This is me, aping. This is me plagiarizing another man’s style. What you are reading is flattery by way of imitation. What you are holding is a complete rip-off.
I received a book called Choke. It was a present.
I read it and was in love. It was the prose I waited my whole life to read.
A writing teacher told me the best way to learn style was to read the masters. And then imitate them.
So this is me learning style.
But the thing is, this isn’t me at all. This is Chuck Palaniuk.
The thing about Chuck’s prose is it’s concise, minimal. It’s color. His prose, you could bounce a quarter off it, it’s that taut. His sentences are so short, sometimes they’re not even sentences. Not in the grammatical sense. But with these sentences he paints pictures so vivid you can smell the excrement, taste the fetid air in your mouth. Pictures so dynamic you’d swear you’re standing in that very sewer.
He creates characters so unsavory, you can tell he loves them and wants you to love them. He wants you to give them a hug. He introduces you to a pink-haired realtor, and then makes you so intimate you’ll have to wash your clothes to get her perfume out.
His every chapter reads like a short story, starting in the middle of things and ending with a point.
The way he reprises a theme, it sounds like music. It sounds like something I want to learn how to do. The way he reprises a theme, he brings it back again at the moment you’ve forgotten it.
And so this is me using another man’s voice to speak my own thoughts.
This is me copying Chuck Palaniuk the way I’ve been doing all quarter.
And, I think, I’m a better writer for it.
ps: check out www.chuckpalaniuk.net
pps: it's pronounced PAULA-nick
