Chuck Palahniuk’s skill of observation seems to be the root of his creativity. His experiences spark his imagination through his writing. Are his novels really fiction? Yes, but let’s think about what might be happening here. Could this cutting-edge fiction have something to say about our daily lives in Jackson, Mississippi?
On the surface, we are affected by the oddity or perhaps insanity of his character and plots. He pulls the reader into an array of bizarre situations–for me at least. As Jung might say, Chuck’s images present archetypes we can use to examine our own subconscious life. He digs into myths, fables and images we all have in common.
In reading Chuck, I feel we are reading something bigger than appears on the surface. Is reading Chuck like putting on training wheels to understand our lives better? Is he perhaps trying to wake us up, or open our eyes wider, as we shape our future?
Right: Chuck Palahniuk has been involved with The Cacophony Society, “a randomly gathered network of individuals united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society through subversion, pranks, art, fringe explorations and meaningless madness.” Or not so meaningless?
Often in real life, we may be confronted by issues we don’t understand and perhaps fear. (I’m not sure Chuck has any fears left.) The fast world we live in may restrict our inner selves from addressing serious issues thoroughly, and we may just give up, not understanding what’s going on and move on down the road to our next situation or connection.
I believe Chuck is consciously directing his skill of observation and metaphorical expertise of writing, in attempting to cause us to free up ourselves, to free up the reader from his/her own limited ego. He wants us to expand into our wholeness. He wants us to dig into who we already are, into the depths of ourselves.
Left: Stranger Than Fiction, a collection of true stories, a showcase for Chuck’s keen sense of observation.
We Jacksonians (and Mississippians) come up with many reasons to live our lives as is, not consciously trying to activate our creativity. We can deny the possibility of successfully creating change and blame it on something or someone else. We can choose to complain about everything or everybody. Through pretensions are we keeping ourselves down? How authentic are we living our lives to create “our” sense of place, for ourselves and our community? We can stop living so much as a reaction to circumstances and start activating the force of control and awareness of what could be? Can we?
Special events in the life can go by too fast and our memories can be too short to have solid effects of change. However, I believe that if we shed our fears and pool our creative efforts, we can help create our vision of Jackson. We sold our first book on October 20, 1975. What are the possibilities in 2011?
Celebrate Chuck October 20, 2011.
JX///RX
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cpcp
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