“Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong – they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone” – Herbert Marcuse
The charm of Chuck Palahniuk’s work lies in its unfathomable depiction of the common people’s striving for pleasures, all sorts of self-gratification that are not well known. The first two stories by Saint Gut-Free and Mother Nature in his innovative novel Haunted directly exposed some finest examples about the side-effects of de-sublimation, a process that the subject submits completely to the pleasure principle, which in turn being revenged by the reality principle.
Chuck’s style is quite witty and lucid, never pretentious in narrating the stories of his marginal characters. Reading this book is like traveling in an alienated place, physically it’s familiar, because it’s just plain and like everywhere else. The characters in these places seem quite normal at the first glance. But soon, their strangeness would be exposed by some particular features. And as their stories are unfolded, most of them would simply unheard before, which directly challenge the social norm. It’s quite easy to hastily judge such a book as a kind of tabloid type, which tries to attract readers’ attention by presenting unusual details, titillating one’s desire for something sinful or evil in the eyes of the norm of social acceptance, but nevertheless, practiced by a lot of people privately.
Is Chuck a moralist? It’s hard to tell, but his story is a fine-crafted illustration of some Marcuse’s difficult ideas about one-dimensional man in an affluent and post industry society. It will tell you how the happy consciousness that most of us strive to maintain is a fantasy we create for ourselves.
Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted
I started to know this name through the filmic adaptation of his Fight Club. Thrilling and wonderful, it's been selected by some of my classmates in the film studies as a sample for the cult film. When the word 'cult' is dedicated to a film or a book, it always means something mysterious that resists any attempts to interpret clearly. I remember BBC 4 chose later evening time slot to show this film sometime in 1993, and branded as the most anti-capitalist film that has been ever made. I have never read the original novel, but the moment I saw his non-fiction book Stranger Than Fiction in the foreign bookstore located at Wangfujing shopping street in Beijing, I immediately bought it.
The cover is a UK version, a dog head on a human body, wearing suit with a book in its hand. The cover design has already conveyed transgressive tone. Palahniuk’s style is edgy and subjects in general are those of the unspeakable categories in the mainstream. One story is about an old guy, who has died of a heart disease. In the anatomy, doctor finds an unusual big size heart and also, an unusual size of his dick. The dramatic contrast is the dead body has such a quality of muscle which can never achieved naturally, and ironically, the guy has been revealed as a patience of impotence.
Palahniuk shows his seriousness about the distorted self-identity issue in American society, and clearly shows how commercialization has functioned in shaping such an invisible hand. The theme he has already explored in the Fight Club. I should say these stories are more powerful than many writings in various culture studies. Palahniuk is a daring writer, in the sense that the subject he tackles has been considered very tricky and marginal, and generally it is in the consensus that such a subject should not be discussed. This in turn becomes a charm of Palahniuk’s work.
It’s very difficult to find any forbidden fields now in writing a novel. Palahniuk has just managed to find some, and it has caused a kind of sensation, and above all, it makes you think about yourself, and the fantasy each one of us has had in this world.
Wednesday, 24 May 2006
Saturday, 13 May 2006
a writer's passion
What are sheer playfulness and deadly seriousness related to each other? Two sides of the same coin. They are the best friends of Philip Roth.
The introduction of Steena is by the letter she writes to Coleman after a brief meeting she and Coleman have at a subway. The letter appears twice in the novel. First, in Coleman's remembrance of this girl while talking to Nanthan, the narrator, at the beginning of the narrative.
'Quick. Smart. Pretty. Tall. Marvelously tall. That statuesque recumbency. Never forgotten it. With her for two years. Used to call her Voluptas. Psyche's daughter. The personification to the Romans of sensual pleasure.' Roth is at ease to write such a limpid, yet powerful words to sketch a woman, which creates a sensational immediacy to stimulate imagination. A pleasure indeed to go a bit further to feel more about this 'Voluptas' while her letter to Coleman is read. The sentence like 'Brief as our meeting was, after I saw you I felt an autumnal sadness, perhaps because the six years since we first met make it wrenchingly obvious how many days of my life are "over"' goes consistently with the quality of voluptuousness. The following words then puts up an innocent girlish tone, which I think is Roth's intention to mimicry Steena's style. 'Do you remember yourself? You were incredibly good at swooping, almost like birds do when they fly over land or sea and spy something moving, something bursting with life and dive down-or zero in-and seize upon it.'
However, such a vivid personification runs out of its steam when Steena appears later in a more detailed account of Coleman's affair with her, in which, strange as it is, the perspective of the narrative has been obscured by the interference of Coleman's memory. The latter part leans heavily on the impact of the social bias both Coleman and Steena struggle against, but could not escape its grip. Of course, one can sense the importance of social indication that Roth has tried hard to assimilate in his narrative, but the lively and voluputuous quality of Steena is not sustained, and the narrative seems sluggish.
Maybe it's overburdened with the intension to show some social factors through the story of Steena, the later portrait of Steena seems flat, and even disappointing, as the anticipation created by Coleman's mysterious description about this voluptuous little woman is not fulfilled.
A day passed without an event is groundless, a day without passion is hopeless, a day without meditation is meaningless, and a day without writing is … well, just an awful day. I can’t remember how many awful days I have passed. The promised writing about Roth’s the Human Stain has not been fulfilled.
Read a bit about his life from an interview by a journalist of the Guardian. It has reinforced my not-so-generous impression that this work basically is the by-product of a kind of self-obsession on some issues strictly limited to the academic circle. Unless you are well known about all sorts of cultural studies, and some names such as Julia Kristiva, you would find it’s difficult to grasp some nuances in his sarcasm about French culture and feminist theory originated from than land.
Actually, I think all the lively writing in this novel are about the lives in a small university. Otherwise, it would be pale, and the end is a well-crafted stain of the whole narrative, a residue that tries to reminds readers of its self-importance. A critique finds it’s quite difficult to appreciate the story of the young French female dean. To me it’s the most impressive part of the whole novel. I have laughed a lot on her compulsory journey to New York public library, sitting there with a book by Christiva, hoping to find her Mr. Right.
It’s amazing that Roth can write the story with such confidence, like a psychological detective into the mental labyrinth of a chic, young, thoroughly cultivated French female academician, while discreetly subversive on the subject. Perhaps it’s a syndrome of Roth’s unpleasant affair with a French, or the French culture in general. Whether or not Roth has a love-hate complex with France is out of the question, obviously he is obsessive about it. And that, I think it’s the writer’s passion.
The introduction of Steena is by the letter she writes to Coleman after a brief meeting she and Coleman have at a subway. The letter appears twice in the novel. First, in Coleman's remembrance of this girl while talking to Nanthan, the narrator, at the beginning of the narrative.
'Quick. Smart. Pretty. Tall. Marvelously tall. That statuesque recumbency. Never forgotten it. With her for two years. Used to call her Voluptas. Psyche's daughter. The personification to the Romans of sensual pleasure.' Roth is at ease to write such a limpid, yet powerful words to sketch a woman, which creates a sensational immediacy to stimulate imagination. A pleasure indeed to go a bit further to feel more about this 'Voluptas' while her letter to Coleman is read. The sentence like 'Brief as our meeting was, after I saw you I felt an autumnal sadness, perhaps because the six years since we first met make it wrenchingly obvious how many days of my life are "over"' goes consistently with the quality of voluptuousness. The following words then puts up an innocent girlish tone, which I think is Roth's intention to mimicry Steena's style. 'Do you remember yourself? You were incredibly good at swooping, almost like birds do when they fly over land or sea and spy something moving, something bursting with life and dive down-or zero in-and seize upon it.'
However, such a vivid personification runs out of its steam when Steena appears later in a more detailed account of Coleman's affair with her, in which, strange as it is, the perspective of the narrative has been obscured by the interference of Coleman's memory. The latter part leans heavily on the impact of the social bias both Coleman and Steena struggle against, but could not escape its grip. Of course, one can sense the importance of social indication that Roth has tried hard to assimilate in his narrative, but the lively and voluputuous quality of Steena is not sustained, and the narrative seems sluggish.
Maybe it's overburdened with the intension to show some social factors through the story of Steena, the later portrait of Steena seems flat, and even disappointing, as the anticipation created by Coleman's mysterious description about this voluptuous little woman is not fulfilled.
A day passed without an event is groundless, a day without passion is hopeless, a day without meditation is meaningless, and a day without writing is … well, just an awful day. I can’t remember how many awful days I have passed. The promised writing about Roth’s the Human Stain has not been fulfilled.
Read a bit about his life from an interview by a journalist of the Guardian. It has reinforced my not-so-generous impression that this work basically is the by-product of a kind of self-obsession on some issues strictly limited to the academic circle. Unless you are well known about all sorts of cultural studies, and some names such as Julia Kristiva, you would find it’s difficult to grasp some nuances in his sarcasm about French culture and feminist theory originated from than land.
Actually, I think all the lively writing in this novel are about the lives in a small university. Otherwise, it would be pale, and the end is a well-crafted stain of the whole narrative, a residue that tries to reminds readers of its self-importance. A critique finds it’s quite difficult to appreciate the story of the young French female dean. To me it’s the most impressive part of the whole novel. I have laughed a lot on her compulsory journey to New York public library, sitting there with a book by Christiva, hoping to find her Mr. Right.
It’s amazing that Roth can write the story with such confidence, like a psychological detective into the mental labyrinth of a chic, young, thoroughly cultivated French female academician, while discreetly subversive on the subject. Perhaps it’s a syndrome of Roth’s unpleasant affair with a French, or the French culture in general. Whether or not Roth has a love-hate complex with France is out of the question, obviously he is obsessive about it. And that, I think it’s the writer’s passion.
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