Saturday, January 24, 2015

I Met Chuck




 (Photo © Jim Clark from blog.ricecracker.net)

The past days, I was deep in reading short story collections from Filipino writers like Jessica Zafra’s Twisted Travels and the Writing Home collection, both published by Anvil. I commenced the year with this kind of reading pattern as I pledged for a more intimate allegiance with the brilliant Filipino writers (next in line, Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado). Haha!

PS: Just the brilliant ones. hihi :D

But tonight, I went on reading a Chuck Palahniuk tome for the first time after weeks of stoppage (to give way to short stories and poetry). And it was “Choke”. 

 (Photo from lavandierbook.com)

Surprisingly, Palahniuk’s style of writing is something I never had before. He has a way of narration of his own. He has his own words—that which may deem complex or not, but still create a different kind of fluidity. Not to mention his precepts; his one liners that can deliver you in muse, which will inch you that he is just right.

Full of detailed descriptions and picturesque ideas, Choke may fall to the out of the ordinary stories we used to digest; but the narration from the speaker’s point of view, still full of metaphors and convictions, can bring you in deep contemplation about surviving a weird tale and owning a new perspective. 

The book may baffle a mind but it can catch up right away with the ideals and philosophies of a different person in a same world we live in and in the process we will be convinced that it is indeed the reality.