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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The conference may have escaped the fight clubbing that some feared, but there is a certain degree of geekishness that can't be ignored: An obsessive fan corrects Palahniuk on the finer points of which screenwriter added which lines to the Fincher film, and during his wrap-up Q&A on Saturday afternoon, the author deftly parries the question "Given the choice, would you rather be a robot or a vampire?" And, like all good cult phenomena, Palahniuk's writing inspires his readers to construct their own version of the story by imagining what happens to his characters off the page.
There is, however, a more immediate reason that Palahniuk's work resonates with the grad students and barflies who have made the migration to Edinboro.
"It's the way we all want to write," explains Dennis Widmyer of Chuck Palahniuk.net. "He has a style that's so simple and to the point, and yet no one writes in that way -- it's written from the gut. He writes about things that we're all thinking, but we don't say. His stuff has all been done before, but his books are kind of antiestablishment."
When I meet up again with Christian McKinney, he looks like he hasn't slept in days -- to him, at this point, everything seems like "a copy of a copy of a copy," as the narrator in "Fight Club" assesses insomnia. For the past week, McKinney has devoted his every moment to working out conference details. The project began over a year ago, when Kinch asked McKinney to come up with a name, someone he'd like to bring in as a guest speaker for the university honors program. When McKinney brought her the name Chuck Palahniuk, he thought she wouldn't have heard of him or his books.
"I got the biggest grin on my face," says Kinch. "I just wanted to say, well, maybe I'm not quite as out of touch as you think! When he said that he'd really like to have [Palahniuk] as a guest speaker, I said no, we're going to hold a conference."
Palahniuk took a bit of persuading.
"I had three books out at that point," says Palahniuk. "I was questioning whether or not I really had anything to offer. It just doesn't seem much of a body of work to hold a conference on. But Janet and Christian were so insistent -- how could I say no to that kind of request?
For a small college like Edinboro, celebrating an unconventional young writer with a cult following turned out to be an inspired choice. "Edinboro is not really known as a terribly academic center," says Kinch, "and for us to be able to do something that's cutting edge -- it gives us some notoriety. But more importantly, the fact that our students will get something out of this, it's not just a media event, it's not just a blip on the TV."
Speaking to the entire conference, the irreverent young author at the center of it all gets decidedly caught up in the enthusiasm.
"If I read a book, and it's incredibly well-written," Palahniuk says in his keynote address, "I read it quickly as much out of enjoyment as out of the fact that it makes me want to write. Creation that generates creation is the highest tribute. I would say that there is going to be work coming out of this room that vastly dwarfs my work, and that is the greatest tribute ... that could ever be given to me." After his speech, Palahniuk adds privately, "If I can be part of a catalyst to creating a generation that revolutionizes its culture, my God -- I can't think of anything I'd rather do! I seriously want my books to be forgotten [due to] the mass of extraordinary work that these people create."
