Full Body Guffawing

Page 98-100. If you haven't read the book or got there, just skip ahead and read those pages, shampoo-style, read, enjoy, repeat as needed. For the first time, in a remarkably long time, I actually found myself out-loud laughing at the list of banned literature types. Besides the humor, and slight irony of how many of the literature types match those of Flaubert's Parrot AND Madame Bovary, he actually has a valid point. He begins his list with a little diddy on stories where the characters get crooned in sticky situations: life is tough, they eat bugs and twigs, there is a ring leader and a fire revelation. His final comments are "You see how easy it is to write, how much fun it is? That's why I'd ban the genre." Funnily enough, a majority of remarkable literature follow this plot pattern, including Lord of the Flies. For some odd reason we all see this as some masterpiece, when really, any of us could whip up a cannibalistic teen novel set on an island within seconds. Shake in some sarcasm and dry humor about the fat kid dying first, and oi la, you've got yourself a best seller. From there he does take some of his ideas towards ridiculous, funny zone. He touches on incest, and it's annoyance in literature, even in bad taste. He gives us a glimpse of animal-human sex lives, and then kinky sex positions, particularly ones in showers, that could possible break neck bones. These really have no real connections with literature, well at least that I've read, none that has made any impact, and as of this moment Chuck Pahlinuk has yet to write a great novel that's been oohed and ahead over such as Madame Bovary (keep in mind Fight Club was not jumped over until Brad Pitt was spotlighted slugging Edward Norton (((cause really who the hell likes him))) and also Fight Club is one of the cleanest novels of Pahlinuk in terms of dangerous sex scenes). Above all in these two pages, the voice is incredible. I really feel like Barnes and I are having an afternoon coffee rant, and finally after hours of blah-blah-blahing he's finally caught on to a decent idea, and I'm spewing out tears of laughter, trying to keep my chai in my mouth, and not on his shirt. Best part of the book. If you have time, go back and brush over this. Also, a few pages before this, he mentions something about a blister and a foot-fetish, and really the three sentences of the wife in the pharmacy are so brilliant, it makes you grotesquely fond of feet and bubbling blisters.