Chuck Palahniuk's Realistic Stories



Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk, the author of the novel “Fight Club,” is known for novels that are fantastical, satirical, funny and outrageously profane.  Yet his work, he insists, comes directly from life.

The q-and-a ran today in The Washington Post.

Here's a slightly extended version of his answer about the inspirations for his novels. "Doomed," by the way, features a teen-age girl who emerges from hell to get stuck in Purgatory (which, in his world, is Earth).

One of the University students wanted me to ask you: Where do your crazy stories come from?

Usually someone tells me a story that I find so striking or so compelling that I have to share it with other people -- and then those other people I share it with tell me a version of it from their own lives.  I find I'm able to develop the story ideas that come from one person but use the experience of a lot of people. I just cherry-pick the very best versions of the same experience, and usually find a way of quilting them together and making a story out of it.

That makes it sound like your fiction is realistic.

My degree is in journalism, so a lot of it is just looking for key elements of stories and finding the patterns that exist between them.  They're stories from people's lives, because those are the most unfiltered, freshest stories. Usually they have some cultural precendent, but they're something I've never seen anywhere before.   That always hooks me.

Do you then have to make them more fantastical?

Usually I have to make them less fantastical.

Terry McMillan on Obama and Racism in America

My interview with Terry McMillan runs today in The Washington Post -- she talks about writing from a child's point of view, a white woman's point of view, and happy endings.

While I focused on her novel for the Post article, I did ask for her thoughts on Obama and what the election meant for Americans, and black Americans in particular.  There wasn't room for this in the Post, but thought I'd provide her answer here. 

This book is set in 2001, and alludes to 9/11.  I must admit being curious about what you think of a more recent event—Obama’s election and re-election. What changes has that made for Americans, and black Americans?


Terry McMillan

"A lot of us were very very proud when he was elected the first time and the second time, and it wasn’t African Americans who got him elected and re-elected. There aren’t enough of us.  I feel very very sorry for him, because he hasn’t been able to do his job as well as I think he would like to be able to do it.  Some members of Congress have made it crystal clear from the beginning that they are basically anti-Obama, and I think racism has a lot do with it.  It has brought out a lot of racial hatred and something that a lot of us – we sort of thought we were past it.  It’s frightening. It’s like we’re going back in time to the 1950s, and basically there are a lot of people who resent having an African American president. It almost feels anti-American, what’s going on.
That’s the irony of it. "

 Gish Jen also talked about cultural issues in my interview with Jen in March.

And Anne Lamott, in an interview in November, talked about being a "progressive Christian" in America.