land on the planes of immortality, if he is reaching for them by catapulting a chockfull of shit?

By Juha Virtanen

Copyright October 2005