Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk, doing what I hate the most about his writing for a book that doesn't need to exist. As another amazon reviewer put it, what's best about his books is that he can make you see humanity in even the most grotesque characters. I agree with that. Of course that means he's using the dichotomy between their grotesqueness and their humanity to get you to empathize with them. That's good but that's not what he's doing in this book.

So seventeen (I think, I was never quite clear) writers go on a three month retreat hosted by the mysterious Mr. Whittier. They disappear out of their lives without a trace and are taken to an old abandoned theater that's completely locked off from the outside world. And then it's like an episode of the Real World except all the characters are assholes (not a single one you'd actually like) and they're all idiots, and it's too damn long. The form of the book is that there's a narrative of what's happening to the writers (or rather what they're doing to themselves and each other), then there are the poems about them (written in the story by an unknown author) and then there are the stories by the authors in the story. Neat, eh? No, I didn't think so either.

You have to understand where I'm coming from. I'm a fan of his, dammit, and I like his writing when he's good, but he disappoints me so much (much like Bret Easton Ellis). In this book, the gross stuff has no redeeming qualities. For example, the first story, Guts, is a gross-out of the highest order, and serves only to tell you why St. Gutfrey is the way he is. It does explain something of his character, but not much. Unfortunately, that's probably one of the best stories of the book, except for the last, Obsolete, which is Mr. Whittier's story.

Another thing that just really peeves me is that you get this story from a narrator who's never explained. He's always saying "We" did something, like "We took all the light bulbs out" or "We smelled something in the kitchen". And then he has no place in the narrative. No poem about him, no story by him, and no explanation of how he lived to tell the tale or why. Nobody ever reacts to him, nobody ever talks to him, he lacks any dialogue, and as far as I can tell must have been a ghost floating around watching everything.

So anyway, read the book if you're a hardcore Chuck fan, but don't bother otherwise. It's really not worth it.