Hardtalking Palahniuk

Was much impressed with Chuck Palahniuk on Hardtalk with Gary Esler, shown this afternoon on BBC World. He looked a little like Ralph Fiennes playing Oscar in Oscar and Lucinda, I thought. Gentle. A little geeky. Definitely fun. (The duck is so nice, I now desire the pate ... to mess about with Margaret Atwood's quote.)

Anyway, to make you happy I scribbled down some notes and here are some of the facts I learned about Palahniuk and his work:

• He writes to entertain himself and is easily bored ... so he likes to shock.
• He recalls doing public readings in bars where you had only 7 minutes to make the audience laugh and make them cry.
  
• He says that reading books relies on the constant consent and effort of the consumer in a way which is not true of movies and TV.
• People faint at readings of Haunted. At almost every venue there has been at least one person hit the floor.
• At his readings people come up to him and tell him stories they have never told anyone before.
• He says the success of Fight Club changed his life only in so far as it gave him permission to be with people (giving readings and talks).
• He started writing when he joined a writer's group (for the friendship and free wine) for which the price of admission was a piece of work.
• He wroteFight Club as a kind of male version of books like The Joy Luck Club, Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood and How to Make an American Quilt which emphasise feminine solidarity. He wanted to write a similar book about something that pulled a group of men together to tell their stories.
• He reckons a great deal of popular culture died after 9/11 as transgressional acts were no longer looked upon as being funny.
• The film of Fight Club didn't do well when it was initially screened in cinemas. It began to sell well as a DVD, when news about it spread from person to person on the internet.
• Fight Club sold to the kind of people who normally wouldn't set foot in a bookstore. A record number of copies were stolen.
• He loves readings, which he sees as an excuse for people to come together.
• He says that his narrative technique is based on oral story telling. Too many people read stories as if they are written on the page. They should learn things like timing, delivery and rhetoric from stand-up comedians.
• His sense of horror probably springs from family events. His grandfather shot his grandmother and then committed suicide. As children, he and his siblings used to sleep in the room where the murder took place. His father was murdered by the ex-husband of his girlfriend who is now on death row, threatening that he has planted anthrax bombs and they will explode if he is executed.
• When people tell me I'm extreme, Palahniuk says, they have no idea how extreme these things really are.