Invisible Monsters

INVISIBLE MONSTERS BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK

Chuck Palahniuk is known for penning the great novel Fight Club which was produced into an equally great movie by David Fincher starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. I have in fact read the novel (highly recommend) and rewatched the movie today for the first time in years. I have been meaning to read another one of this novels for a while now, and last time I was in Barnes and Noble, I picked up Invisible Monsters. What makes Palahniuk's writing interesting is that he's really great at taking the existential question that has become the core of the post-modern era and placed it in some really unique situations. Fight Club is a perfect example of this, and Invisible Monsters continues that trend. The basic premise of the story is that a beautiful model has the bottom half of her face blown off, and must now reorient her new, grotesque self in a world where “Beauty is good” is the mantra. Palahniuk wonderfully constructs the novel so that we view the narrator in many different periods of her life instead of following a linear story arc. Palahniuk has certainly read his Boom novel. These vignettes flesh out the characterization of the narrator much better than having these events described to us by an omniscient narrator. I think the overall style and composition of the novel speaks to both the quality of Palahniuk's writing and his creativity.

Okay, that's enough of me fawning over the novel. I liked the novel. I think Palahniuk is a really good writer, and his story concepts are really well constructed. Different then much of the other books being published and in a good way. That being said, I'm really getting tired of the existential dilemma that is the subject of pretty much all contemporary fiction. The subject consumes almost all of my McSweeney's reading (I know I promised a McSweeney's blog a while ago. I swear it's coming.) and most modern novels as well. I know it's the post-modern question. Who am I? What should I be doing with my life? Why do I find myself constantly unsatisfied? Blah, Blah, Blah. Let me solve it for you. You are a product of the choices you make. Just about everything is a choice. Whatever spot or dilemma you find yourself in is a result of choices that you made to get you there. If you had made different choices, you'd be someplace else. It's quite simple. You are the cause of your own happiness or dissatisfaction. Sure, there are outside influences that have helped to mold you into the type of person to continually make the same type of choices, but you still made them and not someone else. Therefore, you need to accept responsibility for them. Life is probably about 80% nurture and 20% nature. It's also probably 90% free will and 10% out of your control whether because of luck, divine intervention, or simply someone else's choice. Life is an incredibly complex web of interlaced choices that no person can reasonably comprehend beyond their own path. Once you've accepted this into your life, then you can make changes. How? Simply take the other choice. Sure, it can be difficult. Sure, maybe one choice carries more weight than another, making it more attractive, but you don't have to do anything. That's why it's called a choice. It means that there are multiple options. And it's not multiple guess. We are all rational, intelligent beings that can evaluate options and choose between them. So...Who am I? I am me, and I got here because the choices I made got me to this point. ed. I fully realize that this is an extremely simplistic explanation of my overall philosophy on life. I promise that I will write a post to fully explain this philosophy in much better detail. Can we move on now?

I don't mean to take anything away from Palahniuk's writing. He is writing within the parameters of the world around him, and Invisible Monsters reflects that. It's done well and interestingly. I'm just ready for the next literary movement to come along. This one has become far too full of pity and self-indulgence. Douglas Adams wrote it best when he said that the meaning of life is “42.” An answer as cryptic as a question that ultimately cannot be answered at any kind of general level. Instead its answer is unique to each person and is intrinsically related to their overall perception of the world around them.

Though somewhat disjointed from where my writing was taking me, my other criticism of the novel is that it reads too quickly. I read 297 pages in essentially 2 days. Now, I know I have a lot of free time on my hands with which to read, and I know all about flow (The feeling one gets when they become so involved in one action that everything seems to fade out of existence. This was a major point in my thesis, and I'm not going to go into much detail about it now. Ask me if you are at all interested.). However, some books simply read too quickly, just like some read too slowly. I expect this type of writing from beach side bestsellers and the sci-fi/fantasy books I love so much. Part of why you don't mind it so much is because you don't really miss anything if you quickly pass over a few words or a few sentences. These short sections have little relative value to the overall story. It's just the nature of that type of fiction. Likewise, some novels overly slow down your reading to the detriment of your overall impression of the novel. One of my biggest gripes with Realism is that it is so detail oriented that it ends up causing me to tune out some of the more interesting bits. Well-balanced novels have passages that force you to slow down your reading for fear of missing something important. If you've never read it, Lolita by Nabokov does this pretty well. Unfortunately, Invisible Monsters does not achieve this. While some books I rush to pick up again because I'm enjoying the story and want to know what happens next, with Invisible Monsters I simply kept reading because I wanted to finish something that had piqued my interest. I just wasn't overly invested or excited by the novel. Maybe it's a minor gripe in an overall well-written and interesting novel, but it was still something that struck me right away after I had finished it.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to my friends. Just don't expect to be reading amazingness.

Music listened to while writing this blog: Habla con ella soundtrack and Cold War Kids-Robbers and Cowards. The Habla con ella soundtrack is one of the better soundtracks that I've heard, in part because it's a beautiful instrumental album that doesn't need the context of the movie to work as an album.