What is this book about?

Haunted is Chuck Palahniuk’s 7th novel.
The book is made up of twenty-three stories. The stories are told by people who have answered an ad headlined “Artists’ Retreat: Abandon Your Life for Three Months” where they are led to believe that here they will leave behind all the distractions of “real life” that are keeping them from creating the masterpiece that is in them.

But “here” turns out to be a cavernous and ornate old theater where they are utterly isolated from the outside world—and where heat and power and food are in increasingly short supply. And the more desperate the circumstances become, the more desperate the stories they tell—and the more devious their machinations become to make themselves the hero of the inevitable play/movie/nonfiction blockbuster that will certainly be made from their plight.

Each story is followed by a chapter of the main narrative, and is told by a character in main narrative, and ties back into the main story in some way.

The characters live under harmless conditions at first. However, the group eventually decide that they could make a better story of their own suffering inside the theater, and thereby become rich after the public discovers their fate. They then begin to individually sabotage the food and utilities provided to them, each character trying to only destroy one food or utility to slightly increase the drama of their stay. However, as no single character is aware of the others’ plans, they end up destroying all their food and utilities, forcing all of them to struggle to survive starvation, cold, and darkness.

Why should you read this book?

This book was so good. As any fan of Chuck Palahniuk will tell you he doesn’t disappoint. The man just continues to get better and better. It’s remarkable.

Never have I ever dogearred, bookmarked, and highlighted so many passages, quotes and stories from any other book than I have with Haunted.

I think my first initial thoughts about the book, when it was given to me as a gift, I immediately judged it by it’s cover. I thought, another story about some haunted happening in some house. But knowing Palahniuk’s work, I had to rethink my whole outlook on the book.

So as I read it I began to realize the name Haunted is just a metaphor for what the writers felt they had to do to be able to sell their stories after they got out.

In the book they keep referring to a ghost they kept hearing and seeing but, I think that’s just kind of what their mind resorted to thinking. For, I think Palahniuk is trying to make the statement that in order to sell your story in order for people to listen, you always need an exaggeration on the truth. In order for people to be interested in what you write about or say you need to captivate their imagination with something they could never perceive, so that they will perceive and keep perceiving.

“When we die, these are the stories still on our lips. The stories we’ll only tell strangers, someplace private in the padded cell of midnight. These important stories, we rehearse them for years in our head but never tell. These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.”- Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

There isn’t a literal ghost in the theater with these characters. No. It’s just what they’re planning on telling the outside world when they get out. Which is funny, because, what does actually happen in the story, that we know, is that they were subjected to an increasingly short supply of heat, power, and food; which should be enough to captivate any audience, but, I think that’s the message that Palahniuk is trying to send is that it’s never enough, or at least people feel that it’s never enough. That no matter how much shock you think might be sufficient in order to tell an interesting story is that you always have to add something more to get someone’s attention.

“What matters is, people need a monster they can believe in. A true and horrible enemy. A demon to define themselves against. Otherwise, it’s just us versus us.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

The whole book revolves around telling stories. Telling their stories. The stories they came there to write, stories they’ve written before, or stories about what happened to them personally. What stories are and how stories are treated in our daily life. And what those stories mean.

“Telling a story is how we digest what happened to us. You digest and absorb your life by turning it into stories. Other events-the one’s you can’t digest–they poison you. Those are the worst parts of your life, those moments you can’t talk about, they rot you from the inside out. But the stories that you can digest, that you can tell-you can take control of those past moments. You can shape them, craft them. Master them. And use them to your own good. Those are stories you can use to make people laugh or cry or sick. Or scared. To make people feel the way you felt. To help exhaust that past moment for them and for you. Until that moment is dead. Consumed. Digested. Absorbed.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

I think the quote that kind of really summed up the entire book for me was this:

“It doesn’t hurt when you think how much money the scars are worth.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Guts”

I definitely could not post this entry without talking to you about this.

The book is best known for the short story “Guts”, which had been published previous to the book in the March 2004 issue of Playboy magazine as well as on Palahniuk’s website (Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing). It is a tale of violent accidents involving masturbation where the reader is told “to hold his breath” in the very first line.

While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel Diary, Palahniuk read “Guts” to his audiences. It was reported that over 35 people fainted while listening to the readings. On his tour to promote Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories in the summer of 2004, he read the story to audiences again, bringing the total amount of fainters up to 53, and later up to 60, while on tour to promote the softcover edition of Diary. The last fainting occurred on May 28, 2007, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where 5 people fainted, one of which occurred when a man was trying to leave the auditorium, which resulting in him falling and hitting his head on the door. Palahniuk is apparently not bothered by these incidents, which have not stopped fans from reading “Guts” or his other works.

In a September 2004 reading of “Guts” at Cooper Union in New York City, no listener admitted to fainting. When Palahniuk showed surprise, many members of the audience replied, “This is New York!” in a nod to the alleged inability to shock the city’s citizens.

“Guts” is said to have been, by Palahniuk, the reason for writing Haunted.

“Guts” begins with the narrator telling the reader to hold their breath for the duration of the story.

The narrator then describes three unnerving incidents involving adolescent boys masturbating. First, he describes a boy inserting a lubricated carrot into his rectum to stimulate his prostate while masturbating, and then hiding the carrot in a pile of laundry. His mother later takes the laundry away and presumably discovers the lubricated carrot, but never mentions it to him. Next, the narrator describes a young boy inserting a thin stick of candle wax into his urethra to stimulate it while masturbating. The wax slips back into the boy’s bladder, requiring surgery to remove it. Finally, the narrator describes an incident in which he sat on the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool while masturbating. The suction caused his rectum and lower intestines to prolapse and become tangled in the filter, forcing the narrator to gnaw through his own innards in order to free himself and avoid drowning. The narrator’s sister later becomes impregnated by semen deposited by the narrator in the pool, which results in her having an abortion.

In all three cases, although the parents of the boys involved knew about the incident, they never discussed it afterwards, causing all three to figuratively “hold their breath” while they waited for the reaction that never came.

Apparently, all three of these incidents are based on true stories, according to Palahniuk. The first two tales came from his friends’ experiences and the third he heard while shadowing sexual addiction support groups as research for Choke. In one of these groups, he met an extremely thin man. When Palahniuk asked him how he stayed so thin, he told him “I had a massive bowel resectioning.” When Palahniuk asked what he meant, he told him the story which was the basis for the third episode in “Guts.”

Here is an absolutely amazing excerpt from Palahniuk about “Guts.” Also, if you’re a writer or into reading a lot, this excerpt is most certainly something you should read.

“But the first time I read ‘Guts’, nobody fainted. My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monster or magic. The would be a book you wouldn’t want to keep next to your bed. A book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover. Because only books have that power. A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to product to risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person. But a book… A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume –
something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it’s difficult to call books a ‘mass medium’. No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades. But with that disregard comes the freedom that only books have. And if a storytelling is going to write novels instead of screenplays, that’s a freedom you need to exploit. Otherwise, write a movie. That’s where the big money’s at. Write for television. But, if you want the freedom to anywhere, talk about anything, then write books. That’s why I wrote ‘Guts’. Just a three-act short story based on true-life anecdotes. People write to say this story is the funniest they’ve ever heard. People write to say it’s the saddest they’ve ever heard. And ‘Guts’ is by no means the darkest or funniest or most upsetting story from the novel Haunted. Some, I didn’t dare read in public. These are the places that only books can go. This is the advantage that books still have. This is why I write. Thank you for reading my work.” – Haunted

Amazing quotes from the book

“”It’s not a matter of right or wrong,” Mr Whittier says, “Every action you take-what you do or say or how you choose to appear-is automatically right the moment you act. Even if you were to tell yourself, ‘Today, I’m going to drink coffee the wrong way…from a dirty boot.’ Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot.” Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Who is the bigger fool? The reporter who refuses to invent a meaning for life? Or the reader who wants it? And stands ready to accept this meaning presented in the words of a stranger.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Our purest joy comes when people we envy get hurt.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“”The same mistakes we made as cavemen, we still make.” So maybe we’re supposed to fight and hate and torture each other…”Maybe suffering and misery is the point of life.” Consider that the earth is processing plant, a factory. Picture a tumbler used to polish rocks. A rolling drum filled with water and sand. Consider that your soul is dropped in as ugly rock, some raw material or a natural resource, crude oil, mineral ore. And all conflict and pain is just the abrasive that rubs us, polishes our souls, refines us. Teaches and finishes us over a lifetime after lifetime. Then consider that you’ve chosen to jump in, again and again and again. Knowing that this suffering is your entire reason for coming to earth. “The only alternative is, we’re all just eternally stupid.” We fight wars. We fight wars for peace. We fight hunger. We love to fight. We fight and fight and fight, with our guns, or mouths, or money. And the planet is never one lick better than it was before us. “Maybe we’re living the exact way we’re mean’t to live.” Maybe our factory is processing our souls…just fine.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Nobody calls Michaelangelo the Vatican’s bitch, just because he begged Pope Julius for work. No one calls Mozart a corporate whore, because he worked for the Archbishop of Salzburg. After that, then wrote the Magic Flute, wrote Eine kleine Nachtmusik, paid by trickle-downcash from Giuseppe Bridi and his big-money silk industry. Nor do we call Leonardo Da Vinci a sellout, a tool, because he slopped paint for gold from Pope Leo X and Lorenzo de’ Medici. No, we look at the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa and never know who paid the bills to create them. What matters, is what the artist leaves behind, the artwork. Not how you pay the rent.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“All those women, all chanting and protesting against Hustler magazine, saying porno turns a woman into an object…Well, what do think a dildo is? Or donor sperm from some clinic? Some men may only want pictures of naked women. But some women only want a man’s dick. Or his sperm. Or his money. Both sexes have the same problem with intimacy.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Yes, terrible things happen, but sometimes those terrible things-they save you.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“In city with a limited police budget a high-profile serial killer is an effective means of behavior modification.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

On food critics:
“Of course this is just their opinion. But there it is, showcased next to real news-famines and serial killers and earthquakes-there it’s given the same sized type. Somebody’s gripe that their pasta wasn’t quite al dente. As if their opinion is an Act of God.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Americans are the world’s best at doing their work. And studying and competition. But we suck when it comes time to relax. There’s no profit. No trophy. Nothing at the olympic games goes to the most laid back athlete. No product endorsements for the world’s laziest anything. We’re great at winning and losing. And nose grindstoning, but not accepting. Not shoulder shrugging and tolerance. Instead, we have marijuana and television. Beer and valium. And health insurance. To refill. as needed.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted

“Our humanity isn’t measured by how we treat other people, our humanity is measured by how we treat animals. In a world where human rights are greater than at any time in history…in a world whre the overall standard of living is at a peak…in a culture where each person is held resposible for their life-here, animals are fast becoming the last real victims. The only slaves and prey. Animals, are how we define human. Without animals, there would be no humanity. In a world of just people, people will mean nothing…”- Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted