Haunted (novel)

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Title Haunted
Cover of Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted
Author Chuck Palahniuk
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Horror
Satire
Publisher Doubleday
Released May 3, 2005
Media type Print (hardcover) & audio CD
Pages 416
Size and weight 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches, 1.3 pounds (hardcover)
ISBN ISBN 0-385-50948-0 (hardcover)

Haunted (2005) is a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk that was released on May 3, 2005. The plot is a frame story for a series of 23 short stories (most of which are preceded by a free verse poem) with a chapter in the main narrative before and after each one. Each of the stories are written by the characters of main narrative, and each ties back into the main story in either important or minor ways.

The synopsis on Haunted's dust jacket describes the book as a satire of reality television. According to Palahniuk, though, the novel is actually about "the battle for credibility" that has resulted from the ease with which one can publish through the use of modern technology.[1]

The cover itself features a glow-in-the-dark image.

Contents

[edit] The main narrative

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The main story centers on a group of 17 individuals (all of which go by nicknames based on the story they tell) who have decided to participate in a secret writer's retreat. After having noticed an invitation to the retreat posted on the bulletin board of a cafe in Oregon, the characters follow instructions on the invitation to meet Mr. Whittier, the retreat's organizer. Whittier tells them to each wait for a bus to pick them up the next morning and bring only what they can fit into one piece of luggage (in particular, only what they feel they need most).

The next day, the 17 characters, Whittier, and his assistant Ms. Clark are all driven to an abandoned theatre. There, Whittier locks all of them inside the theatre, telling them they have three months to each write one story before he will allow them to leave. In the meantime, they will have enough food and water to survive, as well as heat, electricity, bedrooms, bathrooms, and a clothes washing machine provided.

The characters live under harmless conditions at first. However, the characters (not including Whittier or Clark) eventually decide that they could make a better story of their own suffering inside the theatre, and thereby become rich after the public discovers their fate. They then begin to individually sabotage the food and utilities provided to them, each character trying to only destroy one food or utility to slightly increase the drama of their stay. However, as no single character is aware of the others' plans, they end up destroying all their food and utilities, forcing all of them to struggle to survive starvation, cold, and darkness.

[edit] Characters

The following are the 19 characters in the main narrative, along with the stories they tell:

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
  • Brandon Whittier (aka Mr. Whittier) - A wheelchair-bound rich man who owns the abandoned theatre and hosts the writer's retreat. Though he appears to be a very old man, he is in fact a 13 year old boy who suffers from progeria.
    • "Dog Years", "Obsolete"
  • Tess Clark (aka Ms. Clark) - A failed amateur porn actress who has become Whittier's assistant to learn what happened to her daughter, Cassandra, at Whittier's last writer's retreat.
    • "Post-Production", "The Nightmare Box", "Poster Child", "Cassandra"
  • Saint Gut-Free - An abnormally skinny man who lost part of his lower intestine in an accident involving masturbation.
  • Mother Nature - A reflexologist and homeopathic therapy expert who was once employed in prostitution based around her skills with reflexology. She has joined the retreat to escape the mafia, who are out to kill her for abandoning her job and being an accessory to the murder of her friends pimp.
    • "Foot Work"
  • Miss America - A model who wants to become famous. She is pregnant when the main story begins.
    • "Green Room"
  • Lady Baglady (real name: Evelyn Keyes) - A rich woman who, along with her husband, used to pretend to be homeless to get over her boredom with being rich. After she and her husband witness a crime leading to the murder of a wealthy Brazilian heiress, her husband is murdered by the captors, and a string of homeless people are murdered in the search for her. She comes to the retreat to escape the people who want to kill her.
    • "Slumming"
  • The Earl of Slander - A reporter who slanders and murders a former child television actor in order to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning article about his supposed suicide.
    • "Swan Song"
  • The Duke of Vandals - An amateur artist who sneaks paintings into museums. He later becomes a respected professional when he murders a famous artist as a favor to the man who funds the other artist. He has come to the retreat to escape the same fate as the other artist.
    • "Ambition"
  • Director Denial - The director of a police station. She brings with her a cat named Cora Reynolds, named after its former owner, a co-worker who killed herself trying to stop other police officers from using anatomically correct dolls for sexual purposes.
    • "Exodus"
  • Reverend Godless - A former soldier who, with a group of other soldiers, raises money by lip-syncing in drag and allowing people to assault him in order to fund a war on religion.
    • "Punch Drunk"
  • The Matchmaker - A man who dresses similar to a cowboy. He convinced his wife to marry him after hiring a male prostitute to ruin her idea of the perfect man.
    • "Ritual"
  • Sister Vigilante - A religious woman who carries a bowling ball (with which she may or may not have killed people).
    • "Civil Twilight"
  • Chef Assassin (real name: Richard Talbott) - A professional chef who murders critics who write negative reviews of his cooking and blackmails knife manufacturers by threatening to tell the world that he uses only their knives to commit his deeds.
    • "Product Placement"
  • Comrade Snarky - A woman who is critical of other women's looks. When she was a child her parents divorced and her mother continually warned her that her father might sexually abuse her. This, however, never occurred but because of it she has been wary and critical of men for her entire life.
    • "Speaking Bitterness"
  • Agent Tattletale (real name: Eugene Denton) - A man who becomes temporarily crippled and tries to cheat the company he worked for out of worker's compensation after he recovers. After killing a man who was collecting evidence on him for the company, he takes that man's job and is almost killed by a woman who he spied on.
    • "Crippled"
  • The Missing Link - A member of the Chewlah, a tribe of people who are, according to local rumor, able to transform into sasquatches.
    • "Dissertation"
  • The Countess Foresight (real name: Claire Upton) - A woman with psychic powers. She was arrested for murdering a man who she believed murdered Marilyn Monroe. She now wears an electronic tracking bracelet as part of the terms of her parole.
    • "Something's Got to Give"
  • The Baroness Frostbite (real name: Miss Leroy) - A former employee of the White River Lodge, a lodge that had several deadly hot springs near it. She lost her lips to frostbite while trying to save someone from an accident at the hot springs.
    • "Hot Potting"
  • Miss Sneezy (real name: Lisa Noonan) - A woman with chronic sinus problems. She claims to carry an incurable disease, and that she escaped from a government isolation facility.
    • "Evil Spirits"

[edit] "Guts"

The book is best known for the short story "Guts", which had been published previous to the book in the March 2004 issue of Playboy magazine as well as on Palahniuk's website (Palahniuk offered to let them publish another story along with it, but the publishers found the second work too disturbing). It is a tale of violent accidents involving masturbation.

While on his 2003 tour to promote his novel Diary, Palahniuk read "Guts" to his audiences. It was reported that over 35 people fainted while listening to the readings. On his tour to promote Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories in the summer of 2004, he read the story to audiences again, bringing the total amount of fainters up to 53, and later up to 60, while on tour to promote the softcover edition of Diary. The last fainting occurred on September 25, 2004, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Palahniuk is apparently not bothered by these incidents, which have not stopped fans from reading "Guts" or his other works.

In a September 2004 reading of "Guts" at Cooper Union in New York City, no listener admitted to fainting. When Palahniuk showed surprise, many members of the audience replied, "This is New York!" in a nod to the alleged inability to shock the city's denizens.

Many are skeptical about the fainting claims, attributing them to fans wanting to contribute to the count and nauseous audience members claiming to fully pass out.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

"Guts" begins with the narrator telling the reader to hold their breath for the duration of the story, which may have something to do with the faintings.

The narrator then describes three unnerving incidents involving adolescent boys masturbating. First, he describes a boy inserting a carrot into his rectum to stimulate his prostate while masturbating, and then hiding the carrot in a pile of laundry. His mother later takes the laundry away and presumably discovers the lubricated carrot, but never mentions it to him. Next, the narrator describes a young boy inserting a thin stick of candle wax into his urethra to stimulate it while masturbating. The wax slips back into the boy's bladder, requiring surgery to remove it. Finally, the narrator describes an incident in which he sat on the water intake at the bottom of a swimming pool while masturbating. The suction caused his rectum and lower intestines to prolapse and become tangled in the filter, forcing the narrator to gnaw through his own innards in order to free himself and avoid drowning. The narrator's sister later becomes impregnated by semen deposited by the narrator in the pool, which results in her having an abortion.

In all three cases, although the parents of the boys involved knew about the incident, they never discussed it afterwards, causing all three to figuratively "hold their breath" while they waited for the reaction that never came.

Purportedly all three of these incidents are based on true stories. According to Palahniuk, the first two tales came from his friends' experiences and the third he heard while shadowing sexual addiction support groups. In one of these groups, he met an extremely thin man. When Palahniuk asked him how he stayed so thin, he told him "I had a massive bowel resectioning." When Palahniuk asked what he meant, he told him the story which was the basis for the third episode in 'Guts'.

[edit] Editions

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Books by Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club • Survivor • Invisible Monsters • Choke • Lullaby • Diary • Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon • Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories • Haunted
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