Seeing Fight Club and Choke author Chuck Palahniuk in a live setting is somewhat akin to rolling together a black comedy film, a stand-up comedian, and a (comedic!) carnival game. What’s the catch, you ask? Possibly, a penguin.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Palahniuk is currently on a North American promotional tour for his latest novel, Pygmy. Last night, his sold-out “reading” — scare quotes because his shtick is really more of a performance — at the University of Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre featured bedtime stories with a modern spin (including his own where a small child unknowingly orders a prostitute), inflatable giveaways, and a few impromptu surprises.
The evening began with a reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” — a poem written in nonsense verse, thus an appropriate launch point, as the night’s main theme was the role of language in human understanding. Pygmy’s narrator is a 13-year-old exchange student who, aside from being a small-statured outcast, is also an undercover terrorist. The story is told in broken English, omitting crucial words like “I”, “and” and “the”, as well as all compound words; “toothpaste” becomes “paste of teeth,” and so on.
Instead of reading directly from his book, Palahniuk aurally reinvented three classic bedtime stories, in Pygmy dialect: Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears (wherein the bears devour the “golden American intruder.”)
Between stories, the author held one of his infamous blow-up contests: after 50-or-so autographed inflatable penguins were thrown into the audience, the lucky penguin-holders were told that the first one to fully inflate their bird would win a DVD of Choke, the 2008 film based on Palahniuk’s same-named novel. Given that the fully ballooned penguins stand about three feet tall, this was no easy task. Palahniuk continued to give away penguins as prizes throughout the night.
Just as he was about to begin one fairy-tale retelling, a loud cell-phone ring filled the room. It was his own. “Margaret Atwood,” Palahniuk said, gazing at the display. “And she’s ’sexting’ me!” Nonchalantly taking the (fake) call, Palahniuk held a two-minute (fake) conversation about where Atwood finds her beautiful words; the (fake) answer was a thesaurus. It was all somewhat like Bob Newhart via Dennis Miller. With a thesaurus.
A real interview came later in the evening, followed by a brief question-and-answer period with the audience. After reading the final bedtime story, Palahniuk left the stage to what can only be described as a long ovation of standing.
Chuck Palahniuk is reading tonight in Montreal at 7:00pm at Indigo Place Montreal Trust, 1500 McGill College Ave. He is also reading in Burnaby, B.C. on May 21 at Chapters Metrotown Eaton Centre, 4700 Kingsway.
Images courtesy of Random House.
