how i didn't meet chuck palahniuk

yesterday i read in the local newspaper that chuck palahniuk would be visiting the brookline booksmith, one of my favorite local stores, to read from his new novel, haunted. here's what i thought about that:

SCORE!!!!!!

i do love me some palahniuk, and some brand-spanking-new, potentially autographed palahniuk sounded even better than the rest. so i made absolutely certain that i left work (where i am suddenly a senior editor, which is beautiful and bizarre, like the indigenous fauna of australia or the deep sea) exactly at five, knowing what should have been a twenty-minute drive would take me at least forty-five in evening traffic and wanting to be at the store by six, when the reading was scheduled to begin. i assumed that i'd have to stand around at the far edge of the room, if i could even get inside, so i was elated when i reached the store at 6:05 and saw a fairly minimal crowd. and then i was not thrilled anymore, because i realized that the minimal crowd was actually a single(ish)-file line winding up and down the aisles to the table chuck was already sitting at. here's what i thought about that:

hmmmm.

i asked the trendily nerdy boy at the counter if the reading was going to take place later on, since the sandwich board out front said chuck would be there from six to nine, and three hours seemed like an awfully long time to sit in a folding chair huffing sharpie fumes, especially for someone who doesn't need the press. but the boy said no, it was just a signing, until nine or they ran out of books, whichever came first. here's what i thought about that:

screw you guys, i'm going home.

but i didn't really leave, of course. not then. i got in line and did my best to tune out the cluster of giddy, chirpy nineteen-year-olds directly in front of me, whose idolatry of trite adjectives could be rivalled only by that of tom cruise and katie holmes, particularly when they're raving numbly about each other (GREAT! THAT'S GREAT! YOU'RE GREAT! THAT BOOK IS GREAT! SWEET PICKLES ARE GREAT!). i was standing directly across from chuck, and, as we happened to be about a foot in front of the endcaps of the main aisles, and people who become accustomed to waiting and moving in lines cling to walls and don't stray from aisles, there was no one between us. so i watched him.

i had seen and heard him on television and in interviews, but never in person. he always seemed extremely animated to me, almost hyperactive, with a lot of hand gestures and elongated vowels. he tends to explain himself with the wide-eyed vim of a little boy who is working triple-time to impress people by convincing them that he doesn't need to impress anyone. from his folding chair behind the low table, his voice was the same, the rhythms and intonation, the volume, all his standard "people are listening to me" patterns, and maybe that's the way he sounds all the time, alone in his kitchen or bathroom or car. who the hell knows. but his face was not the same. he looked like he had been awake for about three days, and every time he had started to nod off over those three days someone had lobbed a chilled water balloon at his face. he looked startled and aged and lost and unnervingly eager to please. he looked small. really, really small.

i thought about the exhausting dichotomy of being a professional writer. the work is, by necessity, utterly reclusive. you have no choice but to set up house in your head and turn up the volume of your own thoughts until they're all you hear all the time, sometimes for months and months, sometimes for years. and then you have to go out on a publicity tour and convince crowds of strangers that they really, really want to know what you were thinking about. so either you love the writing and dread the crowds, or you live for the crowds and loathe the writing, but either way, you are made a little bit sick by about half of your life. it could have been that he was feeling under the weather, or maybe all of the people in this particular line were as lovely to chat with as the ones adjacent to me, but chuck was looking like he was hating the half i was in. here's what i thought about that:

poor guy. he just wants us to listen to his story.

and then i did go home. but on the way i stopped at a book store closer to my apartment and picked up haunted. if you aren't familiar with the premise, it involves eighteen writers who respond to an ad for an artistic retreat, hoping to isolate themselves from all of the distractions that have been preventing them from completing the masterpieces that will undoubtedly win them international fame and lifelong security. so, things get a little weird, and there may or may not be a titch of cannibalism… well, here's what i think about that:

maybe chuck's decided he doesn't love either half.