Haunted is on one level a satire of reality television- The Real World meets Alive. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more extreme the stories they tell-and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will surely be made from their plight. But “here” turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world-and where heat and power and, most important, food are in increasingly short supply. They are told by people who have answered an ad headlined “Writers’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months,” and who are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of “real life” that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you’ll ever encounter-sometimes all at once. Just a strange, absurd, grotesque, incestuous loop.Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a novel made up of stories: Twenty-three of them, to be precise.
Oral History/Myth-making/Christianity Anyway, I enjoyed the novel. Five major takeaways from this novel (which I might one day delve into deeper if I ever find myself with too much Liminal time or space in-between): 1.
You aren't sure what to do so you just keep digging/reading. You are caught between a weird night and equally bizarre day. Palahniuk exists on an edge of grotesque, absurdity and social criticism that sometimes makes you lose sight of the shore.
Reading Rant was like watching a blind guy juggle a bunch of balls, some are on fire, and some you realize are actually burning cats. I imagine Palahniuk had Ballard's 'Crash' and Benford's 'Timescape', several oral histories, and perhaps even Hofstadter's 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' sitting on his shelf as he wrote this. The mixture was nearly perfect, just not flammable. Or witnesses.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Rant HE was close. “History is nothing except monsters or victims. History is nothing except monsters or victims.
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