TIH 365: Chuck Palahniuk on The Invention of Sound, Fight Club, and Commodifying Human Experience

Michael David Wilson 0:07

Welcome to This Is Horror, a podcast for readers, writers and creators. I'm Michael David Wilson. And every episode, I count with masters of horror about writing, life lessons, creativity, and much more. Now normally I'm joined by my co host, Bob Pastorella. But unfortunately, due to the recent hurricane in Texas, he is unable to join us for this conversation. Now, today's guest is shark por la Nick. And I'm so excited to have him on the show. He is a dream guest for me. So I'm very thankful to be living that dream to be live in that reality. And I just got off the call with him. We had a fantastic conversation. We spoke about his new book, The invention of sound, which is the most horror novel he's ever written. You've got to go out and buy it. We talk about writing, we talk about life lessons, so a tremendous amount on its way with. So let's skip the preamble. Have some words from our sponsors, and then we'll get to the main conversation.

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Michael David Wilson 2:51

Alright, well, with that said, here it is it is a conversation with Chuck Palahniuk on This Is Horror. Chuck, welcome to This Is Horror.

Chuck Palahniuk 3:05

Thank you, Michael, I am glad to be here. You're spoken very highly of.

Michael David Wilson 3:09

Yeah, I appreciate that. And, you know, I hope that I do not disappoint. But thank you to the people out there who were speaking kindly about me. Now, let's begin, where I always like to begin, and that is with early life lessons. So I'm wondering, what lessons did you learn when you were growing up in a mobile home in Burbank, Washington.

Chuck Palahniuk 3:37

You know, I was so lucky, I grew up kind of during a really golden age of horror, and then included EC comics, and then included nighttime anthology shows like The Night Gallery, and the Night Stalker, which was a fantastic show. And we could not stay up for Night Gallery, because it was on a school night. So it was on Wednesday night. And every Thursday morning, my siblings and I would force my mother to tell us the plot of every segment of the Night Gallery on the night before. And my mother would have to remember every plot point, so that she could tell moment by moment, what happened in each of the two, three, sometimes four segments of the Night Gallery with Rod Sterling the night before. And that's how I learned how to plot stories.

Michael David Wilson 4:30

That is amazing. And I mean, did your mom have to take notes for that? Or did she just have a very good memory?

Chuck Palahniuk 4:39

I think she was just very bright. And she knew that there was an expectation that we would want to know what led to what and what caused what and what the ultimate payoff would be. So she had to remember every detail so that it would make sense in the telling.

Michael David Wilson 4:55

So this is your first experience with hearing story but I'm wondering, at what point were you then allowed to watch Night Gallery?

Chuck Palahniuk 5:06

You know, I didn't get to see Night Gallery until, as an adult. I see it now and on me TV on cable service. It's a lot less scary now.

Michael David Wilson 5:17

Yeah. And I imagine as well, I mean, just having the power of your imagination. I mean, it would have a lot that it would have to live up to, when you've been told the story to then see it visually. I mean, unfortunately, it can be easy to disappoint, especially when you're a child. I mean, I know a number of people that we've spoken to, they'd look through these books where they had images from old Hammer Horror films and things like that. And they tell themselves the story and often what they couldn't get up would be more impressive and darker than what was on the screen.

Chuck Palahniuk 5:58

Another element of that is that I remember remember Darren McGavin in the Nightstalker, which was kind of the source material, the inspiration for The X Files, Chris Carter even patterns, the opening sequence of The X Files after the opening sequence of the Night Stalker. And I remember the night stalker every episode being terrifying. But when I see it in DVD, and I can watch it binge watch it episode after episode, I see that they shot that series on a shoestring budget, because you see the same painting showing up in office after office. And you see the same establishing shot of hospitals with palm trees, and McGavin obviously driving through the streets of Los Angeles. So you really see it fall apart in terms of production quality. But that's only because you can watch back to back episodes.

Michael David Wilson 6:54

Yeah. Do you think the way in which we're consuming media now with the likes of on demand? Television, do you think that that is having a kind of effect in the way in which we process story?

Chuck Palahniuk 7:11

That's a good point. It, it makes it much more difficult to do anthology television, because you have to come up with such an entirely different set of characters and circumstances for each episode. And that cost is just is really destroyed anthology, even HBOs. series about the hotel room in which you have basically the same standing set, but a different cast and a different story each week, even that had a really high production cost. So I think anthology television, you know, is just not conducive for our current streaming.

Michael David Wilson 7:54

Yeah. And on on that note, am I right in thinking that you're working on a TV series for Apple at the moment,

Chuck Palahniuk 8:05

I was. Apple gave us a development deal, and funded our first round of scripts. And they ultimately seemed to really love what we produced, which was incredibly dark. But they said by the time they needed it, they needed something much more general. And they were really frightened away from something so dark and so completely challenging. There was one great production meeting it wasn't with Apple, it was with another big network or streaming service. And I pitched them one particular episode, which is about what is known as bug chasing and gift giving, which is basically it would be an episode about a character who charges people money in order to infect them with HIV. And the whole thing is done with euphemisms, the euphemism donut glazing. And so at one point, the legal counsel for this huge network in this skyscraper overlooking Los Angeles, she sort of stops me and she says, Am I getting this right? Are you really pitching us an episode about buttfucking? And I said, No, I'm pitching you an episode about donut glazing, which is unprotected, but fucking I think that's pretty much where the pitch ended. So that's pretty much you know, what's the kind of edgy dark, dark, challenging stuff that I think you can only do in horror right now? Because everything else is gotta play the politically correct game. But horror can find euphemisms and can find ways around all of those. Those obstacles.

Michael David Wilson 9:59

Yeah, and I feel Do you get in, you know, push back from Apple, it seems a theme that has occurred a lot in your creative life. I mean, this is similar to what happened with invisible monsters, you had a number of publishers that really enjoyed it, they saw the potential, but they said we do not want to be attached to that we do not want to publish it. And so then you wrote Fight Club and got your start that way.

Chuck Palahniuk 10:34

And marketing seems to be a big obstacle, especially well, in publishing, they the acquisitions board, they have to take it to, to a board that represents everyone in the publishing house. And it was always the marketing department that would say, We have no idea what shelf to put this on in the bookstore. And so unless we can define it by existing books, we just don't know how to sell it. And that was a problem all the way through the the marketing of the Fight Club movie, is that David Fincher tells his hilarious story about the Head of Marketing for 20 Century Fox, sitting through a screening of the movie, and then grabbing David Banner more or less by the collar and saying, congratulations, you have made my job, a misery, you have created a movie with so much male nudity in it, that no man is ever going to pay to see it. And so much blood in it, no woman is ever going to pay to see it, you have created the ultimate impossible to sell movie. Thanks a lot. And so my stuff always has to kind of sell itself because it can't be sold in relation to other successes.

Michael David Wilson 11:52

Right? And I mean, if I think of all the books and stories that you've written, I mean, none of them really fit in a neat genre box, nor do I think you would want them to I mean, they're all straddling different genres. And I mean, sometimes people kind of term fiction in that ballpark, transgressive, but I think even that label is so malleable that I mean, does that even count as a genre label?

Chuck Palahniuk 12:28

It used to, you could talk about transgressive fiction, and you could talk about the monkey monkey wrench gang. And you could talk about political protests fiction, which might or might not include Trainspotting, or American Psycho or fightclub. But really since 911, transgressive fiction is sort of lumped in with terrorism. So it is it's kind of a dead sort of school of fiction.

Michael David Wilson 12:56

Yeah. Which is why, I mean, you've been saying that you've turned more towards the horror genre. Although I mean, it certainly sounds from talking about your early experiences or story that horror has always been a concern. It's always been a mode that you've been interested in. I mean, reading your early stories, that it's clear that things are pretty goddamn dark. I mean, look at Guts example.

Chuck Palahniuk 13:25

You know, and Guts was up for a believable Bram Stoker award was up for some with just wonderful horror awards. But I always fall back on the past of Ray Bradbury, and Matheson and even Earl Hamner, Hamner is the guy who fictionalized himself as John Boyd Walton and created the Waltons. But before that, he had written for outer limits, and he'd written for Twilight Zone. And he'd written some of the darkest, most twisted stuff that was on television. And this is what John boy Walton grew up to write. And then ultimately, in the 80s, he wrote, and created Falcon Crest, which was one of the big primetime soap operas. So I am just charmed by these people who can write the really dark, edgy short stuff, but then they can go out and they can sell mainstream Jane Wyman Falcon Crest.

Michael David Wilson 14:24

Yeah. Yeah. And I wanted to take things all the way back to your early age, because I think that this kind of might help paint a picture for people in terms of your origin story, because I know that you've always had this simultaneous fear and attraction to conflict. So I'm wondering, why do you think that stemmed from?

Chuck Palahniuk 14:52

Oh, you know, years ago, I sat down and I did an hour's long interview with Andrew Sullivan. And he more or less fessed up that he always has to put himself in opposition, with whatever group he's working with whatever newsroom whatever, magazine staff, because his parents fought like dogs, his father was more or less kind of a football hooligan, his mom really went head to head with him. And he grew up in a household where his parents fought like animals. And so he's only comfortable around people who are fighting. And if they're not fighting, he has to get them fighting. So he's always putting himself against whoever he's with. And I recognized that I get a nostalgic kind of thrill. When I'm around people who are fighting, there's, there's something very comforting about that, because my parents fought a great deal. And so, Fight Club was really a way to kind of put a toe in the water, and to explore conflict in a very completely consensual, structured way, between friends. And I think that this is kind of a purpose it serves for a lot of people who read it and who watched the movie is that it gives them a way to be with conflict, that doesn't completely exclude them or shut them down.

Michael David Wilson 16:20

Yeah, and I think the popularity of Fight Club and the popularity of mixed martial arts like UFC shows that there is a demand for that consent, you're fighting.

Chuck Palahniuk 16:35

And it's a physical, visceral kind of entertainment that involves you and not just an intellectual level that pulls your whole body into what you're what you're watching. Yeah. Horror does that also, horror pulls your entire body and as well as your, your mind and your emotions.

Michael David Wilson 16:54

Yes, yeah. And I mean, speaking of horror, your forthcoming novel, The invention of sound, I mean, it might be the most horror novel you've ever written.

Chuck Palahniuk 17:09

I think it definitely is, I think I've gotten some some short stories out there, that kind of go over the top in terms of horror, but the invention of sound really is what I refer to his Tableau horror, that, think about the movie Seven, we never actually see any of the people killed, we always arrive after the fact. And we see a kind of static Tableau that suggests the enormous cruelty and violence that took place. And then we examine that Tableau in very detached forensic procedural language. And so whether it's seven or DaVinci Code, or it is the alienist, where we're never seeing the violence performed, we're always seeing the after effects of the violence. And I find that really fascinating, because so much of horror, is about not just showing the After Effects is about showing the actual violence take place. And that's something I wanted to save in invention of sound until, until the really the end, I just didn't want to go there until I had to.

Michael David Wilson 18:20

Yeah, given the subject matter, I'm imagining maybe on your computer, you have a VPN, you're on the dark web a lot, because I mean, some of those things that you must have to look up in the research of this novel. I mean, you don't want people to be aware that that's the kind of thing you're Googling.

Chuck Palahniuk 18:41

You know, I don't think I've ever been on the dark web. I'm not even sure how I would find it. But my primary research sources, always other people, because I figured by the time it's on the web, or by the time it's on television, God forbid, it is so processed, and it is so commonly known. And I really want the stuff that people only tell the other people and they only tell it in private, and they only tell it typically after they've had a drink or two. So I want the really the rawest stuff I can find and you only get that from people.

Michael David Wilson 19:18

Yeah, and then that goes back to your writing method. Because I know that you are often writing in public I mean, in normal circumstances, obviously at the moment with the pandemic that's been changed a little bit but going to gyms and cafes and places where you can actually interact with other people. And you're also doing that in a notebook. You're doing that physically it's not typing I think you said before the you know that the writing that's the physical act to errors when you're on the computer that that's just the editing. That's more a What's the word? It's just more of a robotic thing? It's not really a creative process.

Chuck Palahniuk 20:08

Right? It's like bookkeeping. Yeah. Yeah. The real writing is when someone phrases something in this extraordinary way, makes an observation that I had never read completely reinvent a topic for me. And that's the stuff I want to capture in the moment in a notebook. And then I start to compile it in a kind of bookkeeping session, when I'm actually keyboarding. It, I just like sitting at a computer so much. And the more I can sit around and eavesdrop on people, the fresher the stuff will always be. And while the added bonus is also that if I want to create work that people can read, in crowded airports, and on crowded airplanes, and then all these distracting horrible circumstances, in hospitals, then I need to create it in those circumstances, if it can't hold my attention, in those noisy, bothersome, you know, subway cars, then it's not going to hold anybody else's attention in those circumstances.

Michael David Wilson 21:17

I think that's a really good point, and a really compelling reason for people to get out there and to create in these noisy environments. And, I mean, we are living in this attention economy. And there are so many things that we're competing with as writers, you've got video games, you've got Netflix, you've got movies, you've got graphic novels, which of course, you've branched into with Fight Club, too, and fight club free and to hold the attention of someone for a novel length work is a difficult task.

Chuck Palahniuk 21:55

You know, one of my favorite places to work is hospital, emergency room waiting areas. Because people typically aren't allowed to watch television. So you don't have a kind of a dominant form of media there. But everyone's under stress. And so there's always comfortable chairs. So you've got to get to be around all these people who are under stress. They're talking to each other. So you're hearing language, but they're just terrific places to work. And so

Michael David Wilson 22:29

when you're writing in an emergency room, I mean, are you having to do a kind of tour of local emergency room? So you're not always in the same one? Or is there a particular ER where the staff are aware? Like, oh, that's just jack, he kind of comes here and does his thing, just don't worry about him.

Chuck Palahniuk 22:50

You know, I do tend to do kind of changes up between Good Samaritan and Emanuel hospital. But that's pretty much stick to one or the other. There and airports. Those are my favorite places.

Michael David Wilson 23:03

And have you got to know many of the staff there.

Chuck Palahniuk 23:09

No, because in my purpose in being there is just to be that fly on the wall, yeah. And test my material, by working on it with distraction. But also to be able to look up any moment, if I need a gesture, or physical detail, I can look up at two or 300 people, and someone will be doing the thing or displaying the behavior that I need. And I can just kind of harvest it in that moment.

Michael David Wilson 23:37

Yeah, and this is such a good creative writing exercise, particularly for people that are more used to just staying at home or in front of the computer. Or perhaps they have quite an empty, quiet cafe that they go to get out in the wild get into one of these busy environments. And right there, see how it changes your flow and your work and just experiment with them.

Chuck Palahniuk 24:07

One thing that happened while I was still teaching in a workshop where we were meeting in person, and it was oh, 15 to 20 people is that someone mentioned? Oh, we were talking about a used magazine store that was closing down. And at one point, I had been in a used magazine store a huge place called periodicals paradise, possibly the largest, used a magazine store in the world. And I was doing all these, all this research in old magazines. And throughout the entire time I was there. Every 15 or 20 minutes a guy would bring in cases and cases of Playboy magazines. And the owner of the store would explain that they did not buy Playboys, or National Geographics, because people never threw them away. And so there was so many of them in the world that they had no value And so each of these guys was forced to Holloway the these enormous collections of playboys that until that moment, they thought each guy would think that what he had had a huge value. But then he would suddenly find out, it was just a burden. And someone in the writers workshop, a student said, I wonder if that's how the box of porn in the woods happens. And suddenly, everybody leaned forward. And people ranging in age from 65, to 18 years old, everyone in that group had a story about finding the box of porn in the woods. And we, we all realized it was an archetypal experience that we had all had, but none of us had ever, ever shared it. And it's in moments like that, that you recognize that a commonly held undiscussed story has such fantastic power as an archetype, that you can do anything with it. And for a long time, we had thrown around the idea that we would each write a short story, and we would put them together and publish them as a collection. And then one student, Patricia suggested the perfect title. We were going to call it children of the porn. Yes, it was such a fantastically sticky idea. People could not put it down. But it is really hard to get a publisher to sign on to do a book that has the world's worst children.

Michael David Wilson 26:40

Yeah. I mean, my God, you, you put that on something like Amazon, and probably the algorithms again about it straight away.

Chuck Palahniuk 26:52

See, it bans itself?

Michael David Wilson 26:56

But you're right. It's the perfect title.

Chuck Palahniuk 27:01

One of those students is a man named Tyler Jones, who speaks very, very highly of you. And Tyler has a new book out called Criterium. And so Criterium by Tyler Jones, I just wanted to give it a shout out while while I'm on here, criterion by Tyler Jones, it is a novella, give it a chance, it has a fantastic cover by David Mack, the comic artist, who's done all of the Fight Club to win Fight Club, three graphic novel covers.

Michael David Wilson 27:30

Yeah, and I've actually just started reading criterium and it is so tight, I mean, in terms of the pros, and it really does have that great minimalist style that I think people who are fans of your writing are really going to enjoy. So I mean, I'm looking forward to getting back to that and completing it. Because I mean, from the beginning it, I'm into it, the only reason that I haven't actually consumed all of it in one setting is because I was reading and rereading so much of your stuff to prepare for this interview. But I can certainly endorse that as well. And I'm very appreciative of Tyler for saying wonderful things about me to say, thank you, Tyler.

Chuck Palahniuk 28:23

Tyler also put me in touch with Cemetery Dance. And they picked up a brand new short story of mine, and that's published in their latest issue. So my thanks to Cemetery Dance as well. I just want to sort of get it all out of the way.

Michael David Wilson 28:38

Yeah, yeah. And so is that issue out now? Or if not, do you know when it will be coming out?

Chuck Palahniuk 28:46

It was supposed to be out in June. So I really thought that they were bringing it out late, but I thought they were bringing out in August or September.

Michael David Wilson 28:53

Right. Yeah. I mean, as you are well aware of so many publishing schedules, I guess, particularly for the independent presses as well, with everything happening with COVID. It's, it's a bit of a nightmare at the moment. And the usual rules of operating are out the window.

Chuck Palahniuk 29:16

Yeah, the book tours are really scrubbed so many book tours, so many movies not going on screens.

Michael David Wilson 29:22

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was something I wanted to talk to you about as well, because I mean, I think you're pretty well known for having these elaborate and interesting in person events where you do things like give out your autograph limbs because too many people were getting tattoos of your autograph. So you decided to solve that problem for them. But, of course, now you're having to do a virtual book tour for the invention of sounds. So I mean, I'm wondering what kind of things are you having to do to make these events He says unique and memorable is the in person events.

Chuck Palahniuk 30:04

You know, I'm kind of stuck. I have no idea. I've never done a virtual event. And so I've just kind of got to go with it. I'm already planning for next year I'm figuring next year we'll get together. I'll have to paperbacks next year, and I'll be able to do a big dog and pony show again. I already got huge shipments of flashing light up stuff already ordered for next year. No, next year will be the big back to work year.

Michael David Wilson 30:35

Yeah, yeah. So those two new books that you have coming out next year,

Chuck Palahniuk 30:41

it'll be the paperbacks for this year's writing book, which was considered this. And it'll be the paperback for this year's novel novel, which is the invention of sound.

Michael David Wilson 30:53

Yeah, and I mean, those are the two books that are so perfect for listeners of This Is Horror, because I mean, we're a horror podcast. So that's the event killer sound. But we also like to get into the craft of writing. So that's consider this. So I mean, there really wasn't a better time to get you on the show. And those are the books through our listeners.

Chuck Palahniuk 31:15

And boy, it is so much nicer to learn writing from that book than it is from me because I am the John Houseman I am the Paperchase professor of writing. And I will not hesitate to make you cry. So I just burned through the students.

Michael David Wilson 31:32

Yeah, I think that one of my creative writing professors probably took a cue from you. And I said, the University of Warwick because he decided as an experiment to get us all to do this big assignment. And then he'd read each story aloud. And at the moment that he would have put the story down, he'd just rip it up. And the look on students faces and the reaction. I mean, yeah, there was some people that did not take too kindly to that.

Chuck Palahniuk 32:08

I had one of those classes in college, and the professor would read our work out loud as if he were the writer. And he would always make fun of it as he was reading it. And so, you know, before I dropped out of his class, I wrote a story, which began with a lion. The dog's penis tasted salty. And then it went downhill from there. And this poor guy had to debase himself reading that entire story. And once I had my revenge, I dropped his class and never looked back.

Michael David Wilson 32:42

Yeah. Yeah. So you purposely wrote that for him knowing he was going to read it out loud. You're like, Okay, well, if that's the game that you're playing, I'm gonna want to view.

Chuck Palahniuk 32:57

Exactly I wrote it to humiliate and degrade that pompous jerk.

Michael David Wilson 33:02

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, I'm

Chuck Palahniuk 33:05

I love humiliation and degradation. I'm the one that has to stand up there and read Guts to people. But you know, there's a difference between humiliating yourself and humiliating other people. And I'm all for the former, but I will not stand for the latter.

Michael David Wilson 33:24

Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, in terms of that kind of thing, there's something I can't remember if you said it in, considered this or if you've said it live, probably both. But I mean, with writing, you said, you're not writing to be liked. You're writing to be remembered.

Chuck Palahniuk 33:49

Exactly. And the more they like you up front, the faster they will forget you. Those books that hit huge and they hit big and they they're gone in a year, you go out and find me a copy of the self esteem prophecy. Yeah, people don't even know what that is, you know, these books that were the best book ever are forgotten so quickly.

Michael David Wilson 34:14

Yeah. And I think it's not a bad lesson to kind of have for life, you know, live to be remembered. I mean, obviously, there are going to be some caveats there are some people that we remember for very fucking terrible reasons. So you know, don't don't actually go out killing people or anything like that. But I do think, perhaps because of this, social media instant gratification, world that we live in, there are perhaps too many people who are obsessed in terms of their likability and how others perceive them, rather than being more concerned about creating good art or living an authentic life.

Chuck Palahniuk 35:07

And there's a there's an old trope about if you design a house to please one person, it will ultimately please everyone. But if you try to design a house that will please everyone. It will please absolutely no one. Yeah. So there is that, you know, the message is to stay really true to your own vision. And not to try to manage this the anything by committee in that way.

Michael David Wilson 35:33

Yeah. Is that ever anything that you've struggled with? Or have you ever had times where you've faltered or you've, you've questioned whether you're going down the right path?

Chuck Palahniuk 35:48

In the very first, when I was first writing, and I had my first novel going around to agents, this would have been in 1990. I was talking to an agent, somebody in Seattle of all places. And she was hemming and hawing. And I was trying to get her to tell me yes or no, and what she didn't like about the book, see if we could work. And she was saying that there were parts of the book that she found really disturbing, and she really did not care for. And I was saying, well, I could change those parts. I could make those parts into anything that you would like, on the page. And then she finally crumbled. And she said, No, she found the entire book, disturbing and distasteful. And I said, Well, I can change the entire book, I can change everything about, okay. And I heard myself say that, and I realized, oh, my gosh, if I'm going to be that way, I'm going to really hate writing. It's always going to be about making somebody else happy. And I thought, No, I've got to draw the line. And I thank you for reading the material. And I called it a loss. But I swore that I was never going to buckle under like that ever again. In fact, now when people say, Okay, we think it goes a little too far. My reaction is to go even farther. Yeah. And the great example was that the line and fight club I thought the Fight Club had to have one line that went too far. And that is the moment when Marla makes love with Tyler. Yes. And rather than say, I want to have your baby, she says, I really want to have your abortion. Yeah. And everyone at 20th Century Fox hated that line. And even Brad Pitt came to me and said, My mother is going to see this movie. Could we change that to anything else? And so they finally dumped it, David Fincher his lap, and David Fincher changed that line to I haven't been fucked like that since grade school. Yeah. And everyone at Fox went nuts and said, could we change it please? Back to the abortion line? And Fincher said, no. Oh, and happy birthday to David Fincher. He, his birthday was late, late last week. So David Fincher, happy late birthday.

Michael David Wilson 38:19

All right, happy birthday to David. And, yeah, like, I've heard that story before. And I mean, it, it still is enjoyable every time you tell it. And of those two lines. I mean, how do you even pick which one is worse? But I mean, that's what happens if you asked to change a line and slight well, maybe we'll change it. But I don't know if you can, like what we go in with.

Chuck Palahniuk 38:46

And so often, and I would urge writers that if something doesn't work, it's not because it goes too far, it is because it needs to be dialed up even farther. So there is an authority in doing the thing that is completely above and beyond wrong. And so if something If in effect, if a moment if a line is not quite working, maybe it needs to be more extreme instead of less extreme.

Michael David Wilson 39:16

Yeah. I can have any examples of that in the latest one, the invention of sound where you originally had a team of passion and then dialed it up.

Chuck Palahniuk 39:28

Oh, you know, I don't want to give away too much. Oh, my gosh, the scene on the mountain that's tolls in retrospect,

Michael David Wilson 39:37

That is one of the parts that really messed me up.

Chuck Palahniuk 39:42

Vicious, and that is from true life. It originally had been a peanut allergy story. And my my first readers had said, you can't go with a peanut allergy story. It's too mainstream. It's been done too often. And I knew it needed to be dialed up and needed to go up to something that people had not seen before. Yeah. And I was in Los Angeles. And I was working with the showrunner John Shaban. And John and I were putting together this this anthology series that we sold to Apple. And John was telling me about an actor friend of his, that he had worked with on The X Files because John had been showrunner on The X Files and breaking bad that he just came off at Ozarks. John put together, Ozarks. Anyway, John was telling me that this this actor, was riding his motorcycle down the freeway in Los Angeles, and he caught a bee in the face, and the bee stung him. And he hadn't been allergic up until that moment. And suddenly he started to have this enormous anaphylactic shock reaction. And as he was blacking out, and he was thinking, I'm gonna die, and he managed to pull his motorcycle over to the shoulder. As he collapsed and the motorcycle fell on top of him. The tailpipe burned his leg to the bone. And it burned him so badly. The doctor later told him that that fantastic painful burn, acted like a shot of what is it that give people adrenaline? Yeah, yeah, a huge adrenaline response. And it saved his life, like an EpiPen would have. And so I'll just say that that true story about how the actor didn't die. I ended up taking that to the invention of sound, and making the standard peanut allergy story into something monstrous and horrible. And even legendary, because it ties into so many different fairy tales. But it took something very Bunnell and took it to a level nobody had seen before. And I can hear it from you that even you were freaked out by that.

Michael David Wilson 42:02

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the most vicious parts of the novel that was a part where it's like, Okay, after I ended, that kept Iran lit, they they felt like I'd physically been through some encounter to get up and take a bit of a breather.

Chuck Palahniuk 42:19

And the fact that it's happening between two children makes it even more.

Michael David Wilson 42:23

Yeah, yeah. Well, so much of this novel. I mean, it is concerned on a surface level with the protagonist, Gates Foster, looking for his missing daughter, I think because I have a two year old daughter and since becoming a father, I've become more sensitive to these things. It just ratcheted up everything about the invention of sound having that personal experience, and it, it was an uncomfortable read. But, you know, I enjoyed it in the way that all of us horror readers do. You know, it's an experience like a roller coaster, it's adrenaline rush, we enjoy being scared and getting a little bit fucked up. But, man, you really knocked it out of the park to use a terrible cliché.

Chuck Palahniuk 43:20

well notice that in stories that are primarily aimed at young people, and I'm thinking Disney movies and situation comedies on television, it's almost always a dead parent. And it's not just Disney with its legendary dead mother's. It is every major sitcom through the 60s and 70s, the 80s, either one or both, either the mother or the father is dead before the story starts. And so comedy sort of starts with this off screen tragedy that no one is ever addressing. Nor when no one ever talks about which parent died in the Brady Bunch. The Partridge Family never talked about their dead father. Nanny and the professor nanny never talks about Courtship of Eddie's father. And he talks about everything except for his dead mother. There are so many dead mothers and fathers throughout television history, and no one ever talks about them. Family Affair, Buffy and God, they never talk about their dead parents. But that is a way to get right to the heart of children is to show a child who's lost a parent. And the way to get to the heart of adults is to show a parent who's lost a child. And that takes you right to the heart of your adult audience, because that is their worst fear. And they will automatically admire and feel for an adult character who's lost a child you know, is It always works. It worked in my book lullaby. Yeah. And I think I'm, I'm drawn to the the father who's lost a child, because I never had children. And I now am at a point in my life, where I am mourning the kids I never had. And so it allows me to kind of express that grief.

Michael David Wilson 45:21

And I mean, what does that look like for you mourning the kids you never had, at what point did you realize you were mourning? And how does that manifest?

Chuck Palahniuk 45:33

You know, it, it brings me back to writing that character, a man who's lost a child, I don't think I can do it too often. Their are authors like Jodi Picoult kind of made an empire out of writing about dead children. And I just don't want to be that person. I don't want to be that writer. But but there's different ways of always going to that dead child, or that dead parent or archetype by story zombies. That was in Playboy. And I love that story piece, it would make Eve it make even the most hardened hipsters cry in public, I could look out over an audience of college students and see these 25 year old guys weeping see the tears on their cheeks, because it's about a kid who's lost both his parents and is not stopped by it. And he's able to say some really unvarnished observations about what it's like to not have his parents. And that is a young person's worst fear is losing his or her parents, and finding a new way to demonstrate that will automatically take you right to the heart of your audience.

Michael David Wilson 46:50

Yeah, I think a lot is looking for these universal fears or these universal experiences, such as the Playboy magazines in the woods, and then seeing how can I really tap into that? And how can I mold it into something unique and original?

Chuck Palahniuk 47:11

And people automatically have sort of a stake in the story, because they thought that they were the only one. Yeah. And now they're seeing Oh, my gosh, I'm not the only one.

Michael David Wilson 47:25

Yeah. With something else that the invention of sound is about is commodification. And the way in which our personal lives are commodified. And in this particular instance, in the invention of sound, the commodification of death. So I wonder, when did commodification become a concern and something you were acutely aware of,

Chuck Palahniuk 47:55

you know, I don't think I was really aware of the commodification of human experience until I had to go out and promote the book Fight Club. Because until then, I thought people went on to talk shows, because somehow they knew the host of the talk show, and they were friends. And you went on, and you talked to Oprah Winfrey for an hour because you two were best buds. And then, after being in one green room after another, and seeing all of these washed up VJs and these washed up actors in these washed up singers, all traveling the country, appearing on daytime television and these really small markets, trying to sell whatever their latest thing was, whether it's a book or a recording or, or some invention, it was just so heartbreaking. Because I could just see them, basically they are Willie, The Death of a Salesman guy, and it's a new thing. It's the death of assault. It's a dead celebrity out shilling a thing. And I really saw how, you know, human experience is so commodified. Yeah, it just broke my heart. Willy Loman Death of a Salesman.

Michael David Wilson 49:15

Yes. Yeah. And I mean, because being a celebrity is so fleeting. It is something I think about quite a bit and you know, you have these pop bands and an acts like stamps and S Club 7 that were really big in the 90s. And they were really big for a number of years. But then now I mean, what are they doing? I don't know. I doubt many people know and you know, how does it feel for them? What happens when you reach that height of fame and the height of celebrity but then five years down the road? You're nobody How do you deal with That's a must. It's gonna be a strange thing to have that effect on you.

Chuck Palahniuk 50:06

You know, and I've seen a certain amount of cruelty where whatever the program was the host, kind of got a revenge on whoever had been the teen idol. Right, but a few years before, and really put them through the wringer and humiliated them. And so watching people sort of constantly sell themselves in order to to make a living and try to get back into the spotlight is really painful to watch. And it's not a big jump from there to the idea of killing people and commodifying the moment of their death. I'm amazed at the really private aspects of our lives that are bought and sold right now. Google, Google knows exactly what niche of pornography, I'm always looking for. Google knows, and sells things about me that that used to be my deepest, darkest secrets. But now they're part of an algorithm. And they're being used to market other popup ads to me. And, you know, everybody knows somewhere. So I'm just amazed that the things that used to be almost sacred and profane way are now sort of legal tender.

Michael David Wilson 51:24

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you look up one thing, and then suddenly, you've got about 20 ads for similar things. And if you keep clicking on them, well, even more again, oh, appear they you know, it's, it's very smart, and simultaneously terrifying.

Chuck Palahniuk 51:43

Yeah, so and there's no getting away from it. When I was a, I started writing the book, beautiful you, which is about these kinds of evil sex toys to take over the world? Yeah. Oh, and that was when the Trojan Twister was being advertised very heavily on primetime television. And I never thought I would live to see the day when really fancy vibrators. Were being advertised with really pretty girls on television, and they would all be giving each other vibrators at parties. Yeah. And it would be handled sort of euphemistically, but I just never thought I would live to see that. So I had to write a book about it.

Michael David Wilson 52:33

Yeah, I don't know if Ann Summers is popular in America, but you do have these like, kind of sex toy parties in the UK, the I mean, are almost like can be marketed from anywhere from kind of late teenagers to to whatever age and there and some as parties but and some as is a very mainstream kind of sex toy and lawns you lingerie store that's about in the UK, and then they decided we'll have the, like, half an answer as wrap come around. And then you pass all these vibrators and toys and beads and all sorts around. And then if you buy any on the night, you get a discount.

Chuck Palahniuk 53:21

And you know that there's got to be a lot of wine consumed on

Michael David Wilson 53:25

Oh, yeah, you know.

Chuck Palahniuk 53:28

And you're buying stuff that you cannot return because of the intimate nature of it. Yeah. You're basically just kind of hosting a party where everyone's gonna get loaded, and buy things that they kind of regret by?

Michael David Wilson 53:42

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, on the ninth year of commodifying, death, everything gives I was this social media site that I saw or a few weeks ago, I can't remember what it's called. But if you sign up, you can then tell them the social media profiles that you currently have. And then they'll create a kind of forever account so that when you die, it uses AI to take all of the things that you used to tweet or talk about and then it will continue to write the status as for you. And I thought this must be some sort of pitch take or Black Mirror thing but it genuinely looks like it's real and they're trying to market it as you know, your loved ones will have a piece of you you're going to be effectively living forever. It will it will bring them joy, and hence light and this is This is fucked up. And if you take it to its inevitable conclusion, I mean, you look at in, you know, maybe even just 100 years, then at that point, you're probably going to have more dead people on social media than you are actually living. I think

Chuck Palahniuk 55:03

Oh, I love that.

Michael David Wilson 55:04

Yeah.

Chuck Palahniuk 55:07

In that same vein, one of the really early sort of things that put me off but also clued me into this commodification is that one of the first splurge as I did with Fight Club money, is that nobody in my family had ever had a tombstone. We were just not a family that has enough money for grave markers. Just a lower working class family. But when my grandparents died, I had enough money to buy them a tombstone. And I went to the mortuary. And they sat me down with these catalogs. And one of the sort of avenues to explore was they started asking me what products my grandparents bought and enjoyed. And they started showing me tombstones in cemeteries, for teenage girls, and some had Coke and Pepsi logos on them. And some had voit volleyballs on them, because the teenage girl really loved volleyball. And they had all these different marketing agreements with major manufacturers that they could put the trademarks and the brand names of products on the tombstones of people who use those products. So as you walk through cemeteries, you would see all this badging, all these logos, all these memes from companies on all these otherwise beautiful tombstones. And that seemed like a kind of horror I had never seen before. And when I said that my grandfather had been a farmer. They said, was he a John Deere guy, or an International Harvester guy. And then they showed me tombstones with either a John Deere tractor on it, or an International Harvester tractor on it. They said, choose one or the other. And it's just sound like the ultimate commodification of putting it in an advertisement on a dead person's tombstone, above their name. And it was bigger than their name. And it was instead of an epitaph. That was disgusting. Yeah.

Michael David Wilson 57:19

I was not familiar with that. And yet, I'm not surprised. It almost seems inevitable. I think it's difficult to be surprised by these things, and the lengths that corporations will go, I mean, if it's going to make them money, then they're gonna do it. And I mean, we see that play out again and again.

Chuck Palahniuk 57:46

And also the heartbreak that, that when people come in, they know so little about their loved one. Yeah, they, they don't know a poem that the loved one loved. They, they don't have something eloquent that they would like to see on that tombstone. All that they know is that their loved one liked Pepsi instead of coke. That is the only thing they know as the consumer preferences of the people closest to them. And that's what I find the most heartbreaking. Yeah. Oh, I, I was a reporter all through college. And occasionally, I'd get stuck writing obituaries. And so when the editor wanted a longer obituary, I would have to call the next of kin. And I would sort of politely talk to them about what the deceased was, was like as a person, and try to try to evoke a memory some sort of anecdote that I could put in the obituary. And I was always stunned by how little the loved ones could bring to mind about the person who had just died, that people seem to really be so unaware of each other. And I think when events like Christmas gift giving events come around, people have no idea who each other are. So they just buy the thing that's most effectively advertised. And that's what you get at Christmas, because you don't know anything about the other person. And so I think that's another form of commodifying people is, you know, turning them into the product that you're told they want.

Michael David Wilson 59:24

Right? And so many festivals and things like Valentine's Day, I mean, they came about by organizations such as Hallmark, it was an excuse to to sell more things, but I mean, when it comes to Christmas and birthday, if I if I can't think of something that is personal, and special and specific to that person, I'd rather just not get them anything. Because otherwise I'm just getting them meaningless shit. It's like it's an it feels like an empty gesture to him. You say he get to know the friends and the family that means something to you. But if not, it's a bit of a facade.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:00:09

Yeah, and then the other horrible part is they're getting you meaningless shit. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. And we're paying money for it. Oh, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 1:00:18

Sometimes as a as a kid some of the distant relatives who get me things and they just kind of highlight to me how little they knew about me particularly as like a teenage golf and Metal Head and it's like you've got me an Adidas sweater is the opposite. I mean, do what you do in

Chuck Palahniuk 1:00:43

Yes, you know, and that's the difference between the buying you the thing that they like and the thing that you like, yeah.

Michael David Wilson 1:00:52

Yeah, yeah. Trying to

Chuck Palahniuk 1:00:55

think of a way to get this back around to horror so well help out?

Michael David Wilson 1:00:58

Well, I mean, it is a little bit horrifying having and Andy that sweater is a teenage golf. And what is also horrifying are some Hollywood sound effects, such as in the invention of sound. I mean, you were talking about the smack of somebody's skull splitting open on a stone floor is effectively a head of lettuce that's frozen and dropped. Landing next to on Mike and I love how this is also about the sound effects and how they're created. And it was It wasn't anything I'd really thought about until reading this book. But I mean, you better believe that I went investigating after and I couldn't believe the amount of movies that use the Wilhelm scream. I mean, it's like everywhere. It's in Star Wars. It's in Indiana Jones.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:01:58

The Wilhelm scream and the the yodel one the goofy. Yes, Goofy. Yeah,

Michael David Wilson 1:02:05

that's the one that how

Chuck Palahniuk 1:02:06

we long scream, the how we scream. These things are just landmarks and they're used in video games. They're used everywhere.

Michael David Wilson 1:02:13

Yeah, yeah. And they have these brilliant names as well. Which you you Alliance? In the book. I mean, so on the nose, the original name of the Wilhelm scream being the man was beset by alligators streams, and then he died.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:02:32

It's such an elegant title like a painting a piece of

Michael David Wilson 1:02:36

conceptual art. Yeah, yeah.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:02:40

Just kind of a tangent. That's I always regret saying this, is that when David Fincher submitted fightclub to the ratings board, it was going to get an NC 17 rating if it didn't get an X rating. And so one thing he did to get an N Get it an R rating, was he took out a layer of sound effects. That was basically the impact the really violent sort of noise that sold every slugger every violent injury, that really Gore level of sound effect. He took out that layer, ran it for the ratings board, got the our rating he wanted. And then he put that layer back in. Yeah. So that's how important sound can be. You know, when you're watching alien, and they bust the mask off of John hertz face. I swear when we hear that the first time, we think that is his skull that is breaking in half. It's such a sharp cracking sound. And it's the perfect moment. And it's so it just that sound is so horrifying. Stir of Echoes, every time that fingernail breaks in the flashback and the little sort of psychic blip scenes. We hear that fingernail break and whether or not our eyes are open or closed, we hear that fingernail break is still sounds that really really get us below the radar.

Michael David Wilson 1:04:14

Yeah, yeah. Well, I know that we're coming up to the time that we have to gather and we've got a number of Patreon questions. So I wanted to take a few of those. So the first one is from Max Booth. And he says, Is it true at 1.2 sequels were planned for Rant forming a trilogy? If so, is that still a project you're interested in pursuing? And what can you tell us about it?

Chuck Palahniuk 1:04:48

Yeah, there were two sequels planned. And the gruesome magic about publishing is that if the initial book does not sell enough, you will never get a contract. To write the sequels. And so, you know, it might be that I pick it up with a podcast, I'm working on scripted podcasts, it might be that I can, I can spin it into a scripted series. But you know, publishers are not going to pay unless they see the money for the original book reached a certain level. So sequels are just not bankable right now. Sorry.

Michael David Wilson 1:05:28

Right. Yeah. And I mean, a trilogy that you did have successfully wave was the damned and doomed trilogy. Was that something that came about because of the initial sales for the first book? Or was that a case of selling it all in one go?

Chuck Palahniuk 1:05:50

Let's see. me pushing it. I don't think Random House really wanted three books. And I kind of forced them to put doomed out. But there was another book, there was a third book called delivered, that they would not buy. So that was another case where the trilogy didn't come into the world, because there were not enough sales of the first few books. So I'll leave it at that. But again, you know, if the first two books don't sell, they will not buy the third book. Yeah, there's just, you know, there's realities, and you're just not stopped by them. Yeah, you always work on another project. You move forward. You gotta be a grown up about it.

Michael David Wilson 1:06:37

Yeah. And I mean, no. So you don't know, when a book might take off. I mean, we have seen instances of years, even decades later, for whatever reason, maybe a book is picked up and there's a film adapted, and then suddenly, that book gets a second life. Well, at that point, you know, sequels and pretend to your trilogy as a back on the table.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:07:03

You know, Philip K. Dick really owned the 80s. Almost every big, big movie coming out in the 80s, about science fiction or fantasy was a Philip K. Dick book. So, you know, it'd be nice if it happened in my lifetime, but that's not necessary.

Michael David Wilson 1:07:18

Right. Right. Well, Zach Dozier says, You've always been incredibly generous with your time with both your readers and with writers just starting their careers. What can we do to pay it forward?

Chuck Palahniuk 1:07:37

Well, you can pay it forward by just reading more books. And this is another thing I'd kind of ask. This is a big ask. But there is a lot of piracy out there. Recently, I kind of, I was asked to do a bunch of writing for a subscription service. And I saw that they had a huge amount of my work that had been uploaded as PDFs by subscribers. And these were all basically pirated things. And they included a lot of short stories that must have somehow been snuck out of my publisher, because they were not edited. They were the first drafts of stories that never should have seen the light of day. But some somehow people had PDFs of them. And so you know, when work is pirated, it's not just the author who's losing work. It's the editors, is the publicists. It's all the people the author really enjoys working with. And it's the bookstores. And so eventually, they're, you know, if there isn't a monetary incentive, all of those things are going to go away. So if you love to read, or if you want to be a writer, you can't be supporting piracy. piracy. That's a big ask. I totally understand. That's a lot of money for a book. But even if you buy it as a used book, that's better than piracy.

Michael David Wilson 1:09:16

Yeah. Well, Chad Lutzke says, you seem to find an artistic beauty in even the most disturbing stories such as, share or strange the molesting grandfather and the baby bird. Is there anything you've read that was disturbing enough to where you felt it had no redeemable quality? And if so, what draws the line for you?

Chuck Palahniuk 1:09:45

A story that I really loved going into was a kind of landmark story that had been part of a collection written by the writer David Foster Wallace. David killed himself 11 years ago this summer, almost to the date. And until then David really was the golden boy, he had written a huge novel called Infinite Jest. But one of his first books was a collection a collection of short stories, called the girl with curious hair. And in the title story, there's a kind of group of punks. And toward the end of the story, they take a puppy to a very small puppy, and they take it into a basement, and they dump it with lighter fluid, and they set it on fire. And they laugh as it runs around screaming and dies. And it took me a long time to get over that story. And I never really went back to David Foster Wallace, his work with much enthusiasm after that story. And my editor always said, You will never write a story like this. You will never write a story where especially a puppy is tortured to death while people laugh. And I said, No, I will never write that story.

Michael David Wilson 1:11:19

And then there's anything we need to add to that.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:11:24

Really shut things down.

Michael David Wilson 1:11:26

I think I think we can move on to the next question. We don't need to go into any further detail. Take

Chuck Palahniuk 1:11:32

a turd. Don't just drop a turd in the podcast. I think I did.

Michael David Wilson 1:11:37

Well we've done it up past the hour mark, I feel if you're in for past the hour, you're in for anything, even if it involves torturing and laughing at puppies, but we're going to swiftly move on to a question from Timothy Fox. And he says, your fiction seems at times to suggest that humanity is responsible for its own problems. And the root of these problems is a willful refusal to learn. How far off is this observation?

Chuck Palahniuk 1:12:12

Wow, you know, I'm not sure if it's a willful refusal to learn. I'm not sure. I'm going to be public school educator right now. And I thought it was I can't remember if it's Aristotelian or Socratic, where you present a story in which the protagonist doesn't learn. The protagonist makes constant mistakes. Scarlett O'Hara never realizes she never gets smart. The first line and Gone With the Wind is her saying, there's not going to be any war. And from that moment, you are so on board because you feel smarter than Scarlett. And right to the end of the book. She never hooks up with red, she never really falls in love with the one guy she should fall in love with. And so, you learn you get smart, you learn the lesson. But Scarlett never does. So in this whether it's Aristotelian or Socratic form. The idea is to show a character that does not achieve enlightenment. But by doing so, sort of coach the reader coach the audience to the enlightenment.

Michael David Wilson 1:13:29

That makes a lot of sense. And I mean, I think it's something that we see in the best fiction and the best storytelling. And I think it's something that writers would be wise to ponder when writing their own fiction.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:13:46

And it's also really important sort of intrinsic in horror, because horror, you don't necessarily want a happy ending. But you do want a kind of cautionary tale and yeah, Rosemary does not abort that baby. She ultimately has the devil's baby. And then she goes on to care for it. In the Sentinel, the beautiful model goes on to be the Sentinel. That horror always has a kind of downer ending, but it leaves the audience enlightened.

Michael David Wilson 1:14:19

Yeah. And you want something that the audience is going to ponder and to reflect upon after you need that to be an effective and an enduring story.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:14:33

Right, you need Amy Irving to be screaming, with Sissy Spacek bloody hand around her wrist, right. You need the family in poltergeists to drive away as their house crumbles into the into the ground. You you really need that dark ending? Because Happy Endings just don't work in horror.

Michael David Wilson 1:14:55

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there's a thing misquote that every story is a tragedy if you go far enough. Yeah. Well, Lucas Milliron says, your style and voice is so unique and genre bending, has that helped or hindered your early success? So is it difficult pitching when publishers prefer more traditional easy to market genre fiction? I guess we have touched on that quite a bit.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:15:30

You know, I was told early on that you should write a book that can be defined by the success of previous books. So when I was running Fight Club, I was told that the market the market is looking for a Chicano Joy Luck Club, because Joy Luck Club was a huge, huge success. And they were just looking for a different ethnicity for the Joy Luck Club. So the market will always be looking for something that can be spun as a known success. I cannot tell you how many books have been presented to me as the female version of Fight Club, and they've all kind of disappeared, more or less, they never really achieved a readership or built an audience. But so many people are trying to break the equation of creating a female Fight Club. That that's another example of trying to create a future success based on an existing model, which I you know, kind of works, but it doesn't really create a classic classics kind of gotta be be its own thing.

Michael David Wilson 1:16:38

Yeah. I think the problem, particularly if you write for market, or you write because you're trying to piggyback off the success of another book or another film, the problem is, it's an ever changing book and movie environment. So if you try to write what's on trend, or as worked, or what is lit up the zeitgeist in that moment, well, by the time you finished it, it might be out of favor.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:17:10

And you're gonna be one of 10,000 people trying to ride that same wave.

Michael David Wilson 1:17:14

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, for me, that doesn't really work, I think. So authenticity and originality, that is a safer recipe. I mean, I guess there's no guarantee of commercial success. But is there ever guarantee of that? And is that even what you want to strive for, you know, write a good story, have that as a starting point.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:17:40

Exactly. And also express something that you see resonates really strongly when you discuss it with other people, like children, children of the porn, you will be talking about children of the porn that will define that experience for the rest of your life, because it's clever. And it's universal. Yeah. And so that's what you're looking for is something with a huge resonance that's not already been introduced or recognized in the culture.

Michael David Wilson 1:18:13

Yeah, I'm trying to think how you can put that out because it needs to be out in the world. But as we've said, it's just it's gonna ban itself. I wonder if it would work as some sort of podcast series if you had it as an audio play? But I don't really even that even then you're probably gonna have to, to blank out the oh, I don't know if you if you can just write children important. In fact, in anything, I'm not sure it's possible.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:18:47

Oh, but if nothing else, next week, next time you go to a party, introduce the topic of the big box of porn in the woods, and almost everyone will have a story of finding a bag, a box, a duffel bag, a suitcase. It's all these different manifestations of the same thing. Yeah. And it really changed them because they found it at a point in their childhood when they were not ready

Michael David Wilson 1:19:12

for it. Yeah, yeah.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:19:15

a friend of mine, Chelsea Cain, who writes thrillers, when she was eight, she found a huge box of porn in Key West. And she was so excited. She just thought it was free magazines. So she roped it to the back of her bike, and she biked home several miles with this very heavy box, presented it with such pride and enthusiasm to her family. She said, Look, I found this free, beautiful magazine. And it was all hardcore. really raunchy porn. And her parents went crazy. And they totally shamed her. And they said you are going to take this back to where you found it. This filthy, filthy material, and you can leave it where you feel out it And shame on you. And you do that right now. So she had to bike this heavy thing that suddenly a huge Albatross, she had to take it all the way back and leave it. And she's never really recovered from that either.

Michael David Wilson 1:20:16

Yeah. And I hate it with those stories when the parents approach is to shame the child, because at that point, as a parent, or as an adult, with a coyote presenting that to you, you have two paths that you can take, you can either, you know, look at a way to not really acknowledge it for what it is and to shy away from the adult nature of it, or you can go hard on that child, but I don't see I don't see the value of shaming an eight year old for, for an act that it's not bad, because they had no knowledge that it was bad. So it seems I've said,

Chuck Palahniuk 1:21:00

well, that kind of riffs on the fantastic story that a woman told me once and forgive me, I've told this story before. I had read guts. And she told me that when she was a small girl when she was seven years old, in second grade, she'd been a brownie, which is a precursor to Girl Scouts and, and she also had a stomachache, and her mother made her lay on a vibrating heating pad. This woman is about my age. So this would have been in the in the 1960s. And she said, as a seven year old, she woke up and this heating pad had slipped down between her legs. And she had the most fantastic feeling something she had never felt before. So she invited all the brownies over, she had them all right, this heating pad. And so she said it was like Sex in the City for seven year old girls. And they all just love this heating pad, until the day that her mother came home from work early and sent the little girls home. And then just beat this girl, this woman who was talking to me just beat her with a quart of this heating pad and said, You slug, you dirty whore. What kind of piece of shit Am I raising. And sometimes, you can't save that you can't go back and say it should not have been that way. But you can provide an opportunity for people to tell their story. Whether it's Chelsea or It's Cheryl Strayed to talk about what happened. So that they can really fully remember it. And they can exhaust their emotional attachment to it. That is the best gift you can give them is to recognize the thing, and to allow people to talk about the thing that no one talks about. Because that's the only way people are going to move beyond that thing that should not have happened.

Michael David Wilson 1:22:55

And that is the note that we're going to go out on because we're all out of time. Now you've got a go, you've got a class to teach. But I think it's a powerful point. And yes, thank you so much for spending all this time with me. This has been fun. There's so much that we've spoken about and there's so much more that I would like to get into at some point. So if you ever want to come back on This Is Horror, then the invitation is there.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:23:26

Yes, yes, please. Let's do it for the paperback if not sooner.

Michael David Wilson 1:23:30

Okay, let's do it. Thank you, again, have a great rest of the day.

Chuck Palahniuk 1:23:35

Okay, Tyler Jones. Criterium. Just one more plug. All right. Thank you.

Michael David Wilson 1:23:43

Wow, what an honor and a privilege to chat with Chuck Palahniuk. And I can't wait for him to come back on the show. There's so much more that I want to get into we barely spoke about lullaby. And I think there's a fascinating story both on and off the page there to be discussed. And we really did only scratched the surface on a number of topics. And I know that Bob Pastorella wants to chat with Chuck as well. It was incredibly unfortunate the timing of the hurricane and the power being out. But hey, next time, it will be both me and Bob were Jack and talking of next time we will be chatting with Daniel Kraus, who co authored the living dead with George A Romero. So if you're a fan of the night or the living dead franchise, and I would imagine most of you are that is a book and that is an episode that you're not going to want to miss and that is the next This Is Horror Podcast conversation. And right around the corner we've got a conversation with David calm is the founder of the no sleep podcast. And, again, absolutely fascinating. So if you're a fan of that audio drama, then stay tuned because I think it might be the most in depth interview that David has given. Now, I know that there are going to be new listeners as a result of this conversation with CAC. And I would encourage you all to check out the archives, we've got 365 episodes, I mean, the clue is in the title T H 365. But, Eva, go on your favorite podcast app and just search for various horror array ads that you're interested in hearing from or go to the website. This is horror.co.uk and just start typing them in on the search bar at the top at a website. conversations you might be particularly interested in, include our conversation with Joe R. Lansdale, the legendary crime writer and famous for the likes of the happened Leonard series and Bubba Hotep. We've also got conversations of Josh Malerman, the author of Birdbox. And if you haven't read the book, I'm sure that you've seen the film on Netflix. We also spoke to Antony Johnston most famous for the lights, a dead space and atomic blonde. And then if you're a True Blood fan, it was Charlene Harris. So if you want to delve a little bit deeper into the Sookie Stackhouse series, then you got to check that one out too. But perhaps for Chuck Palahniuk fans, it may be the conversations with Craig Davidson that most appealed to you. So we spoke about his work as Nick cutter we spoke about what to do when you have creative burnout spoke about how to write supernatural and human villains and that is just an all round fascinating conversation. Now if you enjoyed the show, and you're thinking, Oh, I'd like to support those guys. I'd like to get early bird access to every single episode I'd like to submit questions to future guests. Well, guess what my friend you are in luck, because you can become a patron on patreon.com forward slash This Is Horror. There are many different levels to support us out. So check them out and see which is a good fit for you and you will be a part of the horror family. Okay, before I wrap up, let us have a quick word from our sponsors.
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Michael David Wilson 1:28:54

As always, I would like to end with a quote an instance from Kelsey Kane. I've always been more interested in what happens after the bad thing has happened. The fallout of the bad thing when people are already damaged. I'm less interested in seeing people when they're fine and following their journey to becoming damaged. I'll see you in the next episode with Daniel Kraus when we can't and about all things George A Romero. But until then, take care yourselves be good to one another read horror. Keep on writing and have a great great day.