Parkaboy's Review **SPOILERS**

I Loved It. It Was Better Than Cats. I Will Read It Again and Again.

I Loved It. It Was Better Than Cats. I Will Read It Again and Again.

I Loved It. It Was Better Than Cats. I Will Read It Again and Again.

[img]http://home.comcast.net/~dlites/DonDoingHypnosis.jpg[/img]

Started reading last night and fell instantly in love with the set up, the setting, the potential. Read most of the day today and closed the book at page 189. Won't be reading the rest. Just now read Parkaboy's review. Yeah. What Parkie said. Maybe only half as disappointed because I'm only halfway through.

I think Chuck fell in love with a set up, a setting, a potential but once he got it moving he couldn't decide where to steer it. The most interesting and real character in the novel is the theater they are trapped in. I can see that so clearly and cannot even feel the characters as anything more than puppets to go exploring a truly haunting space. I don't care about the characters more or less after their stories, because I don't know any more or less about them. The shorts are of varying success, as one would expect in a book of 23 stories. But there is no there, there. Cannot even sense the implied ghost.

The novel does move with mezmerizing grace through the first third and you get a truly grand reversal--although it is a transparent reversal--and it is accompanied by a "poem" that is moving and authentic in wisdom: I typed it out and printed it and put it on my wall. A set of words worth seeing every day. But then it gets lost, worse you can feel Chuck get lost in the contraption he's fashioned for himself and you can almost feel him decide to run it into the ground to let the thing crash and burn. The novel just gets more frenzied with as much forward momentum as a hamster running in its wheel. (This is why you never ever get too good, too important, too famous, or too saleable to not need a rigorous editor. The day they stop editing you is the day you stop writing. You are only as good as your editor forces you to be.)

A novel told in short stories is a tremendously tough trick to pull off. And this thing is a mighty ambitious approach to the beast. I'm a quilting writer by nature (and I quilt as a hobby). The hardest kind of quilt to pull off is the so-called crazy quilt. It looks like it was made up as it went along, but the structural sense of balance of a geometrically based quilt has to balance the crazy. Chuck has got the crazy down pat, but the quilt sort of falls apart. It makes me sad to say that. I really, really wanted to love this. But that first third? Breathtaking.

*Edited for an addendum* I was just rereading that poem I printed out and reread the pages leading up to it. No spoilers--but in those pages Chuck offers the logic that kills the rest of the novel. Once you accept why you are here, the irony is the reason you are here no longer matters....

[QUOTE=ireLocus]that had nothing to do with you, snuffy... but point well taken. :)[/QUOTE]

everything has to do with me.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]I Loved It. It Was Better Than Cats. I Will Read It Again and Again.

I Loved It. It Was Better Than Cats. I Will Read It Again and Again.

I Loved It. It Was Better Than Cats. I Will Read It Again and Again.

[img]http://home.comcast.net/~dlites/DonDoingHypnosis.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]

You mean like the musical?

[QUOTE=snuffy]everything has to do with me.[/QUOTE]
You ain't no quantum singularity.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Yep.[/QUOTE]

I know this isnt really the place for this question, but I tried to IM you and it said you had too many messages -
ive been wanting to do some reading on the Situationists and such. Is there some, easy place to start, or should I just dive in and get Society of the Spectacle?

[QUOTE=sacredchao23]I know this isnt really the place for this question, but I tried to IM you and it said you had too many messages -
ive been wanting to do some reading on the Situationists and such. Is there some, easy place to start, or should I just dive in and get Society of the Spectacle?[/QUOTE]
I prefer Baudrillard actually, he was involved with them in a tertiary way as I recall. Check out his Simulations and Simulacra I believe it's called or vice versa. his stuff is very relevant and deconstructs the modern spectacle. otherwise, Guy Debord is probably the way to go, though I would think there is some sort of analysis text or what have you that covers the whole movement from a current perspective, but I'm not sure on that.

Baudrillard, to me, is talking about similar things but in a more philosophical context which I go for more readily. As I recall, The Society of the Spectacle, had too much of that 60's netality and jargon.

I just found this, looks good: [url]http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/1.htm[/url]

And, yeah, Baudrillard is right in there with their ideas.

Those "Introduction to..." books are actually a pretty good place to start to see if you're going to be into any of the ideas. I know there is one on Baudrillard and I think it mentions the Society of the Spectacle. Anyway, those texts, while superficial, at least will indicate if you want to delve further.

i just read this out loud with a fake french accent

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]You ain't no quantum singularity.[/QUOTE]

in my dreams i am.

[QUOTE=snuffy]in my dreams i am.[/QUOTE]
I dream I am the unified field theory...

alas.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]Started reading last night and fell instantly in love with the set up, the setting, the potential. Read most of the day today and closed the book at page 189. Won't be reading the rest. Just now read Parkaboy's review. Yeah. What Parkie said. Maybe only half as disappointed because I'm only halfway through.
.[/QUOTE]

To be fair Luddy - you didn't like Survivor when you were halfway through and almost chucked (!) in the towel on that one, but then went on to love it.

I'm not saying that it will magically win you round, but it doesn't seem fair to condemn it based on the same kinds of disappointments you had with the first half of a book you went on to dig.

Shame on you [IMG]http://forums.virtualfestivals.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/nono.gif[/IMG]

(though I'm quite sure you're right. But that's not the point dagnammit!)

i agree with the gimp on this one.

[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]To be fair Luddy - you didn't like Survivor when you were halfway through and almost chucked (!) in the towel on that one, but then went on to love it.

I'm not saying that it will magically win you round, but it doesn't seem fair to condemn it based on the same kinds of disappointments you had with the first half of a book you went on to dig.

Shame on you [IMG]http://forums.virtualfestivals.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/nono.gif[/IMG]

(though I'm quite sure you're right. But that's not the point dagnammit!)[/QUOTE]

Yeah. You and [B]Atomos[/B]: point taken. Then again, Survivor had a story arc, narrative momentum and is not an endurance test in an abbitoir for cannibals. Even when those in the abbitoir deserve their suffering. Besides with Survivor it was the beginning that did not grab me. I liked Tender though, he was interesting, he kept me going. I freaking love the opening 100 pages of Haunted. I have absolutely no interest in any of these characters. Frankly, they can all die horribly and I'll be happy to have them gone from the page.

Given that it is unfair to completely (almost) dismiss a book that I haven't read completely. I'll finish it. Not because I care but because it the only fair thing to do. I'll be back when I'm done with mea culpa's galore if Chuck pulls this thing out of its nose dive. Or underscores and ditto's and demands for return of six more hours of my life wasted--when I could have been out ending world hunger or finding the cure for cancer, both of which I was planning to do today. It's on your heads.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]-when I could have been out ending world hunger .[/QUOTE]

They'll just have to live on toenails for one day more.

That book aint reading itself...

Spoilers

I finished reading this book last week.
If all these stories happened to these characters, and they are their ghosts, why wasn't everybody at the retreat infected with Miss Sneezy's disease?
If she was super contagious, why wasn't everybody else developing symptoms?

When Miss America got cat scratch fever, and the migraines, was that possibly her being infected by Miss Sneezy's disease?
Cause everybody that Miss Sneezy killed got killer migraines before they died.

Maybe I missed something. I probably didn't read something correctly.
Does anybody have an answer?

i swear i read somewhere. awhile back, maybe around the time Guts was in Playboy that this book was going to come in at a "whopping" 450 + pages.
Its weird describing Chuck's longest book as too short, but thats exactly what it is. this could have easily been his best work so far. As such,to me, it only stands above lullabye and diary.
Such great fantasical names for these characters and nothing done with them. Earl/Duke, Matchmaker/Missing Link, Baroness/Countess they were are interchangeable in my mind.
But then again, those Canterbury cats weren't the most in depth characters either and that book seems to get held up as a classic all the time

I'm glad i bought it, glad i read it but i can only see picking it up again somewhere down the line to maybe read 3-4 of the stories again

Okay. Finished it. Although my instinct to quit while I was ahead was the right one. It took three days to force myself through the last half--and only because I said I would.

The next parts contain some spoiler type material. You've been warned.

Chuck kills his own novel the first time Whittier makes the speech about the world be a polishing plant for our souls. That the point of being here is to suffer and once you accept that, you will never suffer again. At that moment the reader understands that the point of being in the theater is to suffer and therefore nothing that occurs is anything other than what is supposed to happen. That puts a cleaver right through any ascending arc of suspense. When the rock grinding machine image comes back around in the speech at the end? Yeah, we know. You told us already. That's why I knew that Whittier wasn't really dead from the moment he was pronounced gone. Why would Chuck spare us the visual glories of that particular grotesquerie?

By the time I finished reading, I just kept thinking of the inevitable CD by a singer who has been famous for two or three years on which all the songs are about how much it sucks to be famous. I imagine it does suck to be famous. I can't imagine why anyone would court cannibalization by the media. The irony in being lectured on becoming famous through our love of our stories about pain coming from a guy on a massive media campaign to sell his book that are nothing but stories about pain? Chuck had to know this house was made of glass when he picked up that stone.

If the only way for us to find peace on earth is through giving up our stories--then, um, writer guy? What are you going to do with all the words? Stories are all we have. Stories are what we are.

I admit to being overly harsh because my expectations were set at a different angle. Not a higher level, just was looking for something more to be going on than lectures on our love of pain interspersed with the author inflicting more pain on the characters he's trapped in his torture chamber. There's lots of great writing here. Some of the stories are amazing. And the saga of Cassandra and the Nightmare Box is worth the price of admission. I wish that someone had pointed out Chuck the power of that narrative. I know he was going for Poe's Masque of the Red Death, but Cassandra and the Nightmare Box was not only the truly Poe-worthy story, but it was original. Imagine if the Nightmare Box had been in the theater, on the stage, ticking away....

I'm sad that I'm not more disappointed or even angered. It's just more a sense of well, all right, that's over. Except for this lingering sorrow for Cassandra. That line "It made me want to be a writer." Sigh. I wish the characters really had been writers. And the tornado sirens are now going off--so yeah. I'll shut up now and go to the basement.

I had assumed, perhaps erroneously, that the "Nightmare Box" was in fact the theater, that when it clicked, it allowed one to see inside the theter, into the grotesqueries going on there at any given time... perhaps the grotesqueries to come. However, the two enclosed spaces, one as watcher the other as participant, suggested a corollary beyond the thematic.

this book was left in its own rock tumbler for too long, completely polished off the edges it needed
although it does leave room for a movie/mini series to be an improvement on the book
come on HBO, you can do it !

[QUOTE=karbunkle]this book was left in its own rock tumbler for too long, completely polished off the edges it needed
although it does leave room for a movie/mini series to be an improvement on the book
come on HBO, you can do it ![/QUOTE]I don't think HBO would take this on as it is, they still pixelate parts of Real Sex, I don't know if they would be willing to show... well baby eating and stuff. Chuck did have some in the prelim stages at HBO once upon a time as I recall though.

You're thinking this could be a new type of [I]Tales From the Crypt?[/I]

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]I had assumed, perhaps erroneously, that the "Nightmare Box" was in fact the theater, that when it clicked, it allowed one to see inside the theter, into the grotesqueries going on there at any given time... perhaps the grotesqueries to come. However, the two enclosed spaces, one as watcher the other as participant, suggested a corollary beyond the thematic.[/QUOTE]

I think it is nested nightmare boxes, the ultimate one being the reader's mind. A lot writers will tell you that they feel like spies in the world, the watcher in the room, the one who recording all the details of being here without acutally being here--but that is a trick of perception. A lot of writers come out of lives that were nightmare boxes; if dysfunctional families serve no other purpose, they do teach the concept of "the scene."

I finished the book yesterday. Still can't shake this lingering sense of "what's the point?" and it is seeping beyond the edges of Chuck's novel--kind of looking at everything and saying "what's the point?" Maybe the novel itself is the Nightmare box.

That's an interesting take. That the theater and the characters are our Nightmare Box to look into while we're reading.
Maybe that was part of the point.
To leave us feeling what cassandra felt.
I don't know. I do agree that the Nightmare Box stuff was great.
It would have been a great temptation to have the Nightmare Box right in the theater. Tempting everybody to take a look. The thing is with that, everybody would've taken a look right away so they would all be the equal victim.
And as for the reality tv parody of the book, usually there's a hero that everybody roots for.
Who, if anybody, did you guys root for in the book?
The werewolf story was great. I've got a friend that's a werewolf nut, so he'll like that.
I enjoyed the Marylin Monroe fetus story.
And the first Brandon story. That story felt like an extension of the fake rape chapter in Choke.

But still, I don't think I quite understand parts of this book. The Miss Sneezy thing is really bothering me. If she was that infectious, wouldn't have all the other people in the theater caught her disease and died? There's a possiblity that Miss America's death was not from Cat Scratch Fever, but from catching Miss Sneezy's disease.
Her nurse on the island reminded me of Shannon's nurse in Invisible Monsters.

I don't know. I'm really going to enjoy the hell out of discussing this book with Chuck at Barnes and Nobel.com

[QUOTE=fortune_wookie]That's an interesting take. That the theater and the characters are our Nightmare Box to look into while we're reading.
Maybe that was part of the point.
To leave us feeling what cassandra felt.
I don't know. I do agree that the Nightmare Box stuff was great.
It would have been a great temptation to have the Nightmare Box right in the theater. Tempting everybody to take a look. The thing is with that, everybody would've taken a look right away so they would all be the equal victim.
And as for the reality tv parody of the book, usually there's a hero that everybody roots for.
Who, if anybody, did you guys root for in the book?
The werewolf story was great. I've got a friend that's a werewolf nut, so he'll like that.
I enjoyed the Marylin Monroe fetus story.
And the first Brandon story. That story felt like an extension of the fake rape chapter in Choke.

But still, I don't think I quite understand parts of this book. The Miss Sneezy thing is really bothering me. If she was that infectious, wouldn't have all the other people in the theater caught her disease and died? There's a possiblity that Miss America's death was not from Cat Scratch Fever, but from catching Miss Sneezy's disease.
Her nurse on the island reminded me of Shannon's nurse in Invisible Monsters.

I don't know. I'm really going to enjoy the hell out of discussing this book with Chuck at Barnes and Nobel.com[/QUOTE]

And we will be expecting a full report..

[QUOTE=fortune_wookie]That's an interesting take. That the theater and the characters are our Nightmare Box to look into while we're reading.
Maybe that was part of the point.
To leave us feeling what cassandra felt.
I don't know. I do agree that the Nightmare Box stuff was great.
It would have been a great temptation to have the Nightmare Box right in the theater. Tempting everybody to take a look. The thing is with that, everybody would've taken a look right away so they would all be the equal victim.
And as for the reality tv parody of the book, usually there's a hero that everybody roots for.
Who, if anybody, did you guys root for in the book?
The werewolf story was great. I've got a friend that's a werewolf nut, so he'll like that.
I enjoyed the Marylin Monroe fetus story.
And the first Brandon story. That story felt like an extension of the fake rape chapter in Choke.

But still, I don't think I quite understand parts of this book. The Miss Sneezy thing is really bothering me. If she was that infectious, wouldn't have all the other people in the theater caught her disease and died? There's a possiblity that Miss America's death was not from Cat Scratch Fever, but from catching Miss Sneezy's disease.
Her nurse on the island reminded me of Shannon's nurse in Invisible Monsters.

I don't know. I'm really going to enjoy the hell out of discussing this book with Chuck at Barnes and Nobel.com[/QUOTE]It's entirely possible they did die, none of them got out of the theater apart from Whittier and he was dying anyhow. Certainly the people in the theater were going to kill/eat each other or starve to death--maybe they all were infected as well. If that's the case then you have to ask yourself if Whittier is a carrier, and if his little story at the end sort of plays itself out by his reentering the city.

Seems to be a loose end.

Didn't a couple of the people kill themselves after seeing inside the Nightmare Box?

So, they might have seen Whittier's Venusian Paradise fanatsy then, right? That would explain why they were depressed afterwards and life seemed pointless? Yes/no?

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Didn't a couple of the people kill themselves after seeing inside the Nightmare Box?

So, they might have seen Whittier's Venusian Paradise fanatsy then, right? That would explain why they were depressed afterwards and life seemed pointless? Yes/no?[/QUOTE]

Oh. My. God. Parkie, I think you've nailed it. That makes absolute sense. What could make life worth giving up on than having seen a glimpse of what waits on the other side? That's why Whittier would want to save Ms. Sneezy....so she could infect as many people as possible, killing as many and making for more ghosts, for more chances that the 13 year-old and dying Brandon Whittier gets the one thing he wants--proof of an afterlife because he is just a kid who is scared of dying.

You've figured it out! I read your post and physically felt the whole novel slam into place. Wow. Suddenly I find myself feeling far less disappointed in the book.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]Oh. My. God. Parkie, I think you've nailed it. That makes absolute sense. What could make life worth giving up on than having seen a glimpse of what waits on the other side? That's why Whittier would want to save Ms. Sneezy....so she could infect as many people as possible, killing as many and making for more ghosts, for more chances that the 13 year-old and dying Brandon Whittier gets the one thing he wants--proof of an afterlife because he is just a kid who is scared of dying.

You've figured it out! I read your post and physically felt the whole novel slam into place. Wow. Suddenly I find myself feeling far less disappointed in the book.[/QUOTE]Well, I don't know about all that... It's still a pretty silly premise, Venusian Paradise?

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Well, I don't know about all that... It's still a pretty silly premise, Venusian Paradise?[/QUOTE]

Perhaps it wasn't the Venusian Paradise, but the box must give one a glimpse of the fact that there is no afterlife; that wanting to be a writer, wanting to have your story of you survive you is the only afterlife you are going to get. Isn't the really big question of life "what happens when we leave here?" We are a death obsessed culture. We have no problems exposing our kids to horrific violence and death, but dang if we dare show them the strange and wonderful way they came into being. In all of [I]Haunted[/I] there is no love, no sexual love, no kindness--except for the most cynical and self-serving of deceptions. Perhaps the Venusian Paradise pictures and mass, voluntary extinction are just the inevitable destiny of such a culture, one that believes values dying more than living. To want to be a writer is to want to stay alive somehow, if only as an echo.

Just wanted to chime in with Thomas Mallon's idea about writers, diary-keepers and their unspoken desires:

"I was, I was, I am...."

Hang on though. This randomness might just be the consequences of jumping on the cult a little cut before heading out....oh well it seems relevant to me...

Have a good one y'all...!

haunted didn't strike me as having anything to particularly "figure out". mr. whittier just seemed like a bitter kid who wanted people to suffer and die. an ironic depiction of "the man" who runs everything. i didn't see any grand notions of an afterlife in him. in fact, in his story, the same people who dominated life in the physical earth, the rich, the celebraties, they were the first people to go and populate the disembodied planet. how cynical is that?!

for me, the story was about a writer who's already gained immortality and realizes that he wants to spend more time enjoying the here and now than locking himself away writing. it seems in haunted that the price for fame is ALWAYS too high, that the goal is to live the life of your dreams "before it's too late."

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]Perhaps it wasn't the Venusian Paradise, but the box must give one a glimpse of the fact that there is no afterlife; that wanting to be a writer, wanting to have your story of you survive you is the only afterlife you are going to get. Isn't the really big question of life "what happens when we leave here?" We are a death obsessed culture. We have no problems exposing our kids to horrific violence and death, but dang if we dare show them the strange and wonderful way they came into being. In all of [I]Haunted[/I] there is no love, no sexual love, no kindness--except for the most cynical and self-serving of deceptions. Perhaps the Venusian Paradise pictures and mass, voluntary extinction are just the inevitable destiny of such a culture, one that believes values dying more than living. To want to be a writer is to want to stay alive somehow, if only as an echo.[/QUOTE]
I agree with that.

[QUOTE=jody]haunted didn't strike me as having anything to particularly "figure out". mr. whittier just seemed like a bitter kid who wanted people to suffer and die. an ironic depiction of "the man" who runs everything. i didn't see any grand notions of an afterlife in him. in fact, in his story, the same people who dominated life in the physical earth, the rich, the celebraties, they were the first people to go and populate the disembodied planet. how cynical is that?!

for me, the story was about a writer who's already gained immortality and realizes that he wants to spend more time enjoying the here and now than locking himself away writing. it seems in haunted that the price for fame is ALWAYS too high, that the goal is to live the life of your dreams "before it's too late."[/QUOTE]
What "dream life" are you talking about?

Whittier states that he wants to kill enough people so one will come back and tell him this life isn't it because his time is nearly up and his life has been shite.

So, you're inferring that Chuck is saying you should live now rather than pursue fame/afterlife/intangibles?

I think his thesis was clearer--this world is a rock tumbler that grinds you and if it can polishes you for the next. Pain redeems if you listen to its lessons, it condemns if you don't. The characters in the book take the latter approach and try an commercialize their pain rather than "telling their sotry" and moving on from it as Whittier suggests.

I don't think anyone is looking at living the life of their dreams.

"Before it's too late, live the life you dream about. Spaces very limited."

[QUOTE=jody]"Before it's too late, live the life you dream about. Spaces very limited."[/QUOTE]
Hmm... well, there certianly isn't anyone who does this in the book. Seems more to lure them there, yeah? Though I suppose you could take it as a philosophy, but like I say, no one in the book does it so the example would have to be a photo negative if you will.

jigger what?

the whole reason people are cutting their fingers off is to get famous, so they can live the life of their dreams not working, doing interviews, being in bad taste, etc. lady baglady's story is all about the tedium of the same rich-people parties all the time. the whole book is an argument for enjoying life as much as possible, about living for the now because fame is not worth the lengths people often go to get it, especially if they render you unable to really enjoy it.

it's almost a defense for a writer who doesn't want to spend as much time pouring his sole into a novel anymore now that he has the means to do the things he's always wanted to do.

[QUOTE=jody]jigger what?

the whole reason people are cutting their fingers off is to get famous, so they can live the life of their dreams not working, doing interviews, being in bad taste, etc. lady baglady's story is all about the tedium of the same rich-people parties all the time. the whole book is an argument for enjoying life as much as possible, about living for the now because fame is not worth the lengths people often go to get it, especially if they render you unable to really enjoy it.

it's almost a defense for a writer who doesn't want to spend as much time pouring his sole into a novel anymore now that he has the means to do the things he's always wanted to do.[/QUOTE]I don't think Chuck meant the book to be a tract against the boredom of fame so much as the crassness of it. Anyway, it's not his primary thesis in the book, it's the rock tumbler world and redemption through turning pain into stories. Certainly he's taking a dig at fame, but that's not then the reason to live for today--because you won't like fame anyway? That makes little sense-- anyway, I'll keep my opinions on the book to myself from now on as per request.

[QUOTE=jody]jigger what?

the whole reason people are cutting their fingers off is to get famous, so they can live the life of their dreams not working, doing interviews, being in bad taste, etc. lady baglady's story is all about the tedium of the same rich-people parties all the time. the whole book is an argument for enjoying life as much as possible, about living for the now because fame is not worth the lengths people often go to get it, especially if they render you unable to really enjoy it. [/Quote]

This may be a dig against the current trend in sensationalist memoirs. For that dig I'll happily add my own shovel. I have an old New Yorker cartoon: guy standing outside a publishing house wearing a sign board that reads: Please Involve Me in Your Scandal. All the stories in [I]Haunted[/I] are in fact memoir/confessionals of a sort. People who have by choice, hacked up their own lives figuratively before coming to this place where they, by choice, hack up their lives in a literal manner. Except for Ms. Sneezy--who, as I recall, is the only true victim of random ill-fortune, an illness, like Whittier, himself.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]I don't think Chuck meant the book to be a tract against the boredom of fame so much as the crassness of it. Anyway, it's not his primary thesis in the book, it's the rock tumbler world and redemption through turning pain into stories. Certainly he's taking a dig at fame, but that's not then the reason to live for today--because you won't like fame anyway? That makes little sense-- anyway, I'll keep my opinions on the book to myself from now on as per request.[/QUOTE]i only said that one story was about the boredom of fame. my take on the theme is that it's the price of fame being too great, or the pursuit of fame not worth the effort. i know chuck mentioned the rock tumbler dream on his last book tour and i know it's explicitly stated in [i]haunted[/i], but for me that's not the central theme. if anything, it seemed he was just throwing it out there but failing to attach it significantly to anything else in the novel. it's almost like an utterly unrealized ideal, a moment of light in a world that's growing ever more dark. that the writers live out their completely disgusting whims is only balanced by the fact that they die or are killed . . . and not by any sort of reform or vindication of humanity.

if you want to just leave it there and agree to disagree, that's fine.

cassandra is also the most interesting character to me. the fact that the book is about writer's is what leads me to my conclusions about chuck's message in the book being about a writer, being about the struggle to write. i can't shake this idea of chuck feeling like the story is not interesting enough yet so he has to chop off another part of his own experience and feed it through the grinder until the product is just right. because for me, writing has always begun as a way to exteriorize something in myself that needed examining . . . it eventually becomes a way to exorcize demons. but like a terminal cancer patient, maybe it can start eating up the good parts too, i don't know. but that is what i see at the heart of this book.

Once more into the breach:

I ran this theory by a fellow culti in a PM, but the more I thought about it the more it started to make sense as why [I]Haunted[/I] is so difficult to read. It's not the material. It is that Chuck shifts forms at the end of the first act and then shifts back at the beginning of the final act.

Act isn't the right word. The book starts out reading like a novel, we are anticipating a sense of interaction between the characters which will provide the narrative momentum and dramatic change. That doesn't happen. It's just poem-story-freakshow-poem-story-freakshow and then Cassandra shows up and leads us back into the novel form, in which one character's actions change the action of another character in a meaningful way. My mistake was anticipating that this was going to be a novel told in short stories as opposed to what Chuck has always said it was, a book of linked short stories. That's why the voice is the same in each story. These are Chuck's short stories. They were Chuck's short stories when they got on the bus at the beginning and since they all belong inside this book, none of them can survive beyond their telling within this book. None of these stories exist outside of this book.

Like one of those swinging suspension foot bridges over a terrifying abyss. The climb up the steps to the bridge is the beginning of the book, a novel's sense of unified ascending action, the stories are the bridge itself, planks tied together because that's how you build this sort of bridge, and then you reach the steps down on the other side which provide a novelsitic sense of resolution--that seemingly makes no sense because the middle was not a novel.

When I think about the book's structure with this bridge sort of architecture a lot of my complaints fall away and the whole of the book makes sense. These are just a bunch of scary stories written by a guy who apparently started wondering about why we write all these terrible terrible stories, why do we need terrible stuff to happen? This book is Chuck's "speaking bitterness." If this is the end of his "bloody trilogy," perhaps it is because he's written all the horror out of his system. [I]Haunted[/I] does afterall end on a note of inevitably sad hope.

The hopeful end seemed unearned by the characters in the book, at least to me. Some of the stories I really liked and the frame had the potential to make a good story on it's own. But I read an interview he just gave for Haunted and Chuck said that he had all these short stories and this novella and he decided to just "wrap the novella around the short stories" which is what it feels like. The two never really congeal and certainly don't form any synergistic union. There is a constant dissonance while reading it, as you point out, that I think is the result of his having forced a marriage between seperate endeavors rather than a consciously sought experience for the reader.

I still want to know if any has concluded who is supposed to be narrating Haunted, since it's always referring to "we" in the novella parts.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]
Several days are past since I finished reading. My memories of the book are growing fonder. Still cannot get Cassandra out of my head. That I had just come off reading Survivor may have has something to do with my initial blech "I don't get it" reaction to [I]Haunted[/I]. I'll probably give it another try in a month or so based on the coincidence of having received [URL=http://www.oxfordreference.com/pub/views/fact-of-the-day.html?date=2005-05-15]this from Fact of the Day[/URL] in today's mail.[/QUOTE]

Going with the Conrad idea I was wondering if there is supposed to be a 24th member of this latter day Donner party, who is narrating, who never reveals their story? Or, does one of the writers narrate but not name themselves? Or is it supposed to be Whittier narrating? That doesn't make sense to me. Someone besides him would to have had survived to tell the story, yeah?

I think its a collective "we," like all of the people are narrating at the same time. The we is the "camera behind the camera."

[QUOTE=sacredchao23]I think its a collective "we," like all of the people are narrating at the same time. The we is the "camera behind the camera."[/QUOTE]Chuck always has a narrator layed out in his head. I'd bet he has one here as well. Diary, written mostly in the third person, had a narrator. I doubt this is the exeption, unless he means for the group to have pieced this story together while they were there, then this would be their "great work." But, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Maybe it was the guy taking notes the whole time, what was his name? King of Slander? I forget. But I suppose it could be his "manuscript" left over. He didn't die, did he? At least not on the page I don't think.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]The hopeful end seemed unearned by the characters in the book, at least to me. Some of the stories I really liked and the frame had the potential to make a good story on it's own. But I read an interview he just gave for Haunted and Chuck said that he had all these short stories and this novella and he decided to just "wrap the novella around the short stories" which is what it feels like. The two never really congeal and certainly don't form any synergistic union. There is a constant dissonance while reading it, as you point out, that I think is the result of his having forced a marriage between seperate endeavors rather than a consciously sought experience for the reader.

I still want to know if any has concluded who is supposed to be narrating Haunted, since it's always referring to "we" in the novella parts.[/QUOTE]
they way i took it was each framing chapter was narrated by a different character, i havent put forth the effort into re-reading each and seeing who isnt named specifically to narrow each narrator down and with the same 'voice' being used all the way through makes it even harder to 'decipher'

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Chuck always has a narrator layed out in his head. I'd bet he has one here as well. Diary, written mostly in the third person, had a narrator. I doubt this is the exeption, unless he means for the group to have pieced this story together while they were there, then this would be their "great work." But, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Maybe it was the guy taking notes the whole time, what was his name? King of Slander? I forget. But I suppose it could be his "manuscript" left over. He didn't die, did he? At least not on the page I don't think.[/QUOTE]

If King of Slander was narrator, he'd never be referred to as "he." Since all of them are at one point or another referred to in the 3rd person, no single person can be the narrator. Thats why i think its a collective "we." There are no "I's" outside of the short stories.

[QUOTE=karbunkle]they way i took it was each framing chapter was narrated by a different character, i havent put forth the effort into re-reading each and seeing who isnt named specifically to narrow each narrator down and with the same 'voice' being used all the way through makes it even harder to 'decipher'[/QUOTE]I suppose that's an option, each interstice has a different narrator. But it'd ne unlike Chuck I think, to do it that way. Especially since the story started out as a novella, my guess is it had a single narrator at that point, which he kept.

Questions for the Barnes & Noble read along I guess.

[QUOTE=sacredchao23]If King of Slander was narrator, he'd never be referred to as "he." Since all of them are at one point or another referred to in the 3rd person, no single person can be the narrator. Thats why i think its a collective "we." There are no "I's" outside of the short stories.[/QUOTE]
Diary was written in the third person but had an "I". Misty was writing about herself in the third person, any one of the victims could have done the same thing.

only 4 more days! Yay!
though the one here is at a church, not B&N, but thats beside the point.

[QUOTE=Parkaboy]Diary was written in the third person but had an "I". Misty was writing about herself in the third person, any one of the victims could have done the same thing.[/QUOTE]

but surely the "she's" and "I's" weren't intermingled. I dont remember for sure, thats how little effect Diary had on me. Does anyone else think Period Revival would have been a more interesting read?