By Daisy Fromkin
September 7th 2023 in Mesa, Arizona was unseasonably warm. People lined up outside Dobson High School in the early evening for the opportunity to interface with an author on the initial throes of a book tour. While waiting outside attendees were approached by a non-lethal, gang of kangaroos, handing out light sticks, beach balls, and other random items, not entirely unexpected as one might think. Because the book title is “Not Forever, but For Now” and the author being Chuck Palahniuk.
For those of you not familiar with the author’s name (how is life under that rock?), most of the public is definitely familiar with his well-known works the iconic 1996’s Fight Club, 2001’s Choke and its dive into sex addiction of a con man or the most disturbing 2005’s Haunted and its 23 short stories (“Guts” being based on three true life accounts). His book tours are known for being a little extra and unconventional.
So on with the show:
First impression: Palahniuk is smaller in stature, soft spoken and exudes kindness. Shifting gears in his communication stye/posture to maximize the comfort of those he’s addressing directly. It creates an easy environment encouraging confidence of your darkest, wildest experiences. This comforting familiarity pushing off guard if you lean into Hollywood tropes of writers being narcissistic story spinners that are often neglectful of those around them. Palahniuk is not what was expected, he was however exactly what I wanted him to be, disarmingly human. (He even mentioned I had a cute dog)
Where do the writing ideas come from? Palahniuk has massive capacity for absorbing the unspoken life details of friends and acquaintances around him and spinning them into tales that intermingle with his own life experiences. When asked where he gets inspiration and ideas and if he ever gets them from other people his response is perfect. “well, it’s not like they were using them.”
Often perceived as leaning into a nihilist approach of writing, Palahniuk would disagree, as he’s “actually a romantic”, that he takes these stories that have such depth of despair and horror, and in the end, there’s always something that works out. There’s something cathartic in the basic hope that the most painful parts of our lives, can turn into something beautiful at the end.
“People don’t want to listen to a forty year old crying into a microphone” you need to take that life experience, that pain, desperation and push it into something that can pull you in.
A 65 year old mother dying of cancer is in itself a hard life experience, on social media you get thoughts and prayers. But what if it was a teen-age girl, not an older woman? What if this dead teenage girl was narrating this story in hell? Now your morbid curiosity and your attention has been grabbed.
A slight teenager bullied in the locker room of a small town in eastern Washington in the late 70s, beaten bloody in an era of “boys will be boys” experiencing the surreal experience of walking back into class and having everyone pretend nothing was out of place. Having this reoccur again toward young adulthood while camping and having eyes slide away rather than question at work bruises and marks. What if it was a relatable man trying to regain control of his life. His consumerism and apathy manifested into reality by creating a space of men beating the crap out of each other, creating empowerment of the individual through the escalation of small change. Now that has impact.
The book launch. After some wild kangaroo antics, random book give aways, a lovey case of “spotted dick”, dog toys, giant inflatable roos and informative Q and A. Palahniuk shared a story from his time at Freightliner that really summed up the whole experience.
He talked about how he used to hide rat plush toys in dark corners where repairs would need to be performed. So the technician would reach back there, have his hand close over something furry and questionable in a dark space pull it out to find an adorable rat plushy. thus changing something horrific into something good. Thats an amazing way to look at life and its this lesson I will take from the interaction most to heart.
Get Palahniuk’s latest book Not Forever, But for Now, and enjoy a horror satire about a family of professional killers responsible for the most atrocious events in history and the young brothers, Otto and Cecil, that are destined to take over.
Available at most book sellers or online along with his other 14 published novels.
