Cult Palahniuk: hands and hares at the Brookline Booksmith |
If you happened to be in the vicinity of Coolidge Corner last night, you would’ve noticed an odd and oddly pervasive accessory amidst the baby carriages and evening joggers: fuzzy, pink-and-white bunny ears. Everyone seemed to have a pair: pierced kids riding fixed gears back to Brighton. High school kids eating ice cream at JP Licks. Boys who’d otherwise wear Sox caps. Girls in ruffled skirts and big necklaces. All of them with the rabbit ears. Creepy? Yes. Confusing? Totally. The Easter bunny having long since departed, one was left to follow the trail, like polyester breadcrumbs, back to the source. And even then it didn’t make much sense.The bunny ears, it turned out, were emanating from a seemingly endless stash housed in a coffin-sized cardboard box located at the Brookline Booksmith on Harvard Avenue. Next to the box, at a table topped with a plastic severed hand and a basket stocked with black licorice and Three Musketeers bars, sat Chuck Palahniuk, the infamous author of Fight Club, Diary, and most recently Haunted. He was there, ostensibly, to sign books. Mr. Palahniuk was being a sport - he posed for pictures (many of which made use of the severed hand), chitchatted with the kids, and smiled with an intensity that looked like it hurt, or would soon begin to.
Palahniuk’s fan base? Surprise: young and male. The age ranged from 16 to 24. Five people -- maybe -- looked as though they’d hit 30. There were ladies in line, too, for sure, but the Fight Club curse still clings: Chuck still draws young men, jocks and punks and hipsters, Tyler Durden wannabes.
So whaddya like about the Chuck Palahniuk, I asked a threesome of dudes towards that back of the line.
“Ballsy,” said Tyshawn Taylor, a 19 year-old student at the New England Institute of Art in an army cap on sideways.
“He’s dynamic,” said Brian Smith, also 19 and, like Taylor, studying film at NEIA.
“He makes characters you wouldn’t see in real life,” said Corey Dalpe, with shoulder length dark hair, nose ring, and sunglasses. “Everyone’s got something they’re precise upon. Survivor is all about cleaning. Diary is all about furniture -- or is that Lullaby?”
You guys know how to pronounce his name?
“Pah-LAH-nyuk,” said Dalpe, with confidence. The other two agreed.
Katie Fortunato, a 19 year-old who’s studying political science at the New School in New York, with bright green eyes, a pierced tongue and septum, found out about Palahniuk through LiveJournal.
“That’s so embarrassing,” she said.
“At least it wasn’t MySpace,” said Lady Malyszko, who studies creative writing at the New School and has a tiny diamond nose ring. Her favorite Palahniuk book is Invisible Monsters, which I admitted to never having heard of.
It was Palahniuk’s first book, Malyszko explained, and he couldn’t get it published. It was released only after the firestorm success of Fight Club, and Malyszko claims it’s by far his most fucked-up work. “Transsexuals blowing their own faces off, incest, STDs, cops having sex with minors.”
I asked the girls if they thought Palahniuk wasn’t more of a dude magnet, judging from all the guys in line.
“Well, I guess girly-girls would get grossed out,” Malyszko said. “But we pride ourselves on being kind of guys anyway.”
And how long are you guys willing to wait in line?
“As long as it takes,” said Fortunato. “It’s worthy of missing the first half hour of the Red Sox game.” They ended up being there for about three hours.
Outside the store, I stopped Dennis Dobbins, 18, with a mopsy flop of hair, Briana Rossi, 18, a business student at Mass College of Liberal Arts, and Jaime Wolcott, 17, a Rockland High School student just along for the ride. Did they chat with Chuck at all?
“I was at a loss for words” said Dobbins.
“I asked him how to pronounce his name,” said Rossi.
Great! How do you do it?
“PAUL-a-nook.”
“Like Paul in a nook,” Wolcott explained.
Rossi and Dobbins looked to see what he’d written in their books.
To Rossi, in a sweeping hand, “Happy Hauntings.” And to Dobbins, “To Dennis, my favorite bunny.” Both girls wore the ears. Are they in reference to something in one of his books? Not that they knew of.
“It’s just because he’s strange,” said Wolcott.
And what do you make of the crowd, I asked Mark Mitchell, a lean, tan 25 year-old. “It’s sort of like his books,” he said. “Edgy exterior, inside warm and fuzzy.”
Warm and fuzzy? Like the bunny ears?
“The books are jarring on the surface. Inside you find a piece of chocolate.”
