Literary Hunger, Literally Hungry
I was able to loan one of Chuck Palahniuk’s novels and was delighted to have something to finally sink my starving literary teeth into. August is, apparently, the Chinese festival of the Hungry Ghosts and to start reading a book called Haunted would make you want to think twice about starting it. Thus, taking a deep breath, and taking a final look at the cover (of a girl whose mouth is opened in a half-scream with eyes so shocked they look like perfectly round doughnuts) I dived into the world of Palahniuk’s imagination to begin a journey of never-ending nausea and amusement.
To put all that unsettles us in a paperback novel or – in this case, a ten-page spree of gut-wrenching discomfort; one of the marvelous character profiles at the beginning – is a pure masterpiece that only Palahniuk could achieve. He makes you cringe at his graphic descriptions and his every comma is a favor from him where you’re given a moment to exhale in relief. But like a master storyteller, he spins his web and traps you in and you find yourself – this is where the irony comes in – you don’t struggle to break free, enjoying your own little corner of Palahniuk’s fiction. Haunted is grotesque and endearing at the same time. Psychologically mad yet eerily familiar. It is beyond the scope of time and space where logic does not reign, where imagination runs amok in chaos but, in some faraway unknown, there is order.
This is my first of Palahniuk’s novels and I will definitely hunt down his other works. I have placed Fight Club, the film starring one of my favorite actors, Edward Norton, in my Favorite Films list when I watched it ages ago; falling deeply in love with the plot and the twists and the sheer ingenuity of it all that picking up Haunted was more out of bias and curiosity and I’m happy to say I wasn’t wrong. I’m sure I will enjoy his other works and will be ready to buckle down for the ride that will send my soul screaming into the abyss of wonderland, all that for the thrill of a good book; words strung together to weave that web that I want to get trapped into.
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My check was cleared last Saturday afternoon and my hunger strike days (trust me, it’s more of a necessity than a rebellion) will finally be over. But I have been withdrawing like mad, getting all the stuff to make my room a little less empty, a little less lonely, a little less hospital-white, a little less like a prison cell. I’m broke but happy because my little square room in this foreign land of strangers can finally start feeling like home away from home, some ground I could plant my floating self into.
So another couple of hungry weeks in August wouldn’t hurt me, but if I don’t, it’ll hurt my savings. And we don’t want that, do we?
