Weekly Shot of Art - Coupland and Palahniuk

Last night authors Douglas Coupland and
Chuck Palahniuk got together at the Frederick Wood Theatre at UBC to have a little reading and discussion event. Right off, the books editor from the Georgia Straight asked the crowd how many of them had not been to a literary event before. About half raised their hands, which prompted the host to mention that all future readings should be held up against this one in comparison. I seem to remember Amy Tan being slammed more than once...
And for all that, it turned out to be true, this was a literary event like none other I have been to, and I have been to a lot.

I admire both Coupland and Palahniuk without really liking their work. If that seems like a strange thing to say let me clarify that I think they are both highly intelligent and have wonderful ideas about pop culture (Coupland), art (Coupland), technology (Coupland again), the human condition (Palahniuk) and the way stories, in particular stories where we don't appear in our best light, join and affect us (Palahniuk. I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to hear them converse and bantering different ideas about.

But when it comes right down to it, I think Douglas Coupland is weird and borderline creepy, and Chuck Palahniuk is much too obsessed with the gross and the horrific for my taste. For example, for all his witty little asides about mail carriers ripping industrial plastics with their teeth, he read a story about Ronald McDonald was made to strip for some suburban housewives at a children's birthday party. I know there is insight and social commentary in there but first of all I don't get it and anyways clowns creep me out so forget it. Palahniuk read a story about a male exotic dancer who had an epileptic seizure onstage and shit himself, then went on to form a troupe of genetically deformed strippers (which, btw, if he didn't get that idea from Katherine Dunn's Geek Love is one hell of a conincedence). So you see what I'm getting at here. Intelligent, insightful, certainly very creative, but also weird and gross.

Having said that, I loved everything that Coupland did early on and I've bought a total of 4 copies of City of Glass for various people. I also thought some of the stories Pahalniuk told during the discussion part were hysterical.

Matt over at Metroblogging Vancouver has written a letter to Douglas Coupland, who I agree did seem a little tired, flustered and generally wanting to be somewhere else during the last half of the event.