Chuck Palahniuk & Lidia Yuknavitch

One of the most interesting writers of the last couple of decades is speaking at the Castro Theater this Thursday. He’s presenting with another author, Lidia Yuknovitch as she unveils what looks to be a fascinating new novel: The Small Backs of Children They will be interviewed by the always entertaining and often insightful Broke Ass Stuart. Chuck Palahniuk is, in my estimation the closest thing Gen X thru the Millennial generation has to a Kerouac. Palahniuk speaks to the post Baby Boom kids – the kids raised by single moms after the demise of the American nuclear family, much as Kerouac spoke to the generation of young men coming back from the Great War wondering “well now that we rule all, what next – what does life mean?”  In Fight Club, the young men were compelled to find out what it was to be a man without having the benefit of any live-at-home role models – “If you could fight anyone, who would you choose?’ “I’d fight Kirk.” That was a sentiment any young guy raised by his mom could appreciate.

Palahniuk recently published the 1st installment of the sequel to Fight Club in graphic novel format along with artist Cameron Stewart. I found a copy while touring the Portland Area a while back. It’s ten years after the action in the novel and the nameless narrator (played by Ed Norton in the movie) is now a suburban office commuter on lots of prescription happy pills and he’s married Marla Singer (!!!) AND the have a young son. Oh, the nameless guy has a name now. Sebastian…..

My Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society co-author Carrie Galbraith and had the pleasure to speak with Chuck at an earlier Commonwealth Inforum presentation. We had a blast talking about Cacophony’s influence on Project Mayhem in Fight Club among other topics. I won’t be able to make it this Thursday, but you should. Oh, and if you get a chance to talk to Chuck, ask him where he got the name for the nameless FC guy!

I’m looking forward to reading Yuknavitch now. An endorsement by CP is not to be taken too lightly.

“Your life doesn’t happen in any kind of order. Events don’t have cause and effect relationships he way you wish they did. It’s all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations. Language and water have this in common.”

― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water: A Memoir