It’s funny how you learn through reading a book that tons of people have reviewed already that they clearly didn’t read the entire book. Although it’s never more apparent than on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, it was exceptionally present in just about every review of Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted. Nobody could seem to get the number of short stories right. Some said 21, some said 23 or 19. As well, just about all of them mentioned that there were the same amount of stories as there were characters. If any of these supposed “journalists” read the damn thing, they’d see that at the back of the book there’s a table of contents, and beside it is the list of characters corresponding to the stories. There is a total of 24 short stories embedded inside Haunted, a total of 21 poems, and 19 characters are there to present them. Tess Clark and Brandon Whittier, the appointed villains, get four and two stories respectively. And just in case you’re surprised that most reviewers basically skim a novel and then ham hand some ideas about how great or insignificant a story is, I can tell you that it is difficult to read four books a month, and I could definitely see how someone could get lazy. Most of these reviewers, however, must have not even ventured past the first story, the aptly titled Guts, because to go farther is to transfix yourself into the underground world of these characters and unable to leave the book alone.
First, the facts you can get the gist of from the back of the book; 18 would-be writers are placed in an underground cellar filled with rooms meant to inspire creativity to write their masterpiece in three months. The idea reflects that of the Villa Diodati, the place Percy and Mary Shelly, Lord Byron, and John Polidori all stayed for several months and came up with the ideas for Frankenstein and Dracula. The theory, Mr Whittier explains, is that if one isolates themselves from the world for a while, it is possible to create a masterpiece. The narrative in between each characters’ story follows the growing paranoia and psychosis that settles among the group, and becomes increasingly horrifying until it eclipses the horror presented in each short story.
Now, the meat of this book is the 24 short stories, told though Palahniuk’s sharp fronting-styled writing that can make just about any regular occurrence feel off-kilter. Through other reviews of this book you might be led to believe that each story is worse than the last, and this simply isn’t true. Guts, the famous short story available here, is probably the most vomit-inducing. The other stories are frightening in their own way, however, and each (this is a strong theme in the novel) taps into a carnal fear that grinds it’s nails against the chalkboard of our forgotten nightmares. Commonplace in all of Palahniuk’s books is a sense of the horrible becoming funny and even comforting, and several of the stories give a certain comfort amongst the various murders, molestations, and dirty secrets that everyone has. This brings out the main theme of the novel, that being the things that Haunt us are the things that keep us in line. For instance, one character brings up that while Jack the Ripper tore through women in 19th century England, there were no other crimes in the city. What most of the stories do, however, is make you trust people a hell of a lot less. This book has made me leery of foot masseuses, old men, loving mothers with missing children, painters, chefs, and infomercialists.
What separates Palahniuk from other emerging authors is his ability to make every sentence only one or two steps away from the various themes of his novel. You can literally choose any fragment of the novel and it will tie into the larger picture. As well, bridges between themes are all over the place, and although many are unexplained, it doesn’t take a genius to piece together a connection between the theme of the Werewolf (regular people becoming horrible monsters for short periods of time) and the three month period in which the characters—away from the real world—slowly tear each other to bits. Figuring these sort of things out in this book really does feel like an Easter egg, and I won’t spoil any more in the hopes that you feel the same way I felt when I found them.
The companion piece to Haunted isn’t scary in the least. At first I picked Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hanson’s Chicken Soup For The Soul because both books introduce a character called “The Bag Lady”, a homeless woman in absolutely no need of help. In fact, it could very well be the same character, as CSFTS doesn’t go any further into her character than to explain that she doesn’t really need people’s pity, while in Haunted she’s a rich man’s wife recreating in the newest trend amongst the elite (poor is the new rich). As I read further into CSFTS, however, I found it to be the exact opposite to Haunted, but in the way that they inhibit the same coin. Both books are based on the idea of preserving folk tales for the future generations to learn from. In CSFTS, these stories are the type printed on thousands of hallmark cards, the feel-good sort of things that make you see the world as a beacon of heaven in the eye of God. In Haunted, the stories give us an idea of our true selves, a dirty, secretive race of people that will kill everyone we know if it means furthering our own selfish needs. Still, the lessons learned in Haunted are similarly positive. Yes, horrible things happen, but they happen so that we know what the true definition of “good” is. Negativity is required in order to have true positivity.
Chicken Soup For The Soul dips into this theme as well, but it’s in a more direct, less read-in between-the-lines sort of way. Every story (most only a page or two long) shows people facing and overcoming adversity. It’s probably the most feel-good book ever put out, and is excellent reading for all the people who don’t like too think too hard about things like subtext, because there isn’t any. The whole idea in this book is that if we have the courage (of God, usually) behind us, we can overcome any obstacle we have. Other stories urge us to become more than what we have become, almost always pressing that children need to be taught they can be amazing creatures, and for one odd-in-hindsight story, tells us about how we should all aspire to be as great as OJ Simpson.
The major difference between the two books (that isn’t an opposite) is that CSFTS has no central story to tie everything together (unless you count your own life, as I’m sure they’d say if you were to present this as a question) and because of this has pretty well no direction. You can pick it up just as easily as you put it down, while Haunted has a built-in story to drive all the others, although this has the flaw of it, by the third act, becoming more interesting than the short stories themselves. As well, CSFTS has no underlying theme (unless you count being happy a theme) while Haunted really begins to come together as a singular unit around the time you begin reading about the Werewolves.
Both books make you look at the world differently. An optimistic person who reads for simple enjoyment would find Chicken Soup For The Soul a comforting collection of ideals worth aspiring to. A pessimistic guy would see it as religious pandering and white-wash (in more ways than one), ignoring stories of struggle and failure. On the other side of the coin, the easy going optimistic guy would toss Haunted in the trash the second he reads about the kid who stuck rolled wax into his penis in order to achieve a transcendent orgasm (page 15). The pessimist, however, would be delighted that someone else out there sees the world in such a way as to include stories of murderers, rapists, and worse. These books connect on the level of being collections of folk stories teaching us all the meaning of life, and what I love about this comparison is that one is filled with light and the other dark, but both come to basically the same conclusion; life is worth living (even when the idea of death is erased), things are worth fighting for (even if the memories contained are things better left unmentioned) and that we all work a little better with a guiding light (even if it happens to be a death threat).
