Choke to Tapping the Source is Stranger then Fiction
Listening to: Mrs. Potter - Counting Crows
I’m up to two books a week. Choke (Chuck Palahniuk), Tapping the Source (Kem Nunn - Best surfing novel ever and finalist for the National Book Award) and Stranger than fiction (Palahniuk) are merely the past three.
Nobody knows how to feed an addiction like a creative. At least this is a healthy addiction, the reading and all. But the subject matter of all three offers a strong sense of the “transgressive novel.”
Catharsis through anti-social behavior. Close to what Kierkegaard defines as: the moment we are forbidden to do something, we will do it.
“According to Kierkegaard, the person who allows the law to control his life, who says the possible isn’t possible because it is illegal, is leading an inauthentic life.” – Palahniuk
And as Amy Hempel would say, “As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.”
I am waiting for that moment. I thought it happened almost 2 years ago to the day. But it was a false alarm. Fire alarms don’t mean fires anymore. Just like car alarms don’t mean cars are being stolen anymore.
BTW: Choke is being made into a movie set for release next year (not starring me), and Tapping the Source was what the classic Keanu/Swayze vehicle "Point Break" was (loosely) based on (should have been starring me). Point Break II is in discussion. Be an informed member of your culture.
2 comments:
Thanks for the Chuck Pahluniuk tip! I just got back from Borders...picked up STF and Choke to read on the no less then EIGHT airplanes I'll be flying in over next 14 days, beginning just 10 hours from now. Also saw Chuck Klosterman IV on the shelf, but passed it by for now, as "transgressive" literature seems best suited to airplane reading.
Thanks, mang. ROCK ON!
Flying is the fastest, but trailer park-shittiest way to travel. Good books help. As well as an iPod and/or some long-acting psychoactives or relaxants. I always find a window seat to be nice. Anything to keep the fat ass next to you as metaphysically far away as possible. Klosterman is a great writer. As are you, dude.
Today, I was about to read a Phillop Roth novel, but then I bought The I Chong and got into that instead. Chong as in Cheech's friend. Reading it is like talking to a stoner in college, except he's like, 70 years old. Hippies, man. They are so cool.
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