Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
Admirers of "Fight Club" author Chuck Palahniuk convene to discuss art, life, masculine pain and why groin kicks are very, very popular.
Apr 20, 2001 | Entering the wood-paneled hall, it's tempting to check the surrounding faces for telltale signs: mushy black eyes, hospital-shaven heads, the acknowledging smirk on a bruised face. In advance of "Postcards From the Future," the first-ever Chuck Palahniuk conference, no one seems quite certain who will show up in the sleepy northwestern Pennsylvania town of Edinboro, nor what form their dedication to the cult-favorite author of "Fight Club" might take.
"It's kinda weird," says Amy Dalton, coauthor of the Chuck Palahniuk.net Web site, one of the conference's sponsors, "because I'm a little bit afraid of some of these people. I try to think that they're just like me, and they're interested in this writer. But there're people on this other [online] message board who are really 'fight clubbing' it -- not like the guys on our board saying 'Why isn't there a fight club in Omaha?' These people are really doing it!"
Christian McKinney, the 22-year-old Edinboro University senior who is the main organizer of the conference, was similarly anxious in the days leading up to the event. At some of Palahniuk's recent speaking engagements, McKinney explains, the author has been asked disconcerting questions: "People were asking him, basically, to tell them how they should live their lives. And when he refused to tell them, they started shouting at him."
Palahniuk's three novels, "Fight Club," "Invisible Monsters" and "Survivor" (the fourth, "Choke," comes out next month), all hinge on issues of postmodern sexual identity, consumerism and fame, and they've struck a chord with fans of contemporary literature as well as the young, suburban outcasts who popularized Palahniuk faves like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. With the cult success of David Fincher's 1999 film adaptation of "Fight Club" -- starring Brad Pitt, Ed Norton and Helena Bonham Carter as nihilistic characters who create an ominous underworld culture revolving around floating bare-knuckle fistfights -- the author's fame spiraled in both the ivory tower and on the streets. While teachers such as Edinboro University literature professor Janet Kinch were teaching Palahniuk in their courses, less scholarly fans were allegedly punching each other's lights out in real-life "fight clubs" across the country.
It's hard to know for sure, though, because, according to Palahniuk's novel, the first rule of fight club is: You don't talk about fight club. With the beginning of the Palahniuk conference on April 6, however, any anxiety about potential violence has faded. Edinboro's University Center multipurpose room is filled with well over 100 of the 165 Palahniuk enthusiasts who signed up for the event, and it's apparent that the "fight-clubbers" failed to make the journey. Most of the men in attendance, like the yuppie narrator at the beginning of "Fight Club," look like they haven't been in a fight since the schoolyard bully called their mother a bitch in the hall after science class. Apparently, such topics as "The Quest for Fulfillment: An Analysis of Recurring Themes and Character Motivation in the Works of Chuck Palahniuk" and "Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Postmodernism and 'Fight Club'" appealed more to the bookworms than the basement brawlers.
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