Blogging and Fight Club?

I love Chuck Palahniuk. There's something about the way he writes and what he writes about that speaks to me, reveals the truth about things unexpectedly. Bret Easton Ellis does the same thing in a similar, yet distinctly different, way. Both authors are among my favorites and I own everything they've written. When I first read Fight Club, I thought it so brilliant that I started highlighting passages. I recently bought his newest book, Stranger Than Fiction*, which is book of short stories. The book's been out for a while and received a lot of praise, but I haven't had time for pleasure reading until now.

In the introduction, Palahniuk explains how he writes and researches for his books--- and other things...I love how the intro begins--enough to quote it. I really hope it's not illegal to do so... A big part of the intro is focused on the cycle of time spent alone and then with others that writers go through. I think what he writes is very true, and applicable to all sorts of people or all sorts of writing. As I read, and reread, I think about how what he is saying applies to my life and then-- to blogging. Read this: (emphasis is mine)

If you haven't already noticed, all my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people.
In a way, that is the opposite of the American Dream: to get so rich you can rise above the rabble, all those people on the freeway or, worse, the bus. No, the dream is a big house, off alone somewhere. A penthouse, like Howard Hughes. Or a mountaintop castle, like William Randolph Hearst. Some lovely isolated nest where you can invite only the rabble you like. An environment you can control, free from conflict and pain. Where you rule.
Whether it's a ranch in Montana or basement apartment with ten thousand DVDs and high-speed internet access, it never fails. We get there, and we're alone. And we're lonely.
After we're miserable enough--like the narrator in his Fight Club condo, or the narrator isolated by her own beautiful face in Invisible Monsters--we destroy our lovely nest and force ourselves back into the larger world. In so many ways, that's also how you write a novel. You plan and research. You spend time alone, building this lovely world where you control, control, control everything. You let the telephone ring. The emails pile up. You stay in your story world until you destroy it. Then you come back to be with other people.
If your story sells well enough, you get to go on book tour. Do interviews. Really be with people. A lot of people. People, until you're sick of people. Until you crave the idea of escaping, getting away to a . . .
To another lovely story world.
And so it goes. Alone. Together. Alone. Together.
Chances are, if you're reading this, you know this cycle. Reading a book is not a group activity. Not like going to a movie or a concert. This is the lonely end of the spectrum.
[. . . .]

My pet theory about Fight Club's success is that the story presented a structure for people to be together. People want to see new ways for connecting. Look at books like How to Make an American Quilt and The
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Joy Luck Club.
These are all books that present a structure--making a quilt or playing
mah-jongg-- that allows people to be together and share their stories. All these
books are short stories bound together by a shared activity. [. . .]
. . . In so many ways, these places--support groups, twelve-step recovery groups, demolition derbies-- they've come to serve the role that organized religion used to. We used to go to church to reveal the worst aspects of ourselves, our sins. To tell our stories. To be recognized. To be forgiven. And to be redeemed, accepted back into our community. This ritual was our way to stay connected to people, and to resolve our anxiety before it could take us so far from humanity that we would be lost.

In a way though too, is what he's talking about so different than what we do as bloggers?
When I started this blog, I was seeing a shrink. After a while, I quit going. I feel like I get a release from blogging that replaces my need to see a psychologist. While that may not be true for everyone (and while I may still need a shrink and not know it, lol) do we not get a release from this 'ritual' of blogging, of telling our stories. Are we not also trying to find a way to 'stay connected' and to 'resolve our anxiety before it could take us so far from humanity that we would be lost'? I know I do. Blogging is a way for me to connect with people while at the same time have that mountaintop castle, alone and in control.

Palahniuk goes on:

We live our lives according to stories. About being Irish or being black.
About working hard or shooting heroin. Being male or femail. And we spend our
lives looking for evidence-- facts and proof-- that support our story. As a
writer, you just recognize that part of human nature. Each time you create a
character, you look at the world as that character, looking for the details that
make that reality the one true reality.
Like a lawyer arguing a case in a courtroom, you become an advocate who wants the reader to accept the truth of your character's worldview. You want to give the reader a break from their own life. From their own life story.
This is how I create a character. I tend to give each character an education and skill set that limits how they see the world. A house cleaner sees the world as an endless series of stains to remove. A fashion model sees the world as a series of rivals for public attention. A failed medical student sees nothing but the moles and twitches that might be the early signs of terminal illness. . .

It seems to me that this is almost painfully true. We do live our lives according to stories, stories that we tell on our blogs. For Palahniuk, it's about creating a character....For bloggers, or some of them, that character is ourselves. This makes me wonder about my own world view, and how it's apparent in my blogging... What about yours? I do find that I get a break when reading others' blogs, and the authors of those blogs are like characters in a book. When reading other people's blogs, we get a glimpse of what it's like to live in another person's reality-- a peak at their world view.

Palahniuk ends his intro, and I this post, with this:

In this way, even the lonely act of writing becomes an excuse to be around
people. In turn, the people fuel the story telling.
Alone. Together. Fact. Fiction. It's a cycle.
Comedy. Tragedy. Light. Dark. They define each other.
It works, but only if you don't get stuck too long in any one place.

*copyright 2004 Chuck Palahniuk Stranger Than Fiction. Anchor Books