America's got Guts!

Chuck Palahniuk’s short story “Guts” is relatable to British transgressive fiction in various ways, but there are a few notable elements that distinguish the piece as a work of American literature. The most interesting that I found is the variation of tone, where Palahniuk’s work emphasizes more of a freedom of language that is more personally provocative towards the reader. With lines like “Sticking stuff inside yourself. Sticking yourself inside stuff. A candle in your dick or your head in a noose, we knew it was going to be big trouble” the tone is less “magical”, and more confrontational than that of British transgression.

Reading the “Guts effect” Palahniuk reflected “My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monster or magic.” He attaches levels of exaggerated honesty onto main ideas of value in American life (family, sex, money, success). He shows their temporality of glory that can be lost in a single moment. I think the fact this story was published in Playboy changes a lot of the type of auidence this story may be targeting. Like Money, Crash, or Nights at the Circus, this story is acessible to nearly anyone. It encapsulates the desire of sex in an animalistic and pornographic way as the UK novels do, only the “art of distance” does not seem employed here. The reader is put in a position where Palahniuk assumes his reader can find a commonality in the absurd choas and unsettling images in the story. Lines like “If I told you how it tasted, you would never, ever again eat calamari” would make anyone laugh for there is a certain “on-point” comparision in his choice of comparing the large intenstine to calamari.

It seems like there is an extra level of personal connection between Palahniuk and the reader. He plays on the idea of the true lack of freedom tied to the “American Dream” whether it be through commidity or self exploitation in pursuit of temporary desires. Examples of this can be seen in lines like “This is the baby they brought home from the hospital thirteen years ago. Here's the kid they hoped would snag a football scholarship and get an MBA. Who'd care for them in their old age. Here's all their hopes and dreams.”

Palahniuk juxaposes images that provoke an ambience of a surban atmosphere where the animalistic qualities of human condition are placed into the framework of wealth. He explores the relationship between money and inner desire and how the two correspond and humilate each other. This can be seen in events like the the narrators large intestine being ripped out by a ‘sucking’ pool clearner, the lamb skin condom as an intestine,the vitamin he sees inside of the cleaner that “saves his life”, or paying for a bladder operation with a college fund . I found his ideas

Operating on an American sense of realism as opposed to British trangression, the work itself possesses no limits to its madness, and contains almost a greater sense of literary freedom. After reading “The Guts effect” I got a clearer understanding that the free nature of this piece is the result of Palahniuk’s idea that books aren’t a “mass medium” like television, for they require a greater level of intimacy. He reflects, “A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away” and that society is seeking a more false form of intimacy. Perhaps, the pornographic nature of intimacy suggested by the piece. He thinks that it is from the present day’s disregard for reading, that books contain a boundaryless freedom.

Feathery Language

The riddle of a delicate malapropism:

The tone of the story is one of Feevers uneducated voice of poverty with a cross of mystical undertones; in some cases the usage of “misused” and feathery language tends to read like a riddle. It open door ways in which the reader must determine from Feevers “Oracular proof” the truth to the unbelievable tale. Wesler remarks in a passage on 43 that he was a “prisoner to her voice. The voice could almost have had its source not within her throat but in some ingenious mechanism or other behind the canvas screen. The voice of a fake medium at a séance.”

The reader, like Wesler, becomes a “kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness” where the “the rest of the riddle you must answer at the appointed hour.” As the Wesler describes the performance of Feevers, as one in which occurs "in slow motion.. the suspension of disbelief."(17). Carter seems to be making a comparison about the impermanent and deceptive nature of illusion in relation to divine law. The essence of the world crafted by Carter is one between life and death, a moment, like the clock set to midnight that the dark angel stands beyond, is one where time stands still. This moment, perhaps the loss of Fevvers virginity, will be for Feevers, a time when the “clock outside will correspond to that registered by the stopped gilt clock inside. Inside and outside [will] match exactly, but bother [will be] badly wrong."(53)

Perhaps, “Nights at the Circus” then is a critique then on the temporary pleasures of desire and "ludric play", where the circus is only a “permanent display of the triumphs of man’s will over gravity and rationality.” The novel encapsulates an esthetic of unfinished suspense and surprise through the embodiment of Feevers who views her body as the “abode of limitless freedom” (34).

I recently went to the Whitney and they had a piece called the circus by Alexander Caldert. I found it related to the mechanical motions of time bring embraced by the novel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6jwnu8Izy0

Money in Magic

Money & Nights at the Circus

The humorous nature in which Amis juxtaposes a variety of images to emphasis money in relation to the self, Angela Carter in “Nights at the Circus” uses a variety of juxtaposed images that operate through the same technique. In a passage where Feevers tells Wesler she was sold to a man under the fake name of ‘Mr.Rosencretuz’ she reflects, " I am an honest woman. And the poor old bugger had put his cash down on the nail, hadn’t he, even if I’d pocketed none of it so far.” (81)

Carter emphasizes a duality of Feevers/Sophia: money vs. religion. She uses a repetition of certain images and thematic concepts throughout the course of Rosencretuz rebirth ritual. The man who payed a fortunate to Madam Shreck for her virginity lives in a “mansion in the Gothic style” that is “ivied all over, and, above the turrets, floated a fingernail moon with a star in its arms.” Throughout the course of Rozencretuz's 'metaphysical' self-proclamation there is a constant mentioning of bottles of cabret being opened; Feevers even reflects during the course of his divine rant “the least he could do was crack another bottle of claret. Half the profit from this bizarre transaction but he was temporarily blind and deaf to the world, harkening only to the invisible angels shouting in his ears.” (80)

He assures her not to run away with the “idea there’s anything fleshly indecent or even remotely corporeal about [the] meeting of this night of all nights, when the shining star lies in the moon’s chaste embrace above this very house, signifying the divine post-diluvian Remission and Reconciliation of the Terrible.”

Here, Carter has used the image of the moon and the star to represent a reoccurring concept of “Remission and Reconciliation.” ‘Mr. Rozencrantz’ proclaims to Feevers that she is a “creature half of earth and half of air, virgin and whore, reconciler of fundament and firmament, ambivalent body, reconciler of the grand opposites of death and life” and that she will “come to him neither naked nor clothed, but wait with [him] for the hour when it is neither dark nor light.” (81) Feevers focus on the wine, which Carter uses as a symbol of wealth, highlights one of the novels main contradiction: money vs. the metaphysical. She reflects, “That’s rich!” I thought considering the amounts of money changing hands.” (81) Fevvers does not know how to feel the magic of her own being without the view of dirty money attached to it.