guts

I’m one of those angry white guys that thinks Fight Club is a fucking fantastic movie. Only, while being tremendously pale, I’m actually not particularly angry, and I don’t worship at the altar of author Chuck Palahniuk like a lot of fightclubfans. There is talk about an exceptionally grotesque short story, Guts, that Chuck reads at bookstore appearances, and that people have been known to pass out or vomit during the reading. It is suspected that these are marks — people planted by Palahniuk to add drama to the reading.

Today I read it on my Palm while riding the train to work. Well, most of it. For comparison, when reading Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, I found his ability to evoke empathy for a psychopath disconcerting. When I later read the otherwise mediocre Hannibal, the scene at the end with the “serve yourself” dinner party made my head spin; it was literally dizzying. Trying to read Guts on the train on the way in today, so help me, I nearly passed out. The world turns various shades of pink and red, and everything around me was outlined in glaring white. My ears began to ring, quietly at first, then sharply, to the point where it was all I could hear. I put away my Palm, and held onto the commuter hoops for standing passengers, and they were just about all that were keeping me up. Word to the wise: if there is a chance that doing something will make you pass out, don't do it on a crowded train with no stops for 15 minutes.

So you tell me, am I oversensitized? Is it all hype? Or is this as difficult reading as it gets?
Read Guts.