Haunted

Silly names for real people. As if you cut open a rag doll and found inside:Real Intestines, real lungs, a beating heart, blood. A lot of hot sticky blood.

Exerpt from 'Haunted'



Some writers utilise various certain plot devices to facilitate the employment of myriad concurrent plots a single work when a simple narrative form would be inadequate or inappropriate. Chuck Palahniuk, of the 'Fight Club' fame, is the latest in a long line of authors.

In 'Haunted' (2005), he created a premise where writers who replied to an advertisement are led to believe that they will be given a creative environment in seclusion in a writers' retreat to assist in creating their masterpiece. Instead, these people are caged in a 'cavernous and ornate old theatre' and put in a situation where 'heat, power and, most importantly, food are in increasing short supply'. Given these cirumstances, these artists are forced to be creative. Thus, Palahnuik had created the opportunity to create twenty-three tales in within a novel!

Beside him sits Mrs. Clark, her breasts so big they almost rest in her lap.
Eyeing them, Comrade Snarky leans into the grat flannel sleeve of the Earl of Slander. She says, "Purely ornamental, I assume. And of no nutritive value..."

Exerpt from 'Haunted'



Italo Calvino had earlier in his own shrewd way, written a novel that incorporated ten plots. His novel began with 'If on a winter's night, a traveller..' And he proceeded to toy with the reader, diffusing the distinction between the reader and 'the reader'... It is difficult to describe how Calvino manipulated and led the reader throughout, weaving from a plot to another. There is a consistent theme in that manipulation.




Stanislaw Lem was responsible for two of the most imaginative works employing the device of book reviews of books that are nonexistent. In that he could create impossible novels and works that are not humanly possible to write or create. He could describe these works from a distance and yet, envisage the possibilities of what such a work would entail. 'A Perfect Vacuum' and 'One Human Minute' are formidable intellectual exercises and I expected no less from Lem.



As for Palahniuk's novel, I wonder how it would differ from a collection of short stories and if his adoption of various personas in writing 'Haunted' is effective. Is he able to speak in a different voice.

To Mr Whittier, we were lab animals, an experiment.

Exerpt from 'Haunted'

Note: What I write on the blogs are not reviews per se. They are simply short commentaries. If you want reviews, you should look elsewhere. Proper reviews from, say, the New York Times, are more incisive, informative and critical. I read the Calvino and Lem books in the late eighties and early nineties, it has been a long time.