I'm on a real roll with this subject so I'm going to bang out another one (although I know this means I may run out of genius's quicker, it's a risk I'm going to take).
Dear Chuck Palahniuk,
When I was 17 my dad decided (one night when my mum and sister were away) that it was time to sit me down and show me Fight Club. For weeks I was obsessed and when I showed the film to my best friend we obsessed together for months. Word spread around (because I was queen of the nerds at my school) that the film was awesome and not stupid as for some reason everyone thought and before long everyone in our year level had seen it. The less intellectual of us started their own fight club and got suspended, but those of us who actually understood the film sought out our literature teacher and talked to him for hours about existentialism. He turned us on to Albert Camus and before long I was sitting down to lunch and reading Being and Nothingness by Jean Paul Satre (while everyone else was reading the last Harry Potter book).
I started crushing pretty badly on Edward Norton, not because of his impressive torso for if that were the reason I had fallen I would have just fallen for Brad Pitt. But the reason I was crushing so hard was because of what he was saying and the way he was saying it. I am jack's bleeding heart.
I went out and got the book and read it in just a few days (which is impressive when you consider that I was studying my final year of high school). For my birthday that year my friend bought me Lullaby, and after my exams a month later I read it in a couple of days. Then I bought Survivor and Choke and read them quick smart. I saw the film adaptation of Choke in a double with Fight Club at the Astor and fell even more in love with Sam Rockwell (his little sexy dance moves and turn to the dark side in Charlies Angels first had him catching my attention, then his turn as a creepy pedophile in The Green Mile turned me off, but his smooth moves in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind had me back on a bit more).
But enough about how well your books transfer to the screen and back to your books. People in interviews with you get stuck on Fight Club or the fact that Guts makes people pass out on trains but the thing that gets me about your novels is the fact that the scenarios you put forward are completely feasible, utterly ridiculous but absolutely convincing because you have this amazing handle on your subject matter and everything about your bizarre worlds is so detailed.
I recently read Sylia Plath's The Bell Jar and I got to the bit SPOILERS, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ THE BELL JAR, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS BIT! where she has sex and just about bleeds to death and I passed out... on the train no less. So when I got Haunted for my birthday and I got up to Guts, thanks for putting that right at the start by the way, I thought I was done for, but I was fine. I didn't know any actual details about the story except that people pass out when they read it. It is pretty gross, but I don't have sexual deviations or a penis so I couldn't imagine how that would have felt. But I get why people would be sickened by that story, and I'm worried that you've developed the reputation that makes people come up to you and tell you these kinds of stories.
But mostly I want to thank-you for the stories you make up yourself. As you can probably tell I am quite well read, and it is only because you wrote fight club and introduced existentialism to a new generation.
I love your brilliant mind.
Much love,
Kendal Coombs
Melbourne, Australia
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