These are all nonfiction stories and essays I wrote between novels. Here, that kid is still trying to connect with people. Or people being together.įor the castle builders, it's about flying a stone flag so grand it attracts people with the same dream.įor the combine-demolition folks, it's about finding a way to get together, a social structure with rules and goals and roles for people to fill while they rebuild their community by crashing farm equipment.įor Marilyn Manson, it's about a kid from the Midwest who can't swim, suddenly moved to Florida, where social life is lived in the ocean.
This is the lonely end of the spectrum.Įvery story in this book is about being with other people. Together.Ĭhances are, if you're reading this, you know this cycle. Until you crave the idea of escaping, getting away to a…Īnd so it goes. If your story world sells well enough, you get to go on book tour. Then you come back to be with other people. You stay in your story world until you destroy it. You spend time alone, building this lovely world where you control, control, control everything. In so many ways, that's also how you write a novel. And we're lonely.Īfter we're miserable enough-like the narrator in his Fight Club condo, or the narrator isolated by her own beautiful face in Invisible Monsters-we destroy our lovely nest and force ourselves back into the larger world. Whether it's a ranch in Montana or basement apartment with ten thousand DVDs and high-speed Internet access, it never fails.
An environment you can control, free from conflict and pain. Some lovely isolated nest where you can invite only the rabble you like. Or a mountaintop castle, like William Randolph Hearst. No, the dream is a big house, off alone somewhere.
In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or, worse, the bus. If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people. Acts that give spice to his novels are made more menacing when encountered in the real world." - Black Book "The book's lurid appeal rests largely on being let in on Palahniuk's secrets, the raw material for much of his fiction. This is a pretty great book.” -The Seattle Times “Rarely does a collection of essays continually resonate with a main theme and accumulate a weight that would lead you to call it a great book. "Priceless grace notes from an exceptionally droll and sharp-eyed observer." - The New York Times “Eccentric, idiosyncratic, and often entertaining.” -The Onion “In Chuck Palahniuk’s world, the ride is fast, often disturbing, and there is never any holding back.” -The New Orleans Times-Picayune “One of the oddest and most oddly compelling collections to come along for some time.” -The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel These stories are true to him and no one else." - The Oregonian "Step into Palahniuk's dark worldview and watch for what crawls out. "Full of wonderful moments…Palahniuk's voice is so distinctive and intimate-he writes as though he is recounting a great story to a close friend." - Los Angeles Times