It's an accomplished gem of humor, horror and boys-only storytelling. The horrific upshot of all this humiliation spins off a barrage of facts into the realm of urban legend. However, the Palahniuk twist is that what he describes up front so graphically is not so much horrifying as humiliating and embarrassing. In 'Guts', he uses the classic horror technique of tenderizing the reader with graphic descriptions, then literally pulls out a finale that manages to outdo all the vividly described horror that has preceded it. What should be an experience of artistic exploration and fulfillment turns into a quest for control and survival.įrom the now-infamous opening story 'Guts' to the apocalyptic science fiction closer 'Obsolete', Palahniuk explores, explodes and creates urban legends to his own benefit. Instead of an outdoor paradise, they’re driven to a huge, ornate abandoned theater, where they’re locked in with a limited supply of food.
Eighteen men and women answer an ad offering three months away from the world to create your own masterpiece. 'Haunted' is a series of short stories told by the participants of a writing retreat that starts out strange and rapidly turns into a horror movie. But that's a higher price of admission than you're likely to encounter elsewhere. As a novel, 'Haunted' may be a bit less than the sum of its parts. The Frankenstein stitches often show through, surrounded by bright red scar tissue and oozing bodily fluids you'd prefer not to think about let alone see. It's a real lucky-bag of a novel that doesn't always hang together as a novel. 'Haunted' explores the consequences of story control and offers humiliation as the ultimate horror. His latest novel, 'Haunted', is an obvious fix-up of short stories strung together by a creepy battle to control the story. In 'Survivor', he presented a story told by a psychic who knew every event before it happened, in this sense both a victor and victim of history. Few writers are as fascinated with storytelling and narration as Chuck Palahniuk. It follows then, that those who write the history, those who control the vision, those who finally, once and for all tell the story may in so doing seize victory before any conflict has clearly materialized. History, we are told, is written by the victors.
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