NPR’s Rick Kleffel did a long interview with Chuck “Fight Club” Palahniuk which he ended up getting cut down prior to airing, due to Pahlaniuk’s hilarious, R-rated side-remarks about his fans and their odd habits and confessions, as well as his fiction. The interview is up in an unexpurgated MP3 and definitely worth a listen.
I’ve already uploaded MP3 and RealAudio files of this interview, but please don’t listen if you are easily offended. I guarantee that you WILL BE offended. And if you aren’t offended, I guarantee that you’ll be amused. Moreover, this interview allows Chuck to get to the heart of something that really interests him, a theme that crops up in a number of his novels, including his latest, ‘Haunted’. Palahniuk is fascinated with the process of narration, both in literature and in culture, and the relationship between the two. You see, it’s his contention — and I would agree — that whoever the final narrator of our times, our culture, may prove to be, that person or entity wields a power that is central but hidden. It is the power to define our times and our culture, the power to define our lives. This interview will help listeners get to the camera behind the camera. It may make you angry, it may make you pass out, but this time around, Palahniuk tells the story. He’s the camera behind the camera.
(Thanks, Rick!)