Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk

(pb; 2004: non-fiction)


From the back cover:

"Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction.

"At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by the Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own Tarot cards and talks sweetly to his beautiful actress [then-]girlfriend. Across the country, men build their own full-size castles and rocketships that will send them into space. Palahniuk experiments with steroids, works on an assembly line by day and as a hospice volunteer by night, and experiences the brutal murder of his father by a white supremacist. . ."


Overall review:

Exceptional collection of essays - charming, risible, sexual, alarming, touching and otherwise mood-effective, about, as Palahniuk notes in his introduction, lonely people "looking for some way to connect with other people."

Stranger is as incisive, subversive and insightful as his novels, and any reader familiar with Palahniuk's body of fictional work will likely see direct links between his nonfiction and fiction.

This is a book worth owning - not only that, it's a book that bears re-reading*, at a later time, especially for writers looking to hone their characterization, research efforts and overall appreciation for ink-craft.

[*For those not familiar with my reading bents, I rarely re-read books (except if it's for site review purposes, and even then, it's not that often).]


Standout essays:

1.) "Testy Festy": Public sex acts highlight a controversial get-together, the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival, in an otherwise conservative state.


2.) "Where Meat Comes From": Amateur wrestling, and its life-changing scars and results, are explored. Interesting study in an "underappreciated" sport.


3.) "You Are Here": Amateur screenwriters meet Hollywood pros, hoping to effectively pitch their ideas.


4.) "Confessions in Stone": The lives of three dedicated castle builders are explored - their successes and their failures, as well as their strange-for-modern-times learning (and castle-necessary) learning curves. (Echoes of this essay's facts can be seen in Palahniuk's novel Diary.)


5.) "Frontiers": Palahniuk experiments with steroids, with mixed results.


6.) "The People Can": Life on a submarine, in all its subversive-for-that-group nuances, is detailed.


7.) "The Lady": Palahniuk hosts a debunk-spooky-ghosts-bulls**t party in a supposedly haunted house.


8.) "In Her Own Words": Charming hang-out session/interview with Juliette Lewis.


9.) "Not Chasing Amy": Palahniuk, then an unpublished novel writer, attends Tom Spanbauer's writing workshop, where Palahniuk's education in craftwork is kicked up a necessary notch. One of my favorite entries in this collection.


10.) "Reading Yourself": Palahniuk interviews Marilyn Manson.


11.) "Dear Mr. Levin,": An open letter to Ira Levin, author of Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives and other entertaining, subversive works. This is another favorite entry in this collection.


12.) "Almost California": Palahniuk, visiting Los Angeles on book/movie business, has a small-scale, memorably disastrous day.


13.) "The Lip Enhancer": Palahniuk's lip plumping experiment goes wrong with amusing-in-hindsight results.


14.) "Monkey Think, Monkey Do": Subversive novels, Søren Kierkegaard's theories and man's propensity for destruction, self- and otherwise, are linked in an effective manner. Antoher one of my favorite entries here.


15.) "Now I Remember. . .": Hilarious, incisive take on memory, chihuauas and writing.


16.) "Consolation Prizes": Palahniuk writes about post-Fight Club popularity and ruminates about the sad and disturbing facts surrounding his father's murder.


Other essays:

"Demolition"; "My Life as a Dog"; "Why Isn't He Budging?"; "Bodhisattva"; "Human Error"; "Escort"; "Brinksmanship"

Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore, by Albert Mudrian

(pb; 2004: non-fiction. Introduction by John Peel.)

From the back cover:

"In 1986, it was unimaginable that death metal and grindcore would ever impact popular culture. Yet this barbaric amalgam of hardcore punk and heavy metal would define the musical threshold of extremity for years to come. Initially circulated through an underground tape-trading network by scraggly, angry young boys, death metal and grindcore spread faster than a plague of undead zombies as bands arose from every corner of the globe. By 1992, the genres' first legitimate label, Earache Records, had sold well over a million death metal and grindcore albums in the United States alone.

"Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore examines the rise, fall and resurrection of death metal and grindcore through the eyes and ringing ears of the artists, producers, and label owners who propelled the movements. 'I thought of death metal and grindcore as a return to extreme punk,' says John Peel. 'This music was another step in the outlaw territory beyond any aggressive music heard before.'"


Review:

Entertaining and informatory delineation of these "extreme" music scenes, which appeared in the mid-Eighties, and have continued, on and off the mainstream radar, to influence today's high-profile bands (e.g., Slipknot, who incorporate these elements in their genre miscible songs).

Bands like Master, Napalm Death, Arch Enemy, Carcass, Godflesh, Morbid Angel, Nile, Cannibal Corpse, Bolt Thrower, Dark Tranquility and others are part of this storied past and present, one the that has not-so-quietly mutated its way into the mainstream.

Worthwhile read for those interested in underground/extreme music, heavy metal or evolving subculture dynamics.

Whip Smart, by Melissa Febos

(hb; 2010: non-fiction)

From the inside flap:

"Melissa Febos came to New York City as a college freshman to attend the New School. And while she'd always been a bit of a non-conformist, she hadn't planned to find herself - two years later - juggling her 4.0 GPA with a job as a professional dominatrix in a Midtown dungeon.

"Whip Smart is the story of Melissa's journey into a shocking double life. And she spares no one; keen observations about the motivations of her clients, her coworkers, and, most important, herself offer a rare look inside a fascinating subculture. . ."

Review:

This is a solid, interesting read that deals with BDSM (Bondage Sadomasochism)/sex work, as well as the mindset of an intelligent, briefly self-destructive young woman, whose self-destructive traits had little or nothing to do with her job or BDSM.

Those looking for a salacious recounting are likely to be disappointed by Febos' cool, analytic (but not too analytic) style. While she describes "sessions" (BDSM scenes she dommed), as well as her personal reactions to these sessions, her writing isn't lascivious. Her recollections, written in the first person, are akin, tone-wise, to that of an anthropologist studying an alien culture - factual, with a few personal asides, perhaps, but nothing more.

Good, element-balancing work that manages to inform and entertain with its unemotional veracities: worth checking out, this.

The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith, by Matthew Bowman

(hb; 2012: non-fiction)


From the inside flap:

"With Mormonism on the verge of an unprecedented cultural and political breakthrough, an eminent scholar of American evangelicalism explores the history and reflects on the future of this native-born American faith and its connection to the life of a nation.

"In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith's early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, a distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine. He recounts the church's origin and development, explains how Mormonism came to be one of the fastest-growing religions in the world by the turn of the twenty-first century, and ably sets the scene for a 2012 presidential election that has the potential to mark a major turning point in the way this 'all-American' faith is perceived by the wider American public - and internationally.

"Mormonism started as a radical movement, with a profoundly transformative vision of American society that was rooted in a form of Christian socialism. Over the ensuing centuries, Bowman demonstrates, that vision has evolved - and with it the esteem with which Mormons have been held in the eyes of their countrymen. Admired on one hand as hardworking paragons of family values, Mormons have been also been derided as oddballs and persecuted as polygamists, heretics, and zealots clad in 'magic underwear.' Even today, the place in Mormonism in public life continues to generate heated debate on both sides of the political divide. Polls show widespread unease at the prospect of a Mormon president. Yet the faith has never been more popular. Today there are about 14 million Mormons in the world, fewer than half of whom live inside the United States. It is a church with a powerful sense of its own identity and an uneasy sense of its relationship with the main line of American culture."


Review:

Informative, engaging and history-based read from a non-Mormon author that zips along nicely, without getting too thick with theology, but cutting to the root of the problems, raptures and mindsets of those of the Mormon faith. 

Prior to reading this, I was hostile to the Mormon church - I mean, seriously, knocking on strangers' doors to tell them their worldview is wrong (a.k.a., "sharing the good news"), how arrogant/invasive is that? - but now, I just consider them (aside from their Prop 8 proponent members) to be well-intentioned, tax-cheating (as a collective church) and must-make-babies-machine people* whom I strongly disagree with, in matters of politics and religion (which should always be kept separate).  As one meme reads: "Religion had its chance to run the world - it's called the Dark Ages."

[*Note that in this regard, I refer to the church as a whole, not its individual members.]

The Mormon People is worth owning, particularly if you're a non-Mormon who wants to (try to) understand the Mormon mindset and or why Mitt Romney is so willing to his flip-flop on key political issues - elements Bowman's non-judgmental, just-the-facts writing focuses on. 

Sex-Crime Panic, by Neil Miller

(pb; 2002: non-fiction)

From the back cover:

"In 1955, following the sexual assault and brutal murder of two children in Sioux City, Iowa, police, in an attempt to quell public hysteria, arrested 20 men who authorities never claimed had anything to do with the crimes. Labeled as sexual psychopaths under a state law that lumped homosexuals with child molesters and murderers, the men were sentenced to a mental hospital until deemed 'cured.' Neil Miller's carefully researched account shows how the paranoia of the McCarthy era destroyed the lives of gay men in the American heartland. A gripping story of murder and anti-gay hysteria, Sex-Crime Panic presents a dark and strange chapter in the history of postwar America."

Review:

This excellent non-fiction book focuses on a facet of "1950s paranoia" (which mirrors, in many ways, our current political and social climate) that often gets overlooked in the mainstream media.

Sex-Crime doesn't read like a stodgy historical recounting of a by-gone era; it reads like a reader-engaging, fast-moving overview of societal stresses and biases, as well as a necessary reminder of what mistakes we, as a nation, shouldn't revisit.

Timely work: worth owning, this.

Quentin Tarantino: The Man, The Myths and His Movies, by Wensley Clarkson

(hb; 2007: biography)

From the inside flap:

"Quentin Tarantino is the most exciting and fascinating film director of recent years. Since he exploded on the screen with the release of Resevoir Dogs, he is one of the few film movie makers to combine critical success and box office clout. With more than a hundred interviews with colleagues, close friends and family, author Wensley Clarkson explores the enigmatic cinematic legend in depth.

"Born in 1963, Tarantino was a film buff from an early age and determined to join the industry, he studied, wrote scripts and polished his already geeky vast knowledge of all things cinematic by working in a video store. True Romance's screenplay was sold early on, but it was the dazzling Resevoir Dogs that was to be his debut and a movie which stunned the world. The hits kept coming with Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill."

Review:

Solid, engaging, needs-to-be-updated biography - there's not a lot that's new here for Tarantino fans who have followed his press, but it's a good read, with occasional, interesting tidbits (e.g., Christopher Walken, not Michael Madsen, was Tarantino's first choice for Mr. Blonde, the ear-slicing cop-hater in Resevoir Dogs).

Worth checking out from the library, if you're looking for something light and entertaining to read.

Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, by Maitland McDonagh

(pb; 1991, 1994, 2010: non-fiction)

From the back cover:

"The horror films of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento have been described as a blend of Alfred Hitchcock and George Romero - psychologically rich, colorful, and at times garish, taking the best elements of the splatter and exploitation genres and laying them over a dark undercurrent of human emotions and psyches. Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds, which dissects such Argento cult films as Two Evil Eyes, The Bird with the Crystal Plummage, Suspiria, and Deep Red, includes a new introduction discussing Argento's most recent films, from The Stendahl Syndrome to Mother of Tears; an updated filmography; and an interview with Argento.

Review:

Excellent and interesting analytical study of Argento's oeuvre - his great, not so great and in-between works: a must-read for Argento fans.

Worth owning, this.

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Argento's influence found its way into this poem I wrote and published in 2010: Rotten tooth blues (Dario Argento mix).