Diary by Chuck Palahnuik

I just finished the book Diary by Chuck Palahnuik. After reading Fight Club and seeing the movie, I had high expectations of Palahnuik. His writing was so intelligent and thought provoking. However, Diary did not deliver. It was weak and tried too hard to be intelligent and artsy. It was like a Chuck Palahnuik wannabe wrote it with hopes of sounding creative.

The story revolved around a woman, Misty, whose husband was in a coma after attempting suicide. She was writing a diary for him so that she could fill him in on what he missed while he was sleeping. She also visited him in the hospital and stuck him with pins, but that’s beside the point. Misty is an artist, although she has forgotten her talent. Everyone tries to force her back into her art and she doesn’t understand why until she is drawn into a huge conspiracy. I can’t really tell more without giving away the big secret (which is a letdown anyway) but the book flops around for about 130 pages before anything really starts to reveal itself.

Palahnuik spends too much time trying to show off his writing techniques and forgets to give us the story. Then it was like the light clicked in halfway through the book and he remembered he was actually writing something people would be reading. However, the plot falls out from under him at the “big dramatic ending.” I understand that Palahnuik doesn’t see any point to realism in his stories, but this one doesn’t even have any base in reality. It plays around with ideas and theories that don’t fit together, like a trippy journey through Palahnuik’s mind.

I can’t deny him creativity, but it’s more like a rough draft of ideas than a finished manuscript. If Palahnuik would have taken the time to refine this book, I think it could have been truly terrifying. He just didn’t pull it off. Maybe he thinks he doesn’t really have to try anymore after having so much success with his other novels, but someone needs to remind him that he has to edit and rewrite like everyone else. I hope his editor and publisher were fired after the public got a hold of this.

I give the book a C+ because it still had some educational pieces, such as some Carl Jung philosophy and the description of Stendhal Syndrome, which I had never heard of before. (It’s a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly “beautiful” or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world. [Description taken from Wikipedia.]) These ideas have so much potential I can’t completely fail him for the effort. The book was interesting enough, and I would recommend it for someone to read as a study on writing (what not to do) and philosophy. However, if you’re looking for a good story with a satisfying ending, don’t bother.

If you decide you want to give it a try, you can buy it on Amazon by clicking here.

Or, for a better read, click here to buy Fight Club.