During our previous conversation with Chuck Palahniuk, which occurred shortly before the publication of his Sunset Boulevard-inspired book, Tell All, he spoke about how the ultimate name to drop was God’s. For this interview, we reconvene to discuss the domain of the G-man’s nemesis –– Hell ––... more
During our previous conversation with Chuck Palahniuk, which occurred shortly before the publication of his Sunset Boulevard-inspired book, Tell All, he spoke about how the ultimate name to drop was God’s. For this interview, we reconvene to discuss the domain of the G-man’s nemesis –– Hell –– which serves as the setting for Palahniuk’s wickedly inspired new novel, Damned.
According to Damned’s canon, evolution is hokum and Charles Darwin is resigned to hellfire and damnation alongside Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, and the entire Kennedy clan. Turns out you can end up there by committing all manner of trivial shit, such as dropping the f-bomb or honking your horn one too many times. Worshipping the wrong god will also land you in the hot spot, as will suffering the inconvenience of being a deposed one (thus the likes of Thor can also be found hanging out downstairs).
The topography of Palahniuk’s netherworld features a greasy Dandruff Desert, Great Plains of Discarded Razor Blades, a Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions, a Lake of Tepid Bile, and the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm (where in Hell, “porn is creating an effect equivalent to that of global warming on earth”). Those that find themselves there have two main career options: pornography or telemarketing.
The narrative of Damned follows Madison Spencer, the somewhat chubby, eternally optimistic13-year old progeny of a self-obsessed Hollywood star and a billionaire businessman. As a reflection of her mother’s glamour, Madison is an abject failure, however, the upside of her troubled childhood is that after a lifetime (albeit a short one) of electrolysis and herbal high colonics, Hell holds little terror for her.
Having been resigned to Hell after inhaling marijuana, and eschewing an eternity being "ogled by millions of men with serious intimacy problems," Madison finds gainful employment in telemarketing, an occupation that she finds unexpectedly fulfilling. Ensconced in one of Hell’s endless call centers, which has banks of phones that are programmed to auto-dial the earthbound specifically at dinnertime, Madison finds redemption. The question is, ultimately, will she want it?
Being in the business of asking people questions for a living, I felt a certain affinity with Madison. For the start of my conversation with Palahniuk, it therefore seemed only appropriate to borrow a little something from her telemarketing script…
Chuck Palahniuk: Hello.
Nicole Powers: Are you there, Chuck?
CP: Yes, I am.
NP: It's me, Nicole Powers, calling from Suicide Girls. Do you have time for a few questions?
CP: I do. How thrilling!
NP: You're not eating dinner I hope.
CP: I never eat anything.
NP: Damn! So there's not some tasty hot meal that's going to be coagulating as we talk?
CP: [laughs] I didn't get that reference. Ask me about Q-Tips. Ask me about paint samples.
NP: Paint samples?
CP: I was trying to think of anything mundane.
NP: Well, according to your book, statistically speaking, I must be in Hell, because Hell's apparently responsible for 85% of the internet's total smut content, and right now SG's probably contributing heartily to raising the level of the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm.
CP: [laughs]
NP: So the only logical conclusion that I can draw is that I have to be calling from some call center in Hell specifically created for the 100% of journalists that you say end up there.
CP: [laughs] Oh, I thought for sure you were going to say that you were a redhead. I had such a backlash from redheads about that.
NP: Well you know redheads are the new blondes.
CP: They are?
NP: Yes. When we did a survey [on hair color preference], redheads actually came out on top above blondes.
CP: Ah! Well, I know a lot of redheads that I can make happy now after making them really pissed off.
NP: How are you dealing with the ginger backlash?
CP: Boy, don't shoot the messenger, OK. It's not my fault. I'm just reporting here...I think redheads already know what they've got going. Too many cards already.
NP: This book is very tongue-in-cheek. In it you satire the arbitrary-ness of much of religious doctrine. A lot of what you're saying, I assume, is facetious. You get a sense of what you don't mean from the text, but you have to read in between the lines to try and figure out what you do believe. Would you agree with that?
CP: Entirely...Do you remember the Left Behind books that were for the Christians? They bought them by the millions because it made them right...They're these books that reinforce what people already believe, and I wanted to write a religious Left Behind series, but for secular liberals.
Yeah, it is. Madison has this line about how she'll tell you everything about herself except for the truth, and that's kind of the whole theme of the book -- that all the most true things are never going to be said out loud.
NP: As I was reading the book I was trying to figure out what your personal belief structure is. Is that something that you're willing to expand on or is that something that you'd like to leave up in the air?
CP: I'm going to leave it up in the air because I've got two more books to write in the series and I just don't want to let that genie out of the bottle before book number three.
NP: Without giving too much away, there is a "To be continued..." at the end of this one. Does that mean that we're going to see Madison back for two more books?
CP: Exactly! It's The Lord of the Rings kind of. It's based on Dante's Inferno. In the next book she is in purgatory. In the third book she gets to heaven. Things don't really improve much, but she moves along.
NP: I like the idea that you explore that Hell is more of a detox or a rehab spot. There's a quote where you talk about all of the things that you have to give up before you can go to Heaven...The meaningless things that we hold close. I often think about the lies that we tell ourselves and the truths that we ignore to make our lives bearable...What are the lies that you tell yourself?
CP: Wow! The lies that I tell myself? That I'm going to get through this. That if I can just make enough money, or if I can just write a book that's funny enough, or that reaches enough people, that I won't die. I'm not going to die. That's always the big, big lie -- that somehow I can transcend death.
NP: I think that's the goal of every artist, to leave something behind that's eternal.
CP: Every artist or every religious person or every parent. That's how [Martin] Heidegger talked about it. Those were the three main ways in which we sought immortality: through art, procreation, or through spirituality.
NP: [To paraphrase,] you just said earlier that you wanted to write a book [that would make you immortal], but you've already done that. The body of work that you already have has earned you that status.
CP: You know, years ago, maybe when I was 17 or 18, my grandmother got breast cancer and she called each of us grandkids and she said, "What are your three favorite colors? I'm going to knit you an afghan. I'm going to make everyone an afghan in their three favorite colors before I die so that you have something to remember me by." Of course she didn't die. It was dealt with, she lived 20 or 30 more years. Shortly before she actually did die a few years ago, she visited and she saw that afghan that she made and she was just mortified that this thing was her quest for immortality. She tried to get it back from me and she insisted that she could make me a better one. "Please don't let that be your memory of me. I've got to make you a better afghan." And so with every book it's me saying to people, "Let's forget the last one. I've got to make you a better afghan."
NP: I would say that you've already made some pretty damn perfect afghans, but I know that's probably, as an artist, not what you want to hear because you always want to be able to improve.
CP: I can make you a better one. Let me try.
NP: I'll let you try.
I also love this idea that you raise about whether it's blind faith that gets you into heaven or whether it's good deeds...I like to think that if there is a God he wouldn't be an asshole, and if you're doing good deeds for the right reasons, which is because it's the right thing to do, then that should take precedence above someone that's just doing something nice to get a spot on the VIP list.
CP: Exactly. Those people who actually do things because they loved them in high school, versus those people who did things because they looked good on their college applications -- that's the difference.
NP: I've always thought that, in a way, believing or not, or picking a religion like picking a sports team is kind of redundant. As long as you're leading the best life you can, a higher power wouldn't be a dick. He [or she] would see that and let you in. It's like you can't lose as long as you're not a dick.
CP: Yeah, but religion does give you access to a community of people and it brings you together in a mutual and peer-supported way, like any kind of 12-step group, so that you can be accountable and you can state your goals to a group of people who will hold you accountable. I like that aspect of religion.
NP: A friend of Richard Dawkins, R. Elisabeth Cornwell, wrote me an essay on the evolutionary reasons for religion and it was very much about that. As a species we were more successful if we were part of a group. We were safer and we had better access to food, especially as we took up agriculture. So it became important for humans to "believe" and be part of a group, irrespective of whether we really believed.
CP: Also, it allows us to process our experience by converting it into language and make a kind of confession where we debase ourselves in front of our peers so we don't exalt ourselves on an ongoing [basis]. That periodically we invert the power structure and place ourselves on low, and then we're accepted despite the lowest aspects of ourselves, in the same way that people in 12-step groups make their confessions each week and they're accepted back into the community.
NP: I do believe in the function of a church -- when it's functioning well -- but I personally believe that the power of a church is below the roof and not above it.
CP: I do too. I think there's power there, but it's the power the people themselves generate too. So I think we agree on this.
NP: So much of what religion should be about has gotten hijacked by those that focus on the pettiness of it, which is something that you have great fun poking fun at in the book. I'm definitely going to Hell because I've honked my horn too many times, I've dropped the f-bomb way too many times. I don't think I've hit my farting in an elevator quota yet though. That's my one saving grace.
CP: That's kind of the core of the second book in purgatory. Madison has lied to her parents to encourage them to perform these behaviors, and in the second book, when she's stuck back on earth for a year, she realizes that her parents couldn't keep a secret and they founded this enormous major world religion that's based on doing these small inconsiderate rude behaviors, and she's actually made the world an infinitely worse place than it was before.
NP: Madison takes a lie detector test to see if she really should be in Hell or if it's all a big clerical error, and there are lots of questions that are asked that she doesn't know how to answer. She knows what's right in her heart, and then she knows what is written in the Bible -- or what's interpreted as being written in the Bible -- and so she asks this question: "Is God a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic ass? Or is God testing to see if I am?" I just love that line.
CP: I love that too. It's something I didn't plan. I just thought it was terrific the way that it worked out.
NP: That was just one of those lines that tripped into your head?
CP: Right, like a little Zen koan where you couldn't really resolve it for yourself. I think those things live out in the world like crazy and they stay in people's minds.
NP: It is one of the great paradoxes of religion. Homosexual pastors, for example, when preaching the Bible, must constantly have this conundrum in their heads that can never be answered.
CP: And the idea that they might be speaking to pools of people who are already damned and there is nothing that they can do about them because of predetermination. There's all of those big unanswered questions that are just so much fun to spool out narratives and scenarios with. In a way, I think that is the greatest purpose of storytelling and, as a writer, it's so much fun to tackle these enormous and impossible stories, and to make up answers to them and then to support those answers somehow.
NP: I love the idea that Hell might be of our own choosing. At one point in the book, you make Hell akin to a neighborhood that no one cares about, but that people are capable of sprucing up -- they just have to be aware of that choice.
CP: Right. I think just stating that allows people a sense of power, that they're not just trapped in certain circumstances. They can't change the circumstance, but at least they can change their reaction to it, and that's a really powerful thing to start from.
NP: I often see that when I'm driving around the poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles...some of the homes are beautiful craftsman style houses, and they're just in the worst, most Hellish neighborhoods. You just think about what would happen if, as a group, people saw the potential in their existing world. What might happen if they did a little bit of what Madison did -- putting paper lilies on the sea of shit, so to speak.
CP: In a way, she's doing it all for her parents, because she's recognizing that, as ineffectual as her parents were, their motive was to try to provide her with a better world. She doesn't necessarily have to succeed, but she can at least return the effort by trying to provide them with a better Hell, a better afterlife. What redeems us is maybe not so much succeeding in that effort as it is making the effort for another person. That's one of the things that takes her mind off the fact that she herself is stuck in this awful place. Boy, that sounds lofty. Sorry about that.
NP: Also, just with the way she touches and affects other people. Her friends in Hell start off being a not very pleasant group of people, but through her sheer force of personality, they actually become really good friends and better people. And that goes to the effect that you can have on those around you just by being a little bit more pleasant yourself.
CP: Pleasant and accessible. There's a sense that Madison is denying the drama of the situation and denying a kind of social hierarchy. Everything that occurs is kind of equal for her, and that allows comedy to occur. When you deny the drama or the existing power structure, then comedy occurs.
NP: Madison is a very sympathetic character because of her parents. They have very misguided good intentions. If they do something good it's only ever in front of cameras. You have this line, "The road to Hell is paved in publicity stunts." It reminds me of the uncomfortable feeling I get when I'm at most Hollywood charity events...
CP: It really undermines the idea that anything can be good, and you sort of go back out into your life with a corrupt sense of altruism. That seems like the most insidious part of it, that you quit even believing that goodness is even possible because you always see it harnessed to a project or to publicity, to some sort of capital endeavor. That's the horrible part; you forget that there even is a heaven because it's all about making money or something like that.
NP: When you get some celebrity announcing that they've donated to something, the very fact that they've announced that they've done it diminishes what they've done.
CP: Exactly!
NP: Instead of seeing the beauty in that, and maybe this is a fault of mine, maybe this is me being not very generous of spirit, but I see the cynical side rather than the beauty, which saddens me. Maybe I should be a better person, see the beauty and brush aside my cynicism.
CP: I think that part of becoming a fully actualized adult is recognizing both. Being able to hold that paradox of both in your mind at the same time. Not being completely subsumed by pessimism, but also not being so gullible that you accept all of those things at face value.
NP: This idea of the duality of ideas, that you can hold two opposing ideas in your head and acknowledge them and not necessarily struggle with them –– just recognize they're there and accept them –– that seems to be a very Buddhist stance to take.
CP: In a way, it's a nice skill to have for life itself. You know, you're constantly in the presence of death and you have to deny that or you have to somehow hold the concept of life and death simultaneously. Every time you get on a plane or get in your car or eat something, you could suddenly choke to death and die. How can you live with that possibility without being destroyed by it? Having that skill of holding that possibility in the presence of life is such an important part of not going nuts.
NP: I know the only way that I can live my life -- and this goes back to the lies that we tell ourselves and the truths we ignore -- I have to completely ignore the idea of death. I can't think about it. The way that I live my life is by not confronting death in any way, which is probably not a good thing or a healthy thing.
CP: I think that's probably how the majority of people deal with it. That's also why my books never sell really strong. I always want to throw that possibility out there and play with it and rub people's noses in it maybe a little.
NP: I think that comes from the fact that you have had to deal with death directly in your life through personal tragedy, and I understand that you worked transporting terminally ill people for a while, so you've lived with the line of life and death in a much closer way. You have a much closer relationship to it than most.
CP: I've been developing all these different strategies, or ways of looking at it, ways of perceiving it without either denying it, dismissing it, or being shut down by it; finding all of these different ways to re-perceive it and to use the awareness of it to live a better life.
NP: How do you perceive death for yourself? Is it something that you're at peace with or horrified about?
CP: In a way, I'm kind of completely looking forward to it because most of the people that I love most in the world are dead. It seems like a club or a place where everyone I love has gone and I can't wait to be with them. But at the same time, I'm not going to use that as an excuse not to live my life and enjoy everything right now. It makes right now feel a lot more like a game, like something that is really here to take advantage of.
NP: There is a theme that Madison revisits several times in the book where she talks about how the living feel superior to the dead. Is that something that you feel?
CP: I think that's something that people have to feel. It's a defensive posture where you have to ridicule and dismiss and exclude the dead because, like you were just saying, it's too daunting a thing to consider all the time. We have to exclude it from our daily lives because we have no skills for dealing with it anymore. Especially now that so much of religious narrative has been dismissed. People used to have a way of framing those issues and dealing with them. Now they don't so those issues are even more frightening.
NP: That's something that I'd not even thought about, but there was a formalized way with religion of dealing with and acknowledging death. Without religion, people get put in boxes and put in the ground or in an oven, and we just brush it off and move on. I think religion maybe served a function in that it forced us to confront death.
CP: It provided a comfort and structure for how to live that portion of our lives and how to deal with that when it occurs to people that we cared about. Without that structure, without that comfort, we become much more panicked and reactionary, and that part of our lives becomes much more chaotic and full of suffering when it didn't need to be.
NP: Expanding on that, given that religion and religious ceremony helps people confront death, and that a funeral is very much about not so much remembering the dead, but is about being a form of group therapy for the living -- have you planned your own funeral? Because it is the final gift that you leave to the living.
CP: I really haven't. I'm haunted, in a way, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who made such enormous plans for his funeral, mapped them all out, scripted them. They were going to cost a fortune, and by the time he died he was completely in obscurity and had no money, and so he ended up being buried in very modest circumstances. All of his plans were ridiculous in the face of how he was actually was buried. So that tempers me making those kinds of plans.
NP: It seems like you believe in an afterlife because you very much hope that you're going to be reunited with your loved ones. I guess everyone has a creative visualization of what it would be like. I know that in this book you're giving a very tongue-in-cheek, facetious view, what's more the glimmer of reality that you actually see?
CP: That's going to be in the third Madison [book]. Again, I don't want to go there until I have to go there. If you become too attached to that vision you're no longer in the present moment, and so I just try not to live that far in the future.
NP: There's a line in the book, "I can't believe there's no wifi in Hell." It's a joke, but no wifi, that's Hell on earth for me...What's your similar idea of Hell on earth?
CP: When people that I care about are suffering and I can't do anything, that is the most unbearable. When you have to be present to the upset of people you love, a health crisis or any kind of suffering, and you can't relieve it. That is Hell.
NP: I feel so bad because I know that you've had a lot of that in your life, and I'm so sorry.
CP: You know, it gives me books. It's another reason why I keep writing. Writing gives me a way to process each of these unbearable situations.
NP: Well, finally, a lot people in the SuicideGirls community were excited that we were going to be talking with you today, so some of our Facebook friends submitted questions. Is it okay if I ask you a few questions from the community?
CP: Sure.
NP: The first question is from Lindsay Mchugh. She asks: Is there a particular character you most identify with?
CP: From now on it will be Madison Spencer. Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer, that fat little girl who reads books.
NP: The next question is from Johnny Reid: Do you find it more enjoyable to write female or male protagonists in your books, and which is easier or more comfortable?
CP: I kind of see them as equal because I almost write genderless characters. Madison is preadolescent and so she's genderless in that way. The narrator in my last book was a very old woman so she was kind of post gender, or post genitally sexual. Beyond that, my characters are pretty much based on action, so I see their names as either male or female, but I don't see them as one gender or the other.
NP: This question is from Raven Phoenix: Would you ever consider writing a sequel to Fight Club, given the popularity of the book and the movie?
CP: Of course I would consider it, but there's so many other great ideas out there that I would love to explore instead of that.
NP: This one's from Joby Cole: I'm a big fan of Snuff and would like to know which character you sympathize with the most and why?
CP: The Sheila character, the one who is kind of pulling all of the strings. I think it's the writer who is making things happen and setting things up. That's why I identify with Sheila.
NP: You are the puppet master.
CP: You kind of have to be.
NP: And a final question from Cara Stevens: "Are you still an insomniac?"
CP: No, I'm not. I discovered Ambien, so I more or less asleep all the time now, day and night.
NP: Do dreams help you write?
CP: No, but the best time to write is when I first wake up in the morning, before I've heard any language, any music, before anybody has talked to me. That is just a fantastic time to write.
NP: I always find that if I write and then sleep on something, I'll wake up in the morning absolutely knowing what I need to fix, what I haven't fact checked or what I've got wrong...In the morning things just bubble to the surface.
CP: I think, going back to religion, that idle time spent sitting in a church, not really doing anything with an overt purpose, functions in that same way. It relaxes the mind. The Hindus might say that it allows you access to elephant mind, a kind of deeper understanding, or a deeper thinking than the every day chattering monkey mind would provide. I think that stillness that you're talking about allows you access. It's similar to what happens in a really good church.
NP: I haven't thought of it that way, but I think you're probably right. I know that when I'm not ready to write I go do something else. I'll clean the toilet or walk the dog. The best stuff happens when you're not trying to think about it, because you're letting your subconscious function in the way that it's supposed to.
CP: And your hands are occupied. You're doing a mindless thing where your hands are running themselves doing this thing. Yeah, I totally agree.
NP: What's your favorite little trick like that?
CP: Washing dishes. I'm always washing the dishes. I love that.
NP: That's where the best ideas come from? Washing dishes?
CP: Ironing, of all things, ironing clothes.
NP: I can see that. Ironing is very Zen. Ironing the creases out of things and neatening life.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to chat. I really appreciate it. I have to say that I love this book. It set the electrons in my brain firing like you wouldn't believe, just thinking about the big questions.
CP: Thank you, and thanks for making me laugh early on, that's pretty rare.
NP: You are very welcome...It's been an absolute pleasure and I can't wait to read the continuing adventures of Madison. I'm rooting for her.
CP: The next one is better than the first one.
NP: Well, this one was perfection to me.
CP: I can make you a better afghan.
NP: I'll hold you to that. I know you can.
According to Damned’s canon, evolution is hokum and Charles Darwin is resigned to hellfire and damnation alongside Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, and the entire Kennedy clan. Turns out you can end up there by committing all manner of trivial shit, such as dropping the f-bomb or honking your horn one too many times. Worshipping the wrong god will also land you in the hot spot, as will suffering the inconvenience of being a deposed one (thus the likes of Thor can also be found hanging out downstairs).
The topography of Palahniuk’s netherworld features a greasy Dandruff Desert, Great Plains of Discarded Razor Blades, a Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions, a Lake of Tepid Bile, and the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm (where in Hell, “porn is creating an effect equivalent to that of global warming on earth”). Those that find themselves there have two main career options: pornography or telemarketing.
The narrative of Damned follows Madison Spencer, the somewhat chubby, eternally optimistic13-year old progeny of a self-obsessed Hollywood star and a billionaire businessman. As a reflection of her mother’s glamour, Madison is an abject failure, however, the upside of her troubled childhood is that after a lifetime (albeit a short one) of electrolysis and herbal high colonics, Hell holds little terror for her.
Having been resigned to Hell after inhaling marijuana, and eschewing an eternity being "ogled by millions of men with serious intimacy problems," Madison finds gainful employment in telemarketing, an occupation that she finds unexpectedly fulfilling. Ensconced in one of Hell’s endless call centers, which has banks of phones that are programmed to auto-dial the earthbound specifically at dinnertime, Madison finds redemption. The question is, ultimately, will she want it?
Being in the business of asking people questions for a living, I felt a certain affinity with Madison. For the start of my conversation with Palahniuk, it therefore seemed only appropriate to borrow a little something from her telemarketing script…
Chuck Palahniuk: Hello.
Nicole Powers: Are you there, Chuck?
CP: Yes, I am.
NP: It's me, Nicole Powers, calling from Suicide Girls. Do you have time for a few questions?
CP: I do. How thrilling!
NP: You're not eating dinner I hope.
CP: I never eat anything.
NP: Damn! So there's not some tasty hot meal that's going to be coagulating as we talk?
CP: [laughs] I didn't get that reference. Ask me about Q-Tips. Ask me about paint samples.
NP: Paint samples?
CP: I was trying to think of anything mundane.
NP: Well, according to your book, statistically speaking, I must be in Hell, because Hell's apparently responsible for 85% of the internet's total smut content, and right now SG's probably contributing heartily to raising the level of the Great Ocean of Wasted Sperm.
CP: [laughs]
NP: So the only logical conclusion that I can draw is that I have to be calling from some call center in Hell specifically created for the 100% of journalists that you say end up there.
CP: [laughs] Oh, I thought for sure you were going to say that you were a redhead. I had such a backlash from redheads about that.
NP: Well you know redheads are the new blondes.
CP: They are?
NP: Yes. When we did a survey [on hair color preference], redheads actually came out on top above blondes.
CP: Ah! Well, I know a lot of redheads that I can make happy now after making them really pissed off.
NP: How are you dealing with the ginger backlash?
CP: Boy, don't shoot the messenger, OK. It's not my fault. I'm just reporting here...I think redheads already know what they've got going. Too many cards already.
NP: This book is very tongue-in-cheek. In it you satire the arbitrary-ness of much of religious doctrine. A lot of what you're saying, I assume, is facetious. You get a sense of what you don't mean from the text, but you have to read in between the lines to try and figure out what you do believe. Would you agree with that?
CP: Entirely...Do you remember the Left Behind books that were for the Christians? They bought them by the millions because it made them right...They're these books that reinforce what people already believe, and I wanted to write a religious Left Behind series, but for secular liberals.
Yeah, it is. Madison has this line about how she'll tell you everything about herself except for the truth, and that's kind of the whole theme of the book -- that all the most true things are never going to be said out loud.
NP: As I was reading the book I was trying to figure out what your personal belief structure is. Is that something that you're willing to expand on or is that something that you'd like to leave up in the air?
CP: I'm going to leave it up in the air because I've got two more books to write in the series and I just don't want to let that genie out of the bottle before book number three.
NP: Without giving too much away, there is a "To be continued..." at the end of this one. Does that mean that we're going to see Madison back for two more books?
CP: Exactly! It's The Lord of the Rings kind of. It's based on Dante's Inferno. In the next book she is in purgatory. In the third book she gets to heaven. Things don't really improve much, but she moves along.
NP: I like the idea that you explore that Hell is more of a detox or a rehab spot. There's a quote where you talk about all of the things that you have to give up before you can go to Heaven...The meaningless things that we hold close. I often think about the lies that we tell ourselves and the truths that we ignore to make our lives bearable...What are the lies that you tell yourself?
CP: Wow! The lies that I tell myself? That I'm going to get through this. That if I can just make enough money, or if I can just write a book that's funny enough, or that reaches enough people, that I won't die. I'm not going to die. That's always the big, big lie -- that somehow I can transcend death.
NP: I think that's the goal of every artist, to leave something behind that's eternal.
CP: Every artist or every religious person or every parent. That's how [Martin] Heidegger talked about it. Those were the three main ways in which we sought immortality: through art, procreation, or through spirituality.
NP: [To paraphrase,] you just said earlier that you wanted to write a book [that would make you immortal], but you've already done that. The body of work that you already have has earned you that status.
CP: You know, years ago, maybe when I was 17 or 18, my grandmother got breast cancer and she called each of us grandkids and she said, "What are your three favorite colors? I'm going to knit you an afghan. I'm going to make everyone an afghan in their three favorite colors before I die so that you have something to remember me by." Of course she didn't die. It was dealt with, she lived 20 or 30 more years. Shortly before she actually did die a few years ago, she visited and she saw that afghan that she made and she was just mortified that this thing was her quest for immortality. She tried to get it back from me and she insisted that she could make me a better one. "Please don't let that be your memory of me. I've got to make you a better afghan." And so with every book it's me saying to people, "Let's forget the last one. I've got to make you a better afghan."
NP: I would say that you've already made some pretty damn perfect afghans, but I know that's probably, as an artist, not what you want to hear because you always want to be able to improve.
CP: I can make you a better one. Let me try.
NP: I'll let you try.
I also love this idea that you raise about whether it's blind faith that gets you into heaven or whether it's good deeds...I like to think that if there is a God he wouldn't be an asshole, and if you're doing good deeds for the right reasons, which is because it's the right thing to do, then that should take precedence above someone that's just doing something nice to get a spot on the VIP list.
CP: Exactly. Those people who actually do things because they loved them in high school, versus those people who did things because they looked good on their college applications -- that's the difference.
NP: I've always thought that, in a way, believing or not, or picking a religion like picking a sports team is kind of redundant. As long as you're leading the best life you can, a higher power wouldn't be a dick. He [or she] would see that and let you in. It's like you can't lose as long as you're not a dick.
CP: Yeah, but religion does give you access to a community of people and it brings you together in a mutual and peer-supported way, like any kind of 12-step group, so that you can be accountable and you can state your goals to a group of people who will hold you accountable. I like that aspect of religion.
NP: A friend of Richard Dawkins, R. Elisabeth Cornwell, wrote me an essay on the evolutionary reasons for religion and it was very much about that. As a species we were more successful if we were part of a group. We were safer and we had better access to food, especially as we took up agriculture. So it became important for humans to "believe" and be part of a group, irrespective of whether we really believed.
CP: Also, it allows us to process our experience by converting it into language and make a kind of confession where we debase ourselves in front of our peers so we don't exalt ourselves on an ongoing [basis]. That periodically we invert the power structure and place ourselves on low, and then we're accepted despite the lowest aspects of ourselves, in the same way that people in 12-step groups make their confessions each week and they're accepted back into the community.
NP: I do believe in the function of a church -- when it's functioning well -- but I personally believe that the power of a church is below the roof and not above it.
CP: I do too. I think there's power there, but it's the power the people themselves generate too. So I think we agree on this.
NP: So much of what religion should be about has gotten hijacked by those that focus on the pettiness of it, which is something that you have great fun poking fun at in the book. I'm definitely going to Hell because I've honked my horn too many times, I've dropped the f-bomb way too many times. I don't think I've hit my farting in an elevator quota yet though. That's my one saving grace.
CP: That's kind of the core of the second book in purgatory. Madison has lied to her parents to encourage them to perform these behaviors, and in the second book, when she's stuck back on earth for a year, she realizes that her parents couldn't keep a secret and they founded this enormous major world religion that's based on doing these small inconsiderate rude behaviors, and she's actually made the world an infinitely worse place than it was before.
NP: Madison takes a lie detector test to see if she really should be in Hell or if it's all a big clerical error, and there are lots of questions that are asked that she doesn't know how to answer. She knows what's right in her heart, and then she knows what is written in the Bible -- or what's interpreted as being written in the Bible -- and so she asks this question: "Is God a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic ass? Or is God testing to see if I am?" I just love that line.
CP: I love that too. It's something I didn't plan. I just thought it was terrific the way that it worked out.
NP: That was just one of those lines that tripped into your head?
CP: Right, like a little Zen koan where you couldn't really resolve it for yourself. I think those things live out in the world like crazy and they stay in people's minds.
NP: It is one of the great paradoxes of religion. Homosexual pastors, for example, when preaching the Bible, must constantly have this conundrum in their heads that can never be answered.
CP: And the idea that they might be speaking to pools of people who are already damned and there is nothing that they can do about them because of predetermination. There's all of those big unanswered questions that are just so much fun to spool out narratives and scenarios with. In a way, I think that is the greatest purpose of storytelling and, as a writer, it's so much fun to tackle these enormous and impossible stories, and to make up answers to them and then to support those answers somehow.
NP: I love the idea that Hell might be of our own choosing. At one point in the book, you make Hell akin to a neighborhood that no one cares about, but that people are capable of sprucing up -- they just have to be aware of that choice.
CP: Right. I think just stating that allows people a sense of power, that they're not just trapped in certain circumstances. They can't change the circumstance, but at least they can change their reaction to it, and that's a really powerful thing to start from.
NP: I often see that when I'm driving around the poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles...some of the homes are beautiful craftsman style houses, and they're just in the worst, most Hellish neighborhoods. You just think about what would happen if, as a group, people saw the potential in their existing world. What might happen if they did a little bit of what Madison did -- putting paper lilies on the sea of shit, so to speak.
CP: In a way, she's doing it all for her parents, because she's recognizing that, as ineffectual as her parents were, their motive was to try to provide her with a better world. She doesn't necessarily have to succeed, but she can at least return the effort by trying to provide them with a better Hell, a better afterlife. What redeems us is maybe not so much succeeding in that effort as it is making the effort for another person. That's one of the things that takes her mind off the fact that she herself is stuck in this awful place. Boy, that sounds lofty. Sorry about that.
NP: Also, just with the way she touches and affects other people. Her friends in Hell start off being a not very pleasant group of people, but through her sheer force of personality, they actually become really good friends and better people. And that goes to the effect that you can have on those around you just by being a little bit more pleasant yourself.
CP: Pleasant and accessible. There's a sense that Madison is denying the drama of the situation and denying a kind of social hierarchy. Everything that occurs is kind of equal for her, and that allows comedy to occur. When you deny the drama or the existing power structure, then comedy occurs.
NP: Madison is a very sympathetic character because of her parents. They have very misguided good intentions. If they do something good it's only ever in front of cameras. You have this line, "The road to Hell is paved in publicity stunts." It reminds me of the uncomfortable feeling I get when I'm at most Hollywood charity events...
CP: It really undermines the idea that anything can be good, and you sort of go back out into your life with a corrupt sense of altruism. That seems like the most insidious part of it, that you quit even believing that goodness is even possible because you always see it harnessed to a project or to publicity, to some sort of capital endeavor. That's the horrible part; you forget that there even is a heaven because it's all about making money or something like that.
NP: When you get some celebrity announcing that they've donated to something, the very fact that they've announced that they've done it diminishes what they've done.
CP: Exactly!
NP: Instead of seeing the beauty in that, and maybe this is a fault of mine, maybe this is me being not very generous of spirit, but I see the cynical side rather than the beauty, which saddens me. Maybe I should be a better person, see the beauty and brush aside my cynicism.
CP: I think that part of becoming a fully actualized adult is recognizing both. Being able to hold that paradox of both in your mind at the same time. Not being completely subsumed by pessimism, but also not being so gullible that you accept all of those things at face value.
NP: This idea of the duality of ideas, that you can hold two opposing ideas in your head and acknowledge them and not necessarily struggle with them –– just recognize they're there and accept them –– that seems to be a very Buddhist stance to take.
CP: In a way, it's a nice skill to have for life itself. You know, you're constantly in the presence of death and you have to deny that or you have to somehow hold the concept of life and death simultaneously. Every time you get on a plane or get in your car or eat something, you could suddenly choke to death and die. How can you live with that possibility without being destroyed by it? Having that skill of holding that possibility in the presence of life is such an important part of not going nuts.
NP: I know the only way that I can live my life -- and this goes back to the lies that we tell ourselves and the truths we ignore -- I have to completely ignore the idea of death. I can't think about it. The way that I live my life is by not confronting death in any way, which is probably not a good thing or a healthy thing.
CP: I think that's probably how the majority of people deal with it. That's also why my books never sell really strong. I always want to throw that possibility out there and play with it and rub people's noses in it maybe a little.
NP: I think that comes from the fact that you have had to deal with death directly in your life through personal tragedy, and I understand that you worked transporting terminally ill people for a while, so you've lived with the line of life and death in a much closer way. You have a much closer relationship to it than most.
CP: I've been developing all these different strategies, or ways of looking at it, ways of perceiving it without either denying it, dismissing it, or being shut down by it; finding all of these different ways to re-perceive it and to use the awareness of it to live a better life.
NP: How do you perceive death for yourself? Is it something that you're at peace with or horrified about?
CP: In a way, I'm kind of completely looking forward to it because most of the people that I love most in the world are dead. It seems like a club or a place where everyone I love has gone and I can't wait to be with them. But at the same time, I'm not going to use that as an excuse not to live my life and enjoy everything right now. It makes right now feel a lot more like a game, like something that is really here to take advantage of.
NP: There is a theme that Madison revisits several times in the book where she talks about how the living feel superior to the dead. Is that something that you feel?
CP: I think that's something that people have to feel. It's a defensive posture where you have to ridicule and dismiss and exclude the dead because, like you were just saying, it's too daunting a thing to consider all the time. We have to exclude it from our daily lives because we have no skills for dealing with it anymore. Especially now that so much of religious narrative has been dismissed. People used to have a way of framing those issues and dealing with them. Now they don't so those issues are even more frightening.
NP: That's something that I'd not even thought about, but there was a formalized way with religion of dealing with and acknowledging death. Without religion, people get put in boxes and put in the ground or in an oven, and we just brush it off and move on. I think religion maybe served a function in that it forced us to confront death.
CP: It provided a comfort and structure for how to live that portion of our lives and how to deal with that when it occurs to people that we cared about. Without that structure, without that comfort, we become much more panicked and reactionary, and that part of our lives becomes much more chaotic and full of suffering when it didn't need to be.
NP: Expanding on that, given that religion and religious ceremony helps people confront death, and that a funeral is very much about not so much remembering the dead, but is about being a form of group therapy for the living -- have you planned your own funeral? Because it is the final gift that you leave to the living.
CP: I really haven't. I'm haunted, in a way, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who made such enormous plans for his funeral, mapped them all out, scripted them. They were going to cost a fortune, and by the time he died he was completely in obscurity and had no money, and so he ended up being buried in very modest circumstances. All of his plans were ridiculous in the face of how he was actually was buried. So that tempers me making those kinds of plans.
NP: It seems like you believe in an afterlife because you very much hope that you're going to be reunited with your loved ones. I guess everyone has a creative visualization of what it would be like. I know that in this book you're giving a very tongue-in-cheek, facetious view, what's more the glimmer of reality that you actually see?
CP: That's going to be in the third Madison [book]. Again, I don't want to go there until I have to go there. If you become too attached to that vision you're no longer in the present moment, and so I just try not to live that far in the future.
NP: There's a line in the book, "I can't believe there's no wifi in Hell." It's a joke, but no wifi, that's Hell on earth for me...What's your similar idea of Hell on earth?
CP: When people that I care about are suffering and I can't do anything, that is the most unbearable. When you have to be present to the upset of people you love, a health crisis or any kind of suffering, and you can't relieve it. That is Hell.
NP: I feel so bad because I know that you've had a lot of that in your life, and I'm so sorry.
CP: You know, it gives me books. It's another reason why I keep writing. Writing gives me a way to process each of these unbearable situations.
NP: Well, finally, a lot people in the SuicideGirls community were excited that we were going to be talking with you today, so some of our Facebook friends submitted questions. Is it okay if I ask you a few questions from the community?
CP: Sure.
NP: The first question is from Lindsay Mchugh. She asks: Is there a particular character you most identify with?
CP: From now on it will be Madison Spencer. Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer, that fat little girl who reads books.
NP: The next question is from Johnny Reid: Do you find it more enjoyable to write female or male protagonists in your books, and which is easier or more comfortable?
CP: I kind of see them as equal because I almost write genderless characters. Madison is preadolescent and so she's genderless in that way. The narrator in my last book was a very old woman so she was kind of post gender, or post genitally sexual. Beyond that, my characters are pretty much based on action, so I see their names as either male or female, but I don't see them as one gender or the other.
NP: This question is from Raven Phoenix: Would you ever consider writing a sequel to Fight Club, given the popularity of the book and the movie?
CP: Of course I would consider it, but there's so many other great ideas out there that I would love to explore instead of that.
NP: This one's from Joby Cole: I'm a big fan of Snuff and would like to know which character you sympathize with the most and why?
CP: The Sheila character, the one who is kind of pulling all of the strings. I think it's the writer who is making things happen and setting things up. That's why I identify with Sheila.
NP: You are the puppet master.
CP: You kind of have to be.
NP: And a final question from Cara Stevens: "Are you still an insomniac?"
CP: No, I'm not. I discovered Ambien, so I more or less asleep all the time now, day and night.
NP: Do dreams help you write?
CP: No, but the best time to write is when I first wake up in the morning, before I've heard any language, any music, before anybody has talked to me. That is just a fantastic time to write.
NP: I always find that if I write and then sleep on something, I'll wake up in the morning absolutely knowing what I need to fix, what I haven't fact checked or what I've got wrong...In the morning things just bubble to the surface.
CP: I think, going back to religion, that idle time spent sitting in a church, not really doing anything with an overt purpose, functions in that same way. It relaxes the mind. The Hindus might say that it allows you access to elephant mind, a kind of deeper understanding, or a deeper thinking than the every day chattering monkey mind would provide. I think that stillness that you're talking about allows you access. It's similar to what happens in a really good church.
NP: I haven't thought of it that way, but I think you're probably right. I know that when I'm not ready to write I go do something else. I'll clean the toilet or walk the dog. The best stuff happens when you're not trying to think about it, because you're letting your subconscious function in the way that it's supposed to.
CP: And your hands are occupied. You're doing a mindless thing where your hands are running themselves doing this thing. Yeah, I totally agree.
NP: What's your favorite little trick like that?
CP: Washing dishes. I'm always washing the dishes. I love that.
NP: That's where the best ideas come from? Washing dishes?
CP: Ironing, of all things, ironing clothes.
NP: I can see that. Ironing is very Zen. Ironing the creases out of things and neatening life.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time out to chat. I really appreciate it. I have to say that I love this book. It set the electrons in my brain firing like you wouldn't believe, just thinking about the big questions.
CP: Thank you, and thanks for making me laugh early on, that's pretty rare.
NP: You are very welcome...It's been an absolute pleasure and I can't wait to read the continuing adventures of Madison. I'm rooting for her.
CP: The next one is better than the first one.
NP: Well, this one was perfection to me.
CP: I can make you a better afghan.
NP: I'll hold you to that. I know you can.
3 Comments
its hilarious and silly enough for a sunday! 
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Silencia
