At the end of the interview, Chuck Palahniuk asked if we’d mind if he plugged something he cares a lot about–animal rescue. All over the country animal shelters have had  to deal with more and more animals being abandoned due to financial hardship.

Lemurians have a long history of working with animal shelters in the area, namely Pat who has worked at Lemuria for over 18 years. When she’s not at Lemuria, she’s helping the City of Jackson Animal Shelter. It seemed natural for us to devote a separate blog post to the cause.

Here’s what Chuck has to say:

I’d like to plug a topic that lies very close to my cold, dead raisin of a heart.

In 1998, during the filming of “Fight Club” I teased the director David Fincher about the fact that he couldn’t use actual Ikea furniture in his film. Due to copyright liability, 20th Century Fox had to hire artists to make very expensive, slightly differing copies of the furniture in question. This included a hand-made, two-thousand-dollar version of the “Yin Yang” coffee table which sold at Ikea for, like, sixteen dollars. Actually, the artist had to make three: One was exploded, one was partially burned and is visible in the post-fire wreckage of the narrator’s condo, but the third is the table clearly visible in the long panning shot that’s designed to suggest a catalogue page. It’s this third, pristine, table that Fincher sent me as a joke. It has sat in my office for a decade, and this fall it will be auctioned for charity.

Amy Hempel

As the economy falters, record numbers of dogs and cats are being abandoned. My only hero, the glorious writer and person Amy Hempel, has written an astounding essay on the situation and on her volunteer work to rescue animals. Please watch for Amy’s essay, “A Full-Service Shelter”, in the next issue of Electric Literature, but be warned: It will hurt to read.

Although I adore my stupid hand-made table, all the money raised by its sale will go to a no-kill shelter called “The Pixie Project.” Edward Norton is also donating auction items related to the “Fight Club” film, and our hope is that these animals, as Marla Singer would say, “… once loved intensely, and now dumped at the side of the road…” will find lives and futures to share in new homes.

For more information, please check out the Pixie Project at www.pixieproject.org

I’ll shut up now.

-Chuck Palahniuk

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