I got the opportunity again to sit down for some words (and food and drinks) with Chuck Palahniuk, the increasingly famous writer. It has been two years since my last interview with him and we had a lot of catching up to do! He has released two books since then (Choke and Lullaby) and will release two more in the coming months: a hilarious travel book about Portland, Oregon called Fugitives and Refugees, and his next book Diary.

PREFACE

In this first part of my interview, Chuck talks about the conference based on his works, changes in himself, his family, and the synopsis of Diary. Part One concludes with lots of movie talk, thoughts on Marilyn Manson, and Chuck's wishes for Diary. After talking to Chuck, Diary is really something I am looking forward to.

THE CONFERENCE, CHANGES, FRIENDS + FAMILY

Well Chuck, good to see you again.

Well John, good to be back. (Both laugh)

So, how's the conference experience (Edinboro University's Postcards from the Future 2003) been this time around, compared to the last time?

It's been a lot more comfortable!

Really? Oh, here come our drinks…

And here come the drinks and the salads…

(Beer for me, red wine for Chuck)

Very nice…Ashley doesn't recognize you (our waitress at “the DinOr” in Edinboro, PA).

That's a good thing (both laugh); that means she won't pee in our food.

Exactly…so you're more comfortable this time.

Oh yeah…except for the first night in the bed and breakfast, that just did not work.

That's where you were staying?

Yeah, it had six-foot ceilings, six…foot…ceilings…

Wow!

And the owner was a Mary Kay distributor, the whole place smells like my grandmother's bathroom, just this overpowering, sweet, powdery smell.

Do they have that shit hanging up all over the place?

Baskets of it, all over the place, I thought it was gonna kill me.

That sucks…so you're in a better place now, I assume?

I'm in, yeah, Edinboro Inn, with the History channel and no Mary Kay cosmetics…

I heard you talking about the History channel today, I was gonna say do you have cable and stuff at your house now? Or was that what you were referencing…

Yeah, I only watch TV when I'm on the road, it's like the thing that makes traveling bearable is the History channel…

Do you think that you have changed since the first conference?

Well, I'm more comfortable doing this public figure thing, and part of it was just literally sitting next to my grandfather and saying, you know, I choose to be in public the way he was with people. I choose to not be frightened. I choose to just be comfortable with strangers. You know, I wanna emulate that for the rest of my life...that will be my inheritance.

So has it been tough to reach that point? Over time has it gotten easier and easier to be comfortable after you've done like a thousand interviews?

Yeah, it's easier, but I don't know, I think there are people that get a lot more attention than me, that still aren't comfortable with it, that still resent it. Still hate it.

I wonder if you could ever be comfortable with something like that though…

I think so, you know, because I'm more and more comfortable with it, if not entirely comfortable with it. The only time I'm not comfortable with it is when I'm physically exhausted from no sleep that's when it gets…I still get a little bit stressed.

So what do your friends and family think of your success, your following, and what do they think about this conference? Do your buddies rag on you at all?

Most of them have no idea! We live such isolated lives in Portland, my family has no idea. At one point my agent asked me, he said something like “does your mom have any idea just how well-known you're becoming?” She doesn't, she has no idea. And I don't want her at the book events; I don't want them to see me in front of a bunch of people, because I don't want our relationship to change…

I see, so you keep it kind of separate.

Exactly. So no, they know there is a lot more money around these days. They know the quality of my Christmas presents has gotten way up there, but they don't know the rest of it.

(Our dinners arrive: chicken alfredo for me, chicken stir fry for Chuck.)

FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES: A WALK IN PORTLAND, OREGON

Can you talk briefly about your next two books Fugitives and Refugees and Diary in your own words? You read from Fugitives and Refugees (coming in July) today, and I can say that's going to be the best travel book I'm sure I've ever read, that was pretty hilarious! I read a little bit about Diary on the website (ChuckPalahniuk.net), and it's going to be about this older woman and her husband that's trying to commit suicide…

She's a woman that years before she was in art school and she met this guy and she's still not even sure why she fell in love with him or what she loved about him. He never treated her very nice, but now she's middle-aged with a kid and this man is in a coma after what appeared to be a suicide attempt. More and more she's realizing that her entire adult life has been sort of orchestrated into bringing her together with this man, and bringing her to this isolated island of New England where they lived, and that she's really being used for some really horrific purpose, but she denies that. Because in a way it would reveal that over half of her life has been completely orchestrated and controlled by a group of people that she thought were her friends and she thought were her family. So its conspiracy fiction, its really dark conspiracy fiction where you realize that you aren't nearly as in control of your life as you ever dreamed and that ultimately she's betrayed by all these people that she thought were her only family.

Wow! So it's about the process of her finding out what she hasn't known…

I could tell you the ending is a big twist…

Well, don't (both laugh), I love your big twists.

It is the best twist ending I have ever done.

Really?!

It is really the gold-standard of plot twists. It's better than the Tyler/Jack plot twist, squared. It is that plot twist squared.

Wow! No shit, well that's awesome. And that comes out in the Fall?

September.

(We take a little time out to enjoy our meals…)

MOVIES + TAX DEDUCTIONS

The Ring is one of the better movies that I have seen in a long time.

So have you seen Requiem for a Dream? Did you like that? Or did you think it was well done I guess is what I mean…

I think it was well done, I didn't think that it was great writing plot-wise, it wasn't the kind of really convoluted, involving plot, it was more of an organic plot, but it was presented really, really well. A lot of sorta risky, experimental stuff and it worked.

Did you see Pi?

(laughs) You're gonna hate me for this, but I hated Pi, I couldn't watch the whole thing.

It was fucked up.

It was too dry to me, too…limited. Yeah, Aronofsky.

Yeah, Darren Aronofsky.

Did you see Ghost Ship?

No, I don't want to see Ghost Ship. (laughing)

Ghost Ship is actually good, it's good in a totally generic sort of bubble gum way, but at the end it's got a really good plot twist, it's got a plot twist as good as Unbreakable.

You told me last time to see The Wings of the Dove..

I did?

Well you told me at the end there's this big…

Sadness?

Yeah, she comes to the realization at the end (I begin coming to a realization of my own that Chuck has no idea why he told me to see this movie starring Helena Bonham Carter, and I start to laugh), yeah, you told me to see that.

Sorry about that.

Spike Lee's new one, 25th Hour with Ed Norton?

Haven't seen it yet.

See that one.

Once I found out that I could tax deduct it, I got a massive home theater put together last year…

Really?!

One huge room, just devoted to watching movies.

How can you get that tax deducted?!

I'm sort of peripherally in the business (we both start to laugh) so I have to keep abreast of these things! Of course!

That is awesome!

And so I got state-of-the-art, wide screen, everything!

So you have DVD now and stuff?

Hell yeah! (Chuck may regret telling me this when he watches my movie on DVD which I gave him a copy of) I can lay there like a lump and watch movie after movie now. I've got to stay up on story and plot and who does what. It's important.

Ah, but you didn't recognize the girls today flashing the west-side symbol, it's a big gangsta rapper thing, you know how the girls made you do this (I flash Chuck the west-side sign – who would have thought) when you were taking the picture with them?

I was too focused on the fact that I couldn't do it. Now I can do it.

Although I don't think they've done that in any movies lately, maybe 8 mile. Eminem's movie. Did you see that?

No, I wait for the movies to come out on DVD.

It's out.

I either buy or rent them, it's out? OK.

(Our waitress comes over to check on us…)

She's wondering why there's a tape recorder here probably.

Drug sting.

Exactly.

So do you wanna buy any cocaine?

(laughing) Wait until she comes over next time…Jackass?

I thought that was some of the finest work I've ever…no, I didn't see that.

You didn't see it!?

Of course not.

I never laughed that hard in a movie.

Obviously you never saw Porky's then…

I saw Porky's, come on. Alright, I haven't laughed that hard for awhile. You know those shitty muscle-enhancer things that they had commercials for, you put like that pad on you and it shoots the electricity through you? (Chuck nods) They put them on their cheeks and…other parts.

You know, not having TV, I wasn't like primed with Jackass the TV series, I'm a little afraid that if I watch the movie, it will be like going to a different, foreign culture and I don't have that sort of familiarity so I just totally will not get it. Sometimes you sort of have to wade into these things with an appetizer up front, you cant just go right to that hard-core smack of Jackass.

Well, the movie was just essentially the TV show, just unedited. It's really the same thing as the show. It's funny shit, but it's also really, really disgusting…(I enlighten Chuck more on the purpose of Jackass)…it's like a study in pain.

In a way its really expresses what when Sartre talks about dread, because friends of mine can not get out things like stun guns or pepper spray without me wanting to be shocked to see what its like…

Right.

Because you can't be with those things without wanting to experience…

So that you know.

Right, exactly. And I don't know how many parties I've gone to where I talked somebody into shocking me with their stun gun…

Yea, it's just stuff like that…

Yea, you just wanna see how bad it hurts.

Exactly, so did you see Fincher's Panic Room? It wasn't a big think piece, but I thought it was cool.

I did like it, I thought I was in the minority when I liked it…

Yeah, a lot of people didn't like it. I think its was more of his attempt at mainstream for him, cause obviously Se7en and Fight Club aren't things that everyone is going to like, or The Game even. I'm just a sucker for his work, he can take the simplest scene and camera swoop and make it like the coolest thing.

In a way everything he's done has been so sort of claustrophobic, he's done so much really tight-space stuff, this was the first time he told a story within one really tight, space with the townhouse and the panic room…

Exactly. OK, last one, did you see Bowling for Columbine?

No, not yet.

See that, definitely.

I hear that Manson is really good in that.

Yes, really good. So many of these people that protest him think he's the antichrist, you see him and he's just talking like a normal guy about the problem, and its really cool, I am not a big fan of Manson at all but I thought he did good.

He's really a smart guy and I want to see what he transitions into, whether it's a visual art or some sort of writing…

Do you think he's done with music?

I think inside of himself he feels complete, in the same way that now that Eminem has done these three albums, what's he gonna do next? Transition to movies? What is it?

Yeah, Manson should at least get into something that is going to show off his visuals…same with Trent, I was going to ask you about both of those guys and if you still keep in contact with them? Do they still ever talk like “Hey, we should do something down the line?” Because last time we talked there was so much, everything was so much different. It was like Survivor had been optioned (Chuck chuckles) and you were saying how Trent and Marilyn were interesting in things like doing the music…so much has changed since then.

Things have calmed down, but in a way that's good because the books have sort of eaten up my entire life. Once the books started making it into the Times Bestseller list, I had no time for anything else. Just you know like, people called…my whole life was just about getting them off the phone so I could get back to whatever was going on already.

Did you think it was funny or annoying when I called you and invited you to my Halloween party? (Both chuckling)

No, it was fine! It was like, I think I chuckled to myself and then I said something to my family about it like “Hey, John Lyons said…” and they were like “Why?”

It was just sort of funny because I had invited just about everyone I knew and then I thought “Why not invite Chuck Palahniuk!” (both laugh)

DIARY + ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE

When I bring up your name everyone in my family is like “Chuck who?” and then I say “You know mom, that guy who wrote Fight Club, the movie I can't get you to watch more than a half hour of?”

Ah! I don't think my mom has watched it either so…

She just can't relate, as soon as they get into the basement and it's real dark, and they start fighting each other…

Your mother is gonna love Diary!

Yeah?

Totally.

I can give it to her to read it?

She might actually really, really like it. A lot of it is about how your children betray you. Once they get to a certain age they become their own individuals and become ultimately sort of your enemy.

Well she will have to read it, and then maybe watch it?

Ha! It's the one thing that the screen agent kept saying would be easy to sell to the movies, because it's a three act structure, it's got a middle-age female protagonist, it's got a romantic subplot, I mean parts of it are really, really conventional.

Who can you see playing the female lead?

Julianne Moore looked at it, or is looking at it, Glenn Close could even but actually probably younger…

Nicole Kidman, Jodie Foster?

Any of them, easy. Yeah. You gotta be just old enough to have an eleven year-old kid.

Helena?

Hmmm. Anybody.

Has she made any movies since then? (Then being Fight Club)

Planet of the Apes! (sounding very unimpressed) Yeah, geez, try to keep up!

Yeah, I saw it. It's just not something that sticks in my mind.

It was a very compelling, highly romantic…

Paycheck (we both laugh).

Remake.

FUTURE PROJECTS + SCREENWRITING CLASS

Future projects. I want you to give me some dirt. Book ideas? Are you working on any screenplays? Last time we talked you said you couldn’t get into screenplays, they would be over your head, but I have heard that maybe you are working on some or thinking about some…Chemical Pink?

Chemical Pink is not going to happen until David (Fincher) has a window in his schedule.

Well he dropped M:I-3 (Fincher was to direct Tom Cruise in the next Mission: Impossible flick).

He did?! (Very surprised)

Yep.

Then what’s he signed on for?

(I think Chuck should maybe put me on the payroll) He’s supposed to do something about skaters in the 80’s. Lords of Dogtown.

OK, I can’t even keep up. (Laughing) Last time we talked it was his 40th birthday, last summer, so…it was still when he was debating around Mission: Impossible.

Yeah it was maybe January or February that he dropped that. OK, so anything else? Book ideas?

I'm taking a class, with a really successful screenwriter who has written 60 movies with the Lifetime network. She’s made a fortune writing these.

Well that would be someone to give you good advice…

Yeah. These three, no actually they are 8-act movies, because you’ve got to have ten commercials so they are broken into 8 acts. She hates every movie I like. She is a really, really good mechanic and in her class I just wrote a screenplay that my agents are really excited for, and I’m going to rewrite on that before they start selling it. But, they seem to think, after years of telling me that I can’t do this, suddenly they are saying ‘Wow, this is really good.’ So I’m thinking maybe I finally have gotten the knack of it.

So can you give me a little info specifically on that screenplay?

It’s an idea I have had forever about a failed artist, who’s married and his job is he mixes paint in a big hardware store. And he is approached by this little cartel of collectors, curators and art critics and they say ‘Hey this hot-shot artist who you knew in college, who is the new Andy Warhol, his current work is really destroying the value of his early work, he is losing money and is damaging our investment. We will make you the next big famous artist if you kill him for us.’ And he says ‘No, I am not killing anybody.’ And they say ‘Would it help if we told you that he killed to get where he is at…and that he is having an affair with your wife?’

Wow! (Chuckling)

And so this guy, the first act, is that he ends up killing this other artist…

I would imagine…

And in the second act he ends up being roped into being a professional killer and traveling the world in this dark comedy, killing other famous artists who reach the end of their productive period in order to boost the value of their earlier work. Because as soon as an artist dies the value of their work just explodes. So it’s this dark comedy about him, a professional killer/artist.

Do you have a working title?

Ambition.

(I laugh) That’s good.

I’m just really amazed how funny and yet how conventional it is.

Cool. So anything else for adaptations or anything else new you would like to jump into? Any new themes you would like to write about?

I want to do a big re-invention of ghost stories and do a collection of them, sort of new, re-inventive ghost stories…

Not like Ghost Ship though? (Both laugh)

No, as wonderful as it was, we totally did ghost ships.

I’m sure they would have liked to have your quote on their poster, they probably don’t have any other ones to use from reviews: “Chuck Palahniuk says…”

I said “WOW!...”

“…Ghost Ship kicks ass!” (Both chuckling)

“…It wasn’t as stupid as I thought it would be. I thought this would really suck!”

I’m surprised you saw it, if you don’t get to see it too much…

Somebody in the household brought it home. That’s all I am going to say.

Alright, ‘nuff said.

It was a double-feature Ghost Ship and The Ring. But you know ghost stories really have an oral story-telling tradition. You say them out loud and you say them late at night. So I want these to be stories that are short enough, and ideally written to be read out loud. And so the real essence of a ghost story is an unresolved issue in another person that can no longer be resolved because one person is dead. So they are really all these stories about regret and remorse and that’s really sort of it. I want to reinvent ghost stories of regret and remorse. And that will complete my personal commitment to three horror books.

Hmmmm.

And beyond that I want to do a non-fiction book about writing. Not just writing, you know, using the tenets of minimalism. All the things that I wish someone had taught me years ago when I started writing.

So kind of like a “How To” for other writers?

A “How To” but also sort of a psycho sociological, whatever…coping. Writing as a coping thing. Writing as sort of a way of living your life out on the page and using writing as an excuse. As a permission to go out into the world and be with people, and live your life outgoing as a student, constantly researching, constantly compiling information. Constantly sort of exhausting your personal issues in a fictional, detached way. So it’s writing that doesn’t keep you home in front of the computer. Its writing that keeps you active and participating in the world.

Like when you need to vent, or get something out, that’s when to do it.

Right.

Don’t make it like a job that you have to do all the time, is that what you mean?

Make it entirely a personal investment. But detach it from yourself so much that you can put it in a story, whatever the issue is. Go out, and in researching the story and completing that, you complete the issue yourself. So it’s about writing, and it’s also about sort of the personal coping mechanism that self-expression should be.

So are you going to do it in your regular dark-humored kind of way?

Sure, you have to have dark antidotes about weird ways that I have researched things, weird ways in which ideas have come to me. How people brought me different stories, stuff like that.  

"THIS LITTLE.. BOMB" - FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES

That’s how it will make someone like me read it. Because then you’re not just some other guy trying to show people how to write. Like your travel book, which by the way, how did you get that anyway? How did they come to you and say ‘Hey, we want you to write a travel book’ and why would you even agree to something like that?

Money. (Both laugh) Initially they said ‘We want 25,000 words.’ Which is nothing! It’s like 100 pages! ‘We want 25,000 words and we’ll pay you $50,000 up front for it.’ And I had a slow month, I thought I can do a really, just dash and get out, do a bunch of interviews, I could fill 100 pages easy. In two weeks.

Wow.

You know, for a decent amount of money.

Yeah, I wouldn’t complain.

Walk away, have another thing on the market, and if nothing else it would sell at the Portland airport. Someone’s always looking for a travel book.

That’s going to be so funny though, like when the kid asked you today (at the conference) ‘Are you worried about any of it coming back to you?’ And you said no, it would be more like the big money people that would have to deal with that. But I think that’s just hilarious in and of itself, like you said its going to be sitting next to the other books in that collection…(I laugh – when and if you read portions of this book, you will understand)

It’s going to be next to those…

…And people are not going to expect what they find.

It’s going to be in those “Made in Oregon” stores with the boysenberry jam and the Pendleton blankets, and the smoked salmon. And then this little…bomb.

Do you think if the right or the wrong person looked at it do you think it would ever be made into a big deal by your local news media? Do you foresee that happening?

It will be. (He sounds very certain of that)

If they do anything on the news about it, can you try and record it?

I don’t have TV.

Oh, that’s right. Well have one of your buddies record it, that would be funny.

It’s going to come out in the middle of the summer, when there is no news…

That’ll be a big story.

Yeah, just local stuff. And in the whole series, I forgot to say this (earlier at the conference) but in this whole series of 18 books, 18 “Journeys” books, only three of them have been picked up by overseas publishers. This is one of the three. This one has been picked up at this point by six different European publishers, so this is a book that is going around the world. The whole world will know how weird and dysfunctional Portland, Oregon is.

Right. But see, for the right crowd that will attract people, I mean before I didn’t know anything about Portland at all, so now it seems like this wild place. That marathon…

The “Ititerod”.

Oh man. (Laughing)

The other thing you got to do is Stripper Bingo. They make up these special bingo cards...

It’s not all like really old ladies in a church playing is it?

No no! You go to whatever club you want to go to with friends and they all have little stereotypical things that strippers do like “slapping ass”. So as you watch you keep track and whoever gets a full bingo, it’s just like Bingo. Just dozens of things like that. (Back to Fugitives) Oh and ghost stories, there’s a whole chapter on just ghost stories and paranormal investigation teams.

You’re really on this ghost thing now.

Well, there are metaphorical ways we talk about things that we can’t talk about, where we reveal ourselves more fully then if we were to actually talk about ourselves. And myths and legends and ghost stories are right up there. In history books that you would get in schools, they never record ghost stories, or the sex industry or the drug industry, or drag queens. None of that. So my goal is to report all that stuff.

Well, give it some attention.

Archive it in such a way that a hundred years from now, somebody will open a window into the sort of “Alt Culture” of Portland. They could look at that book, and it would give them a really good cross section.  

CREATIVE CONTROL

I wanted to ask you if you have final, creative control over your work, as far as edits. And do you have any say in what cover gets slapped onto your book? I heard that with Diary you wanted to have an actual diary with…

…a lock on it.

Yeah, how come that didn’t happen?

Yeah, I’m not getting that.

Yeah, well it’s far from that (laughing).

You’ve seen it? They said that with a dust-jacket that there was no way you could wrap a dust jacket around the lock and it wouldn’t work. And they really wanted to riff off the graffiti on houses, so that’s why it has that sort of graffiti look. You know you fight some battles and I am not a good visual person that way so…

Ah, ok. And final edits, you said (earlier at the conference) that basically you get what you want in the final print. With the exception of a couple things here and there (Chuck’s original version of Fight Club had the commissioner’s balls actually being cut off).

If they can make a really good basis, a really good argument for not doing something, then I will do it, but really ever since Fight Club I’ve always gotten my way. The last re-write is so radically changed from even the previous draft that they are glossed over in surprise. They read the book like six times, and I want every time they read the book for the book to be significantly different. Almost like an entirely different book.

And it is from what you say.

Yeah.

9/11, FANS + SUCCESS

After 9/11 and the current state of our country do you think that your work will or has been affected at all? Do you ever think that you will be influenced by that?

It will influence the way in which stories are told because people aren’t going to hear stories in the same way. They aren’t going to hear sort of transgressional, funny, dark, obedient stories anymore. That’s all going to be sort of lumped together with terrorism. But you could still sort of comment through horror, or other genre fictions the way people always did through the Cold War and during the 40’s. And that’s the only effective way now. To tell your stories with charm and as entertainment instead of a social rant.

Gotcha. OK, what’s the strangest experience you have had thus far with your fans? Have you ever gone to anyone else’s house (other than mine) for an after-party?

(Laughing) No, yours was the only keg party.

I’ve got bragging rights on that.

I’m 39 years old and I’m at John Lyons’ keg party! Some old pervert staggering around!

No, no! It was cool! You know how that picture of you is like famous; you know how it is on Dennis’ website, pictures from the party?

No. (A bit shocked)

It’s not bad at all and everyone thinks it’s cool. You know, like Stephen King or whoever, people would never imagine him to be so cool as to hang out with his fans. Just sign your book and you’d never see him again. It made you more like a normal, regular guy. Like here’s Chuck, he’s done with the conference and he is having a good time with his fans.

(Chuck pauses to ponder my statement) OK, I will take your word for it.

So what’s the strangest experience with fans?

The waiters in Berkley. Have you heard this story?

No, I don’t think so.

It was this incredibly hot day in Berkeley and the bookstore has space for like 1,000 people, all crammed in this big auditorium. It was so sweltering hot! I took like two Red Bulls and four Advil because my arm was hurting so bad from signing. And I could barely stay on my feet, I was so light-headed. And just as the book event starts, all these extra people start cramming in, and they all have black eyes and gashes on their faces, and they are all dressed as waiters.

No shit!

White shirts and bow ties, a towel over one arm…

Was that like a huge shock to you?

I didn’t say anything because I thought that I was hallucinating. Fuck, I’m just gonna look like an idiot if I say something. And then as soon as I started reading these waiters started throwing dinner rolls at each other, and they are pelting everybody in this big auditorium with these big dinner rolls. And then one guy comes up to the front of the podium, and pretends to choke on a dinner roll and starts barfing clam chowder all over...

So this was all recited for you or something?

Yeah, fuck. It was a cacophony society; it was the San Francisco Cacophony society pulling this big stunt. It was street theater. The bookstore thought I hired them. I thought that the bookstore had hired them.

Wow. That had to have been weird.

Ahh!

OK, well that’s a pretty weird one. My sister, she is an author, she just got her first book published.

Ah! Who with? Where? (Unfortunately, sorry sis, I didn’t know these answers off the top of my head but Chuck, if you read this: Dawn Lyons under Accolade Books)

Her name is Dawn and she wants to know: If you feel successful, and if so, at what point in your career did you feel this way?

I felt successful when I could leave my job. When I knew I wasn’t going to starve to death if I left my job.

So you do feel successful?

Yeah. I have to. I’m too successful; I have too much to do.

VARIOUS QUESTIONS FROM OTHER FANS

Carla wants to know: Boxers or briefs?

Briefs.

And Chris (my friend who is infatuated with the number 27), do you have anything to officially say about the number 27? (27, for example, was the page that the culling song was on in Lullaby)

No, but I just know that it is a bad couple. (Chuck and I talked earlier in which he explained to me that each number he has always related to a type of person, and person two and person seven are really a bad match). Seven should not be with two. And two should never be with seven.

Dorota wants to know: Do they have Eastern European translations of your books?

Polish, Czech, Croatian, Russian, former Yugoslav Republic, it’s in Bosnia Herzegovina, it’s in almost every Eastern European country (Fight Club that is).

Since you are traveling abroad a lot now in other counties, do fans in some countries react differently to your work than they do here? I have talked to some Polish guys when I was over there and because of the cultural differences they can’t really relate to the material in the same way. The concept of ever wanting to have a fight club. You’ve been to France and Italy…

And Spain, and England.

Have you ever noticed anything where you can tell that people are reacting differently?

It’s hard to say. In France I didn’t have a huge number of people at my signing, but I was at a book festival. But in Spain I was swamped, the signing was just massively attended and it was again, basically like the same. Lines and lines. Which was sweet because I was with a group of really famous authors, and they had no one.

Aha, well that’s awesome. So you had the same sort of demographic.

Yeah, but in England, as bad as it is here, in England it’s ten times more popular. It is incredible the numbers of people that show up at the book events. And the English books I guess sell like crazy.

john c lyons, ErieEntertainment.com, 2003
www.erieentertainment.com/film/film_interview-cp2003.html