Country: USA
Genre: It sure eludes me. Wikipedia says Horror/Satire, so let's go with that.
Pages: 260
My interest in Chuck Palahniuk's novels has been inversely proportional to his productivity. Haunted (despite Guts, which was great) and Rant hammered the last two nails in this short lived passion in 2005 and 2007, but thanks to the blogosphere and Brenna, the brilliant mind behind Literary Musings, I have picked up another Palahniuk novel, like an old and disgruntled musician picks up his guitar again. Diary was the last novel published he published before writing the two that disinterested me from his work. And it starred a woman as the main protagonist. For some reason, Palahniuk shines whenever he's telling his story through a female perspective. Not only Invisible Monsters (his other novel I have read with a female lead) is second favorite Palahniuk novel after Fight Club, but it would also probably be a part of a limited bookshelf I'd bring on a desert island. It's that good. So is Diary living up to the earlier legacy of Palahniuk?
Yes it does.
It's a novel that addresses a dichotomy that inflicts pain, terror and anxiety to every artist I know. How to balance the longing for beauty, for aesthetic achievement and the dull thud of the everyday grind. It doesn't seem that complicated to someone who's not actually trying to do art, but it defines the life of Palahniuk's protagonist, Misty Wilmot. Since she met her husband Peter in art school, her relationship to what she does keeps sliding away from reality. Peter comes from the (almost) secluded community of Waytansea Island, home of legendary painter Maura Kincaid. He affirms that the painting doesn't need rules or a special type of knowledge. Only your inner self and a good dose of pain. For someone so hell bent on selling that idea, Peter is very well informed on the subject. In good Palahniuk character fashion, he is a living encyclopedia about art and especially painters. He wants to help Misty understand the reach of her gift and the use she can make of it, but all he does is to intimidate her.
Here's how Palahniuk makes it interesting. There's another duality that afflicts artistically minded (well...all dreamers really) people. Talking about it vs. making it a reality. Peter talks a big game, but life on Waytansea Island brings him somewhere else. The community is struggling to keep up with its luxuriant lifestyle and it means work. Peter is working at a renovation contractor and Misty is working in a hotel. The daily grind washes over them and numb their artistic inspiration. That is until Peter falls into a coma from a suicide attempt and Misty decides to start writing a diary during the process. That will reintroduce her to her own pain and to her inspiration at the same time. I know I seem awfully chatty about the plot right now, but I'm barely grazing the surface and exploring the mechanic Palahniuk uses to get his point across. I'm sure everybody who even tried to write a word of fiction came across the difficulty of transferring your idea from your mind to the page. And the feeling that you're mass producing crap.
Diary is the seventh Palahniuk novel I read and it's by far the most unique. It's the least violent and (it seemed to me) the most intimate. The creative struggle is something that hasn't been the subject of too many novels and Palahniuk's take is highly colorful, yet accurate. It sparks a tiny little flame of interest in him again. Diary is a great entry door to his fiction. It might not be as tormented as Fight Club (although it comes close) or as over-the-top as Invisible Monsters, but it's a good introduction. It's preparing one's mind for the joyous excesses that characterize Palahniuk's fiction. It might even help you to understand a little bit better what you're doing, whether you're doing art on an amateur or a professional level. And maybe it will help you to produce. Who knows? Give Diary a chance, whether you're an estranged Palahniuk fan like me, or you're just struggling with your art. It's a great story about somebody who wants to understand the nature of what she's doing.
