City Infernal

Just finished the book City Infernal by Edward Lee. This was sent to me and I had didn't have any expectations from it.
City Infernal is about a girl named Cassie who was a goth girl in the D.C social scene until her twin sister Lissa commits suicide. Now a few months later after a few bad suicide attempts, hospital admittances, psychiatrists, and drugs her loaded Lawyer father Bill quits his job at the firm after a heart attack or two moves them to the boonies of Virginia to creepy house that's  a mixture between the Munsters and the Adams family.
after being there a few weeks she meets another goth girl named Via and her friends who are also living in her house...come to find out they're dead and her house is a deadpass.
They then take her to the city of Mephistopolis, I know it's hard to pronounce at fist but this city is like New York but a little more twisted and everyone is deformed...like if everyone were allowed to be effected by Chernobyl and we got to see the effects of Nagasaki and Hiroshima only worse.
The story it's self was well written we get to meet the Azreal...sorry Ezoriel, Lillith, and a lot is mentioned about Lucifer who lives up in the Mephisto Tower on floor 666.
Parts of the story are not exactly original but nonetheless it's a good story, parts can be easily predicted but what story nowadays isn't.
But I would recommend it to any goth kid or just anyone into the supernatural looking for a good hellish ride with even better descriptions. 

Fin

Chuck Palahniuk may not have a collection as impressive as Stephen King or Clive Cussler, who have enough books to cover an entire book case but he what he does have that most don’t is unending content. Most authors have general storyline that they are none for that they are known for and they write it endlessly, same story different name. Yet Palahniuk does different, his self destructive anarchic themes may be the same but we never really see the same story let alone the same writing style.

Reading one of his books can be compared to something directors Quintin Tarantino and Eli Roth could only dream, Pulp Fiction antics meets Hostels grit.

‘Arson. Assault. Mischief and Misinformation.

No questions. No questions. No excuses and no lies.

The fifth rule about Project Mayhem is you have to trust Tyler.’ (Palahniuk 125)

Palahniuk got the idea for Fight Club when he was a member of the Cacophony Society, a secret society of rebellious writers it would also be the premise for Project Mayhem  as well other themes throughout many of his novels. Writing Fight Club made him an icon yet with its cult following and film release it was only the beginning.

But what is there really left to say about a man who writes things what most would either not even touch or they write it in such a generic way that reading it is like watching an infomercial, who in a style that trying to emulate feels like plagiarism, who is so sincere to his fans that you know he’s just a man, a man who takes satirical black comedy drama to the next level. The movies are good but the books are better, you have to read them to understand.

‘How weird is that? Instead of a biography, this story will become fiction. A Factual historical artifact documenting a past that never happened.

Like Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny, another obsolete truth.’ (Palahniuk 313)

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Work Cited

Photograph. Litminds. Web. .

Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club "Chapter 16 Page 125." Print.

Palahniuk, Chuck. Rant  "Chapter 40 Page 313." Print.

Haunted

‘If you were planning to be stranded on a desert island for three months, what would you bring’(Palahniuk 6)?

            Haunted stands as one of Chuck Palahniuk’s most famous novels, after Fight Club, mostly due to its graphic content.  Haunted was written different than Palahniuk’s other novels in that it does not end at the end and it is narrated in such a way that any character could be the narrator and every chapter has poetic structure.

‘This was supposed to be writers’ retreat. It was supposed

            to be safe.

            An isolated writers’ colony, where we could work,

            run by an old, old, dying man named Whittier,

            until it wasn’t.

And we were supposed to write poetry. Pretty poetry.

            This crowd of us, his gifted students,

            locked away from the ordinary world for three months’(Palahniuk 1).

It instead begins with a narration of 15 individuals as they are picked up by a bus to take them the destination of their retreat and the man who got them together as well as his assistant, Mrs. Clark, and it ends with a bang. The real names of the individuals are not necessarily given as they tell their definitive horror story that reveals why they agreed to the ad in the paper. The ad offered them a three month reprieve from the world calling it a writers’ retreat where they were to write their most self defining story. Three months of solace, three months of hell and all they have to do is write their write their greatest story.

The ‘retreat’ is a boarded up theatre with five intricately furnished rooms, a kitchen, bedrooms, and the stage that they one by one stand before their peers and confess their story. Each story is just as compelling and disturbing as the next. Our 15 guests soon begin to experience what psychologists call mass hysteria and begin to see Mr. Whittier as the ‘villian’ and Mrs. Clark as the ‘accomplice’. With this in mind they begin to sabotage themselves by poking holes  into the MRE’s, burst the water pipes, breaking the furnace, the stove, even going so far as to cut off their own fingers and toes and eating the cat when they get it into their heads that they will be ‘saved’ and that when they are the public will feel sorry for them and love them and they’re stories will go down in history.

             At the end of every chapter we are articulately told a story by one of the volunteers, usually just before they die.  We are told more than one by Mrs. Clark and Mr. Whittier whose story stands to be the basis for the main plot, which leads to a surprise ending that even I did not figure out and made re-read the last few pages for confirmation that that was how it ended.

‘And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us’(Palahniuk 404)
________________________________________________
Work Cited


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hauntedcvr.jpg

Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 1 Page 6." Print.
Palahniuk, Chuck. "Capter 1 Page 1." Print.
Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 24 Page 404." Print.

Choke

'The question is always: So what do you feel like choking on tonight?' (Palahniuk 75).


Choke is a medical dictionary of things you do not want to be diagnosed with and it is all from the charismatic mind of Chuck Palahniuk. Where the characters are so well written they are almost real.
Choke is about a med school drop out Victor Mancini, who dropped out to pay for his mother’s hospice, in order to do that along with working at Colonial Dunsboro, a reenactment museum, a goes to upper class restaurants, with the assistance of his best friend Denny, and makes himself choke on the food in order to get saved by one the patrons where they will then give him money for their grief.
Chuck holds nothing back in his satirical abilities. Every word is calculated and meaningful. Even his seemingly random additions of medical knowledge are
tasteful as well as insightful for the reader.
‘Author Chuck Palahniuk, requires that you dive through the looking glass into a labyrinth where personal identity is fluid. At one point its cheerfully snarky narrator and self-proclaimed sex addict Victor Mancini…’ Stephen Holden, New York Times.
Choking for cash and dropping out of med school is not the only flaw our narrator retains, he is also a sex addict trying to get through his fourth step ‘When he first had sex.’
We then learn more about his mother as her Alzheimer’s makes her believe that her son his a series of men she has come across his her life i.e. mainly her lawyer, and his father, we learn that she was in a and out of jail for number of things as well kidnapping Victor as a child from his foster homes, we also learn that she comes from very well off family in Italy that knows nothing of Victors’ existence.
In his attempt to sleep with the one girl who actually wants to get to know first he finds out that she is in fact a mental patient posing to be his mother’s doctor.
The ending is not necessarily as heart wrenching as Invisible Monsters, or as odd as Fight Club but it does however end with main character learning a life lesson.
The question is always: So what do you feel like choking on tonight? (Palahniuk 75). Choke is a medical dictionary of things you do not want to be diagnosed with and it is all from the charismatic mind of Chuck Palahniuk. Where the characters are so well written they are almost real.
Choke is about a med school drop out Victor Mancini, who dropped out to pay for his mother’s hospice, in order to do that along with working at Colonial Dunsboro, a reenactment museum, a goes to upper class restaurants, with the assistance of his best friend Denny, and makes himself choke on the food in order to get saved by one the patrons where they will then give him money for their grief.
Chuck holds nothing back in his satirical abilities. Every word is calculated and meaningful. Even his seemingly random additions of medical knowledge are
tasteful as well as insightful for the reader.

‘Author Chuck Palahniuk, requires that you dive through the looking glass into a labyrinth where personal identity is fluid. At one point its cheerfully snarky narrator and self-proclaimed sex addict Victor Mancini…’ Stephen Holden, New York Times.

Choking for cash and dropping out of med school is not the only flaw our narrator retains, he is also a sex addict trying to get through his fourth step ‘When he first had sex.’
We then learn more about his mother as her Alzheimer’s makes her believe that her son his a series of men she has come across his her life i.e. mainly her lawyer, and his father, we learn that she was in a and out of jail for number of things as well kidnapping Victor as a child from his foster homes, we also learn that she comes from very well off family in Italy that knows nothing of Victors’ existence.
In his attempt to sleep with the one girl who actually wants to get to know first he finds out that she is in fact a mental patient posing to be his mother’s doctor.
The ending is not necessarily as heart wrenching as Invisible Monsters, or as odd as Fight Club but it does however end with main character learning a life lesson.
________________________________________________________
Work Cited
Photograph. PopCultureZoo. Web. .
Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 12 Page 75." Print.
 Holden, Stephen. "Heimlich Maneuvers on the Way to Self." New York Times 26 Sept. 2008. Web.

Invisible Monsters

          

  "The truth is, being ugly isn't the thrill you'd think, but it can be an opportunity for something better than I ever imagined." (Palahniuk 288)

Invisible Monsters was originally the first book written by Chuck Palahniuk, but became the second published due to agencies believing it too disturbing for publishing.

So begins Chuck Palahniuk's inspiringly original, intoxicating new novel about drug use, plastic surgery, and horribly disfigured fashion models.- Jonathan Shipley, January Magazine.

‘The fashion photographer inside my head yells:

Give me pity.

Flash.

Give me another chance.

Flash. (Palahniuk 104)'

Jump to me finding it in Half Price Books for 6 bucks.

Give me enthusiasm.

Flash.

Give me love.

Flash.

Now jump to a basic rendition of the plot that gives nothing major away yet still captures that fact that it’s life changing.

Flash.

The book starts off at the end, as like most of Paluhniuks books, At Evie Cottrells, Shannon’s once best friend, wedding where Brandy Alexander is shot and killed and the gosh house is on fire. Then it jumps to her childhood with the brother, she hated. The brother who was kicked out for being gay then presumed a martyr after a mysterious caller claimed he died of AIDs. Shannon McFarland was top model until a .30 caliber shotgun shot off her face who becomes a drug thief with Manus Kelley, her ex-fiancé, and Brandy Alexander, her best friend; Both characters as we learn are closer to each other and Shannon than we think. The three head out on a across country trip and pretend to be interested in purchasing nice homes on the market when instead they steal drugs from the current owners then sell them in night clubs in Seattle.

Give me a review.

Flash.

  ‘Chuck Palahniuk is on the verge of something big.’ Writes Jonathan Shipley in his review of the book as he writes that the book is not for everyone and may give young people nightmares. Which in this case is presumably the truth. The characters are complex yet real, they have their problems like everyone else which intern makes more real and human then anything else I have ever read.

Jump back to the plot where she describes her accidental, yet not accidental, traffic accident where she gets her jaw shot off and she drives herself to the hospital. At the hospital she meets Brandy Alexander in speech therapy where Brandy tells her that best way to get over your past is to reinvent yourself, give yourself a new name, a new background in other words a totally new existence.

While in the hospital her fiancé breaks up with her and she finds out her best friend, Evie, has been sleeping with him and wearing her clothes.

Jump to her describing what it’s like to do a photo shoot in a slaughterhouse.

Shannon goes on to describe how she hated her brother. She hated him because he got al the attention from her family, he was the one who got blown up from a hairspray can that was in the trash, he got kicked out, and then he ‘died’ of AIDs. After his ‘death’ he was more loved than ever and ever even treated like a martyr and they never once asked her how she was.

‘Give me anger.

Flash.’ (Palahniuk 158)

‘Give me needy emotional whining bullshit.

Flash.’ (Palahniuk 224)

What happens in the story is sometimes difficult to explain with out giving something vital away. In order to effectively read it you have to have an open mind and remember every detail so that once the ending is reached you realize how everything comes together, even the things that seemed trite and odd.

‘This story is Thelma and Louise squared and to the second power. It's a buddies-who-hate-each-other bonding adventure. It's a story of mutilation, stolen Percodan, real estate charades, tacky fashion, and a wedding in a burning house. It's sibling rivalry and boob jobs. Here's the thing, if I had known this book was a strange, violent comedy, I NEVER would have bought it, even for 25 cents. BOY, am I glad I did! After I read this book, I went out and bought some of Palahniuk's other books for FULL PRICE.’ - Dehands

Now jump to me writing a blog about it.
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Work Cited

     Invisible Monster. Photograph. Illiterary. Web. .


Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter31 Page 288." Print

Shipley, Jonathan. "The Monster Club." January Magazine. Web. .


Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 8 Page 104." Print
Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 15 Page 158." Print.
Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 22 Page 224." Print.
Dehands. "Invisible Monsters." Rev. of Invisible Monsters. Web log post. Shvoong. Web. .

Unique Snowflakes.

‘If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?’(Palahniuk 33) this is the question the Narrator asks us barely into the story of his Tylor Durden’s life together.

In Chuck Palahniuks book Fight Club, he asks us similar questions that we, as the reader, must answer for our selves. Without ruining the story with major motifs and explanations of scenes, Fight Club is about a man, whom we only know throughout the book as the Narrator, who is unsatisfied with his life as a recall sales specialist for an unknown car company who suffers from sleep apnea. He tries going to a doctor for this problem however his physician insists that there is nothing wrong with him instead he should try 'valarian root tea', an herb commonly used for anxiety treatment. 

'This is when I'd cry because right now, your life comes down to nothing, and not even nothing, oblivion.' (Palahniuk 17)

        In order to over come his sleeping problem he starts going to support groups, which works, for two years, until he meets Marla Singer another support faker, like himself, only after he finds out she’s faking as well it unables to cry. Not too long after he meets Marla, while on a plane back home he meets an odd nihilist guy named Tyler whom he calls after his condo blows up from 'mysterious causes' that same night. The Narrator explains the dynamics of Tyler’s odd jobs and us of 'gorilla warfare' in the catering business as well as his job as projectionist, where he cuts images of porn and places them indiscreetly with the latest kid flick. After they have a fight at Tyler’s request as a clause for letting him stay, the idea of the fight escalates into what quickly becomes known as Fight Club. Fight Club is the place where men of all factions of life can get together and take their feelings out on each other. Therapy for men without the patience or money for shrinks and not everyone can handle their problems by sitting on a couch crying.

One of Tyler’s other main goals in the story is to help the narrator reach ultimate enlightenment by reaching 'bottom', reaching bottom will enable him to take control in his life with a 'you have to destroy yourself to save your self'.

Fight Club slowly turns into Project Mayhem, where certain men of the club join Tyler in his mission to, in a way, destroy the things that, we the people, are dependent on. There are several ‘committees’ within Project Mayhem, which are all focused on, more or less, the same tasks; picking a fight with a stranger, blow up a computer store, destroy a monument, or display a large demon face using the exterior of a major office building.

The Narrator soon starts thinking, after someone in Project Mayhem is accidentally killed, that maybe they are in over their heads and sets out to find Tyler to end it.


The Four Noble Truths: From : The Journal of Religion and Film

Fight Club: An Exploration of Buddhism

By Charley Reed

 'The relationship between the narrator and Tyler is a representation of the four noble truths of Buddhism: Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha, and Magga. Dukkha states that there is suffering, and this is simply a part of life. Samudaya says that Dukkha is caused by an attachment and desire to worldly objects. Nirodha is the truth which simply states that Samudaya can be eliminated by Magga, otherwise known as The Eightfold Path. In the film, the simple translation is that the narrator’s suffering is a part of life caused by the cultural consumerism in America. It is through Tyler and the eightfold path of Fight Club that the narrator can eliminate his suffering. Tyler sums up the connection when he says: “It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”'

         He and Tyler fight over the morality, right and wrongs, of Fight Club and Project Mayhem. In the end the narrator ends up with a gun in his mouth as he realizes the truth about his relationship with Tyler.

'I just don't want die without a few scars,' (Palahniuk 48)

'No matter who you are you are going to have to either reach a high or stoop low to enjoy the full spectrum of the collection.' Mercer Schuchartd, of The Existentialist Paramedic.  

            The story itself is written as a satirical novel stocked full of philosophies and random facts that really play no real part in plot development, yet the information is interesting and plays its own part well. Overall the book is one that anyone can, I believe, read no matter who you are or where you come from and take something useful from it and grow. 

'Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?...

We are not special.

We are not crap or trash, either.

We just are.

We just are, and what happens happens.' (Palahniuk 207)

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The photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/landeng/3836276194/

Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 3 Page 33." Print.
Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 2 Page 17." Print.

Reed, Charley.'Journal or Religion and Film.' Vol. 11, No. 2 October 2007.
         http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol11no2/ReedFightClub.htm

Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 6 Page 48." Print.

Schuchardt, Mercer. 'Chuck Palahniuk, Existentialist Paramedic.'
           http://chuckpalahniuk.net/files/features/fight-club-anthology-intro.pdf

Palahniuk, Chuck. "Chapter 30 Page 207." Print.

Chuck Palahniuk an Icon

         Hero, icon, role model, favorite everyone has one and no one can escape it.

Some are long gone from ancient wars, some are great philosophers of simpler times, some are big time movie stars on every billboard and some are ordinary writers. Everyone has a favorite whether it be fiction, nonfiction, fantasy, romance, anthologies there is that author that you swear to every fiber of your being that if that author wrote a phone book you would read it just because they wrote it and to see what little dissertations they added, my author, the author that I would read if he wrote a phone book, is Chuck Palahniuk.

          Palahniuk is the author of so many great stories all of whom are now or will be motion pictures, titles like Fight Club, Choke, Haunted, Rant, Survivor, Pygmy and many many more....

Chuck Palahniuk is an American novelist from Portland, Oregon, born in February in 1962. He began his career as a Freelance Journalist followed by other jobs he was not thrilled with then he began his career as an American transgressional fiction writer after a time in his life that put great strain on his life as well as the lives of his family and friends. After joining group therapy sessions he decided to join a writing workshop where he got the premise and wrote the critically acclaimed novel turned film Fight Club. During that time he was a member of a Cacophany Group which he says was the basis for Project Mayhem in Fight Club. The book, Fight Club, went on to reach a cult following as did the rest of his following works, many of which have gone on to win or got nominated for awards such as the:Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (Fight Club), Oregon Book Award for Best Novel (Fight Club),Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (Lullaby).
He was later was nominated for the Oregon Book Award for Best Novel for Survivor and for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Lullaby in 2002 and Haunted in 2005.

               But, it is not, I will say, his success that got him a cult following, nor is it his amazing ideas for plot it is his style of writing. He does not use overwhelming words that makes the readers keep a dictionary by them, a medical journal is perhaps needed, he does not use so much detail that you forget what you’re reading i.e. Stephen King, no, he uses a minimalistic form of writing that allows the writer to cut out and break down scenes that gives it a more artistic yet almost poetic look, it is his simplicity and form of narration that makes him great and idealistic, as a writer and I would like to say that I can manipulate and embrace his style and form and make it my own but alas I cannot there are some things that we mere beginners can only dream of embellishing.