Craig's Response to Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk: Strange than Fiction

The author Chuck Palahnuik writes a true account of what happen to him in the short story Stranger than Fiction. Palahniuk writes about the event of being an escort for hospice patients and how it effects his life. Each death is marked by a quilt given to him by a mother or grandmother of a patient. These quilts represent a life lost, but also a memory imprinted on his mind.

As with many great authors, such as Hemingway, Kerouac, Hunke and Bukowski, they took their life experiences and developed them into novels, short stories and poems. This is the authority of people who acknowledge that they are the authors of their own experience (Moore, 2005). Palahniuk demonstrates in his story that real life exploits are valid material for stories that can seem more dramatic and interesting than fiction. The events of life can be well connected to readers, as they hit upon universal emotions and reactions. Readers are interested in living through the author’s characters and the more real those characters are the more of a connection a reader can have with the story.

The wold of the normal can be exciting to examine. The study of a life of a lawyer, accountant, teacher, mother or grocery store clerk can reveal the most intriguing things of the mundane. As normal as any of us, as much as priest, politicians, analysts and teachers of the world try to tell us that we're all normal, and it's just a small bunch of freaks who do weird shit. We are the weirdos, and people want to read about it.

Moore, Johnnie, June 29, 2005, Johnnie Moore’s Weblog, http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog/archives/001008.php