Hauntingly Close

(Warning: this entry might very possibly spoil bits of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Haunted.)

My exposure to Chuck Palahniuk consists of Survivor, Choke, the movie of Fight Club and most recently Haunted. I saw Fight Club long after most people did — in the summer of 2003 to be exact — and long after it had passed from "really cool man" to "trite" in most people's eyes, but I was always a late bloomer and I really loved it and almost started to buy into the idea that what Tyler Durden did was really cool and we should all be more like Tyler before I realized that my life as a Dartmouth sophomore would be rather dramatically disrupted by Tyler's ideas of sweeping social change.

I like to think I've matured a little since then.

After I'd read Survivor and Choke, though, I noticed that there was a very definite pattern to Palahniuk's novels, from the self-destructive main character with a gimmick to the equally self-destructive love interest to the bizarre combination of events leading up to a giant finale with firecrackers. While it worked in Fight Club and Survivor, I thought it was getting a bit strained by Choke, possibly because Palahniuk was running out of new and different variations on the gimmick and the concluding fireworks.

Haunted is different.

The most obviously different thing is the structure. It's subtitled something like "a novel of stories" and the main (novella length) story is supplemented by a series of short stories and vignettes written by the characters as well as poems by (presumably) the narrator about each of the other characters. There are other differences as well: the narrator is not a prominent character in the story at all, is never named, and never really seems to take part. There's no obvious love interest to turn into a means of salvation at the end. There are many more characters than Palahniuk's novels usually have, and they're all developed mainly through the stories they write, leaving the main story simply describing events.

They don't escape.

One of the characteristics, I had noticed, of a Chuck Palahniuk novel was what could be called the god-less salvation at the end. No matter what his characters have gone through, by the end of the story the main character and his love interest are standing together, flying their banner of fuck the world we can make it ourselves and generally looking pretty well set to do that. At the end of Haunted, the characters have not found a salvation, have not necessarily gotten close to salvation, and are still patiently waiting for a salvation that I, at least, was not convinced would ever come. It gives the novel a more biting feel than most of Palahniuk's; it moves from simply being a satire of modern life (and, in this particular case, reality television) to being a condemnation.

It also felt flat.

I don't know if those are related, but in leaving the characters without any hope, I thought it also left the reader without a real sense of why he'd read the book. The characters were all fairly miserable people — not unusual for Palahniuk — but instead of seeing that there's some hope for them, he leaves them in the midst of their problems, and I wasn't sure why he'd dragged me along for the ride if that was all he had to offer.

To me, Haunted was very close to being the condemnation of the reality television culture that, to some of us, America needs. In the end, though, it was almost too much of a condemnation, giving no sign that there was any alternative to that culture, no reason for hope, no reason to do anything but find our own bunkers and wait out the fall.

Phrases in Common

I should start out by mentioning that there's a new link over in the Elsewhere section and I strongly recommend clicking upon it.

Someday I'll actually get around to writing about Cleansed, and it will either be the greatest thing I've ever written or something like "It's been a long time" which at the time was a significant step for me and afterwards I look back on as being quaint but ultimately mostly wrongheaded. For the time being, though, I'm not writing about Cleansed, just one particular line.

Cleansed would have been my second creative collaboration with the girl, although since she was acting this time and had been directing the previous time it would have been less of a collaboration and more of an odd coincidence that we both happened to be creatively involved in the same thing at the same time. But leaving aside the delicacies of that distinction, it did provide an opportunity for me to be in the same place that she was on a couple of occasions and notice the same odd niggling feeling that had occurred once or twice the previous quarter during Pullman Car Hiawatha

(One could call that feeling a crush. The exact details of why I didn't recognize it are long and would probably bore you.)

and it occurred to me at the time that perhaps the logical way to address this was to have dinner together.

I remember the exact table we ate at, too. Considering Thayer Dining Hall from the air, facing down and west, it looks something like this:

H   THE PAVILION
O           
M                 F          
E                 O          
P                 O          
L                 D          
A
T E       C O U R T       

with an odd dining area in the corner between the Pavilion and Food Court, where she and I sat at a small table up against a sort of half wall with fake plants and wooden lattice work. I don't remember what she ate but I'm fairly confident I had seasoned pita bread and spinach leaves with hummus, which was one of my more favorite things to eat when I remembered that I could get it.

There is a scene in Cleansed in which one of the characters, Robin, is learning to write and another of the characters, named Grace and played by the girl, is teaching him with the underlying point being that Robin has a puppy-like affection for Grace and Grace is too much in love with her quite probably deceased brother to be able to return it. Near the end of the scene a third character, Tinker, enters and picks up Robin's paper (on which he has written "flower" to describe Grace) and after asking "fuck is that?" burns it. A lot of lines in Cleansed have that very clipped very clean feeling as if everything unnecessary or even possibly superfluous has been cut out of them, and it can give some of the lines a dark humor where you know it's not funny but you laugh anyway. I don't remember anything else we talked about.

On the way out (through Food Court if you're looking back at my diagram) there were a couple of tables with colored paper tablecloths and a TV set that was playing something involving a rather ridiculous character (possibly involving feathers and a crown) doing something equally ridiculous (possibly involving buckets) and after walking past it the girl and I, at remarkably close to the same time, turned to each other and said "fuck is that?" and then burst out laughing. Then we went back to our respective homes and for over a year didn't see each other except for the occasional hurried greeting in the street when we both had places to go and things to do, and then we started dating. But, if you asked me, I'd probably tell you that it started back in the Thayer lobby during the winter of Cleansed and it just took me a while to get things straight in my head.

Sense, meet Lyrics

I suppose I should start out by admitting that I haven't had the most copacetic relationship with System of a Down. I remember hearing Toxicity on the radio and being vaguely interested if not thrilled, but Aerials was definitely a sing-along song and peaked enough interest that I borrowed a friend's perfectly legal copy to make a legal backup for her. From that album, Chop Suey was also good and there weren't any songs that I found completely unlistenable, and so when I started hearing Inner Vision on the radio, along with mention of their "new" album Steal This Album, I was fairly psyched and made a dutiful pilgrimage to the local mall FYE

(They had one of those anti-theft things on the disk, and at the cash register I commented that it seemed rather inappropriate and the kid behind the desk started at me roughly as if I had a odd growth on my nose and then went back to making change.)

and bought a copy. As it happens, the only thing that was stolen was my thirteen bucks and the time it took me to discover that I'd bought an album with one listenable song on it.

And the other disclaimer is that System has always had at best a tenuous relationship with conventional English usage. While it's true that neither Smashing Pumpkins nor Nine Inch Nails is exactly descriptive of the bands in question, they do at least consist of English words in a grammatical arrangement. System seems to have missed the second part of that right up front.

But that's cool. They're artists, and artists are allowed to do funny things, right? However, listening to the radio today, I came across definite evidence that their charming standoff with grammar and sense and what not has spiraled out of control. As evidence, I give you:

WHY DO THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR?!
Barbarisms by Barbaras
With pointed heels.
Victorious, victorious, kneel.
For brand new spankin' deals.
Marching forward hypocritic
And hypnotic computers.

So, sure, we've got some artistic protest against the Iraqi war here. I suppose pointed heels might be some kind of reference to fascism, although it seems to be more about BDSM to me, and the computers tie into the military-industrial complex and all, so while we may be skirting the boundaries of nonsensical, we can still see sense from here.

You depend on our protection,
Yet you feed us lies from the table cloth.

And now we have an exciting new metaphor, but the dogs and the master's table and what not isn't too hard to get. I thought it was a bit odd to bring it up right there, especially compared to the previous dominance and industry images, but it's not like I didn't follow...

La la la la la la la la la,

La la la is has a well respected past in both political protest songs and screaming metal.

Everybody's going to the party have a real good time.

What the fuck?

Dancing in the desert blowing up the sunshine.

That's a Plan Nine from Outer Space reference right there.

In conclusion, on another song from the same album, System exclaims "Hey man! Look at me rocking out, I'm on the radio!" Honestly, I'll pass.

After the Gospel

I don't know if you're familiar with the Roman Catholic Mass at all, but the first half contains three readings, usually one from the Old Testament, one from the Epistles and one from the Gospels (although sometimes they mix up the first two; I always liked the reading from Revelation on All Saints, and while Acts isn't cool like Revelation, it's nice to get an occasional break from Paul in the second slot) and in most churches these days they let a couple of worthy parishioners get up and read the first two. I'm not sure why, but these people normally have incredible difficulty reading relatively simple passages, and I think if Paul could hear the way people would be reading his letters, he would go back and redo them all as stick-figure diagrams.

So, last Saturday evening, I was sitting there, picking lint out of the velcro in my pants and staring idly around, while the second guy goes up to read the bit from the Epistles, and he starts reading the wrong thing. Usually when this happens, they read the wrong week's reading which is at least understandable, but this guy started reading the Gospel, which has a completely different lead in and tone of voice and all from the Paul's letter to the Lower Slabovians, you know? And you know everyone in the congregation is doing the exact same thing I am, which is not actually listening to what he's reading at all, but wondering whether he's realized that he's reading the wrong thing (he must have) and what he's going to do about it. I'm not sure whether they tell readers not to admit they made a mistake or something, but this guy went all the way through, like nothing was wrong, and then took part in a little ceremony they do in my church where the reader brings the book of the Gospels up (obviously not totally necessary) and gives it to the priest to read the part that he read already, and sits down, which, I guess, just pushes it off onto the priest to figure out what to do next.

Of course, the guy had to read something else later in the service and he spent a good fifteen seconds making sure that he was reading the right thing, standing up there, while four guys in the back were probably taking bets on what would happen this time.

The point of all of which is, I can understand the guy's problems. Just the other day, I was sitting in a coffee shop, talking to the girl. I'd gotten to know her quite a while before, and we'd had a little while of things going really well and since then it's been a longer while of things not necessarily going so well, but not really going badly at any point. I haven't seen much of her lately — I'm moving to a new job come the first — and when we'd planned to get together, I figured it would be a good time to call it quits. Not the "I hate you forever" kind of quits, but more of an "I'm going to be many, many miles away and we haven't really be together long enough to attempt a long distance relationship plus I have issues from my last relationship with even attempting a long distance relationship so really I love you but I don't see how either of us can make this work" kind of quits, but once we're both there and talking — not Talking — my resolve starts to wither away. Eventually, I force it into being Talking, and she says that everything's not always clear, and things can't always be cut and dried, and sometimes you're just in an inbetween stage and that's not a bad thing

(Now, what I told myself coming in is that while that all makes some sort of abstract sense, inbetween stages don't necessarily work when you don't see each other very much, and probably don't work at all when you're 500 miles away from each other, and there's no point in saying to each other oh, this is just an inbetween stage when at least I recognize that the only thing it's in between is my realizing that things aren't going to work out, at least as they are now, and my saying that to her outright.)

and the bad part is, after talking and stuff, it all makes sense to me and I'm afraid to lose her, afraid to make a mistake, afraid to look like this is all a mistake, so just like that guy up at the lectern reading the wrong thing, I say yeah, it's an inbetween stage and we hug and kiss and walk our different directions from the coffee shop.

But what I'm wondering is, who comes up to the lectern afterwards to figure out what to do next?