This Book Has Worms In It!: The Invention Of Sound By Chuck Palahniuk

To add my thoughts to any Palahniuk novel is a very challenging one. He writes the way a toddler’s speed of thought operates. I am in no way saying that he writes like a toddler, that’s preposterous. I wish I had the ability he has in intricately interweaving characters. It’s like being able to interchange your ability to see on different waves lengths, to see molecules forming in the air, in the invisible turning visible. Like light creating a rainbow after it rains.

This book mainly focused on things we hear rather than see, or what we choose to forget we see. Palahniuk gives everyone their part and they play it like they were actually born to play it. As any trained actor. Human being. Piece of shit. An art, hundreds of years in the making and perfecting is illustrated. For movies (especially horror) officiants will like this novelization of an underworld that is amazingly created for the sake of entertainment and presidential flash cards. To go further than this is, I feel would give some phrases away that would tell the whole story.

I will, though, end with my favorite excerpt from the book.

“..the primitives were right, the tribes who believed a photograph would steal someone’s soul. It would and it did. So did an audio recording. As did video. Our greatest creation is ourselves. The way we cultivate our appearance and behavior.

And nowhere is our artwork more apparent than in our minds. The way we each have an idea of self, the one perfect self we’ve chosen by rejecting all other options. The opportunity costs of identity we’ve rejected the slack-self, the fat-self, the gray-haired self or skinny-self, those constant other selves we see modeled by people around us. We are each our own best effort. And we’re satisfied until we see a photograph or hear a recording of our voice.

All the worse is the torture of video to witness the squawking-gawking monster we’ve created. The “you” that you’ve chosen from all possible you’s to create. The one life you’ve been given and you’re dedicated it to perfecting this stammering, yammering artificial Frankenstein’s Monster sticked together from the traits of other people. Anything original, anything innately you, it’s long been discarded.”

You can find Chuck Palahniuk and all his works online or where ever books are sold.
For Your Consideration