It's just no Fight Club

I got Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk for Christmas. I've been trying with Palahniuk for a while. I really dug Fight Club. It was fresh, and funny, and more bad-ass than it looks at face value, if that's possible. The writing was sharp and witty and I'd often read certain paragraphs four or five times because they felt so true. After Fight Club, I wanted more Palahniuk. Went and bought Choke and Lullaby. Liked them less--but I couldn't exactly tell you why at the time. Now I'm reading Invisible Monsters, and I'm finding it really hard to get into it. Palahniuk's patterns of repetitions of phrases, and short, cutting sentences--elements that seemed so cool in Fight Club-- now just feel exhausted. The unbelievably fucked up characters are hard to sympathize with and hard to take seriously. I just don't care about anyone in the book. And while flawed characters are essential in interesting literature, these misanthropic mopes are boring me now. But why?

I feel like Fight Club was such a strike of lightning. The basic idea is brilliant in its weird simplicity, and the writing compliments the overall situation. Every character is perfect in their role, and nothing feels forced. The way it's written is almost necessary to tell this particular story. But after reading Fight Club, every other Palahniuk book I've read just doesn't measure up. And I can see him trying, and I can clearly see his unique writing style shining through every paragraph, which is something commendable.

But it doesn't work me anymore. And I wish it did, because I want to be amazed when I read a book. I want to be blown away the way I was when I read Fight Club. I want to read a sentence or a paragraph and feel like it's the truest, realest thing anyone's ever written, ever. I want to feel like I can relate. But I can't, and it kind of depresses me.

So the magic is gone. Thus far, at least. I don't quit on books (unless it's Money by Martin Amis which just made me want to kick babies) so I'll probably finish invisible Monsters. And I guess we'll see.

Dammit Mark Zuckerberg

Safari. Open Safari. Okay, let’s see, I should check my e-mail, see if my professor e-mailed me back. Yeah, I guess I’ll open a Word Document too, get started on the outline for that paper. Oh well, as long as Safari’s open, I guess I’ll just go over here…yeah, just click another tab. I mean, I might as well just check my Facebook. Really quick. Oh, two new notifications? Sweet! “You have 10 new questions waiting for you in Friends Exposed.” Oh. Whatever. Hm, Lorine Marchal commented on a photo of me? I don’t know who that is, but that’s cool. Let’s just check this out then—oh. It’s one of those “Write a memory about me” things. Well fine, fuck you too then. I guess I don’t have any reason to—oh, James Hogart was tagged in NYE 2010...huh. Maybe I’ll just click through these quickly. Looks interesting. Click. Click. Click. Who’s that in the picture with him? She looks kind of familiar—I’ll just right click a tab for her profile. Kim Samson. She’s got really nice hair. I wonder if I could get my hair to look like that. Well, I’ll just look through her profile pictures really quick, see if I know any of her friends. No. No. No. Negative. Oh. Wow. Her sister’s bachelorette party? This looks like it could be—I’ll just click here and…wait, she’s underage, isn’t she? How’d she get into this bar? Oh, who is that girl? Aw, that’s a really cute baby. Is that hers? She looks kind of young to have a—oh, fuck, her boyfriend is so hot. And his profile is…not private! Ha! I’ll just peruse through here…oh, he likes Dogma? I love that movie! Photos… ”My Epic Night?” That sounds promising. Hm, boring, boring, boring—what the fuck?! Who are these people, and why are they—wait, what? It’s 4:00? No, that’s not even possible. I started working at 2:45. And how did I get to “My baby cousin Krysta’s half birthday?” WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? I DON’T KNOW ANYONE IN THESE PICTURES. HOW DID I GET HERE?

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You can front all you want, but everyone Facebook stalks. It’s bizarre, and weird, and fucked up, and really fun in a twisted, voyeuristic way. And you know what? If somehow I found out that some arbitrary person I don’t know was looking through my photos, I wouldn’t be creeped out; I’d just appreciate the fact that I looked interesting enough to right click tab. 

Smoking

I saw a really pretty girl smoking a cigarette today. Probably about 50% of campus smokes—I see attractive girls smoking every day, but today it was different somehow. Conventionally pretty, she had sandy blond hair, and blue eyes. Thin, but not skinny, dressed smartly, with a nice white smile. She was walking with a group of guys, and she had a cigarette in her mouth. And suddenly I saw way into her future. I saw jaundiced teeth and nails, and wrinkles around her eyes, and carvings of creases where laugh lines should be. I saw in her a sort of desperation that shines in near middle aged women who want to look younger than they are; she still wore make-up of course, and kept her hair long, and dressed in floral print tops and dark-wash jeans that camouflaged any celluloid lurking on her thighs. But her face didn’t match her trendy Junior Miss turns Mommy clothes and her Orange County suburban hair. It was ancient and tired, and you could hear that her voice had lost its melody, and you didn’t want to be there for too long because it made you sad. Watching her 40-year-old self her light up a smoke outside the office, in the car, at her daughter’s soccer game. She holds her cigarette the same way she did in college.

When does it change? At what point do we look around and start feeling disdain for the people who stand outside in 10-degree weather just so they can smoke a square? The rough glamour of smoking—the James Deansian quality of it disappears once the nicotine makes its mark on your face, on your body. It’s a phase, smoking is, from age 15-29—but once you hit 30 you better kick the habit, or you’re just a sad-sack addict who smells bad and can’t be counted on for anything. You’re that mother, the one who gives her kids second-hand smoke for Christmas. You’re that father, leaving the ballet recital because you can’t make it through without a quick cig. You’re that annoyance on the street, the target of glares and heavy sighs of the pious non-smokers, irritated at you for blowing your chemicals in their vicinity. Adults who smoke suck.

But before that. Before you get there, smoking looks cool. It really, really does. The purse of the lips, the kiss on the tip of the slender white cylinder, the quick deep sucks, and the puckering ‘O’ of the mouth as you blow the cool grey smoke out. The way your fingers delicately flick the end of it, orange burning ash scattering to the ground. It’s sexy. It’s mature, and adult, and rebellious.  It’s artsy, it’s tortured, it’s a roll of the eyes and a sigh and a, “God, I need a cigarette.” It’s so nonchalantly dangerous.

Contrast that with the way a forty-three year old woman looks smoking. The wrinkled mouth wraps around a stained white cigarette, the desperate, gasping gulps, and the involuntary “Ah” that escapes through yellowed teeth, as her head tilts toward the sky, her face a picture of pathetic ecstasy. Her fingers tap the end, and once it’s done she lets it fall to the ground, the butt still weakly smoking but not smoldering. The exchange between cigarette and smoker is strangely sad, like stale marital sex. Habitual routine conquers risky excitement. 

I guess it’s just the shit I keep thinking about when I stand on the porch watching my 18 year old childhood friend and my mother smoke cigarettes on Christmas Eve in below freezing weather.