At Least They're Committed

The link was pinged to me by a friend, http://iwl.me/, the results of which were at the least wildly amusing (and that’s saying a lot) and at best deeply inspirational. “Who do you write like?” Simple. You put in copy you’ve written, in my case past blog posts, and it tells you whose prose is similar to your own. I was ready — or maybe I’d hoped — for Carroll or Lewis or Twain.

Nope.

First: David Foster Wallace (Getting My Head Chopped Off)

Second: Stephen King (Shift)

Third: Anne Rice (Peril of Personality)

Again and again, one blog after the next, I put them in. After three submissions and no repeats, I pledged to go until I was the same author twice.

Fourth: J.D. Salinger (really? Wow! That was for Contorting)

Fifth: Rudyard Kipling (Back)

Sixth: Chuck Palahnuik (Anything Goes)

Seventh: Chuck Palahnuik (MEC)

Ta-da! Chuck Palahnuik it is! However, I imagine if he were to stumble upon my writing here he’d cringe at the very notion that we write even the least bit alike. No matter.

I was familiar with all these authors except for Wallace and Palahnuik, so I set about finding out more. Turns out there were all sorts of parallels between these authors and even a couple to me. For one, we’re the same age. Well, let me qualify that, we would be the same age if David Foster Wallace hadn’t hung himself on Sept. 12, 2008. In fact, and I wonder if even the authors knew this, Wallace and Palahnuik were born on the very same day. Feb. 21, 1962. Delightful coincidence or sarcological fate? Feb. 21, incidentally, is my mother’s birthday.

Ultimately, I was in search of new reading material and so I now have begun with Palahnuik, who wrote most notably Fight Club. I bought Diary on Saturday and finished it Sunday and will continue to delve deeper into his body of work. It was, um, good. Not life changing, but still good. Next up Haunted, then Pygmy then Lullaby then we’ll see what happens.

But what struck me — as it has before — about the premise of Diary and the suicide of Wallace is the anguish of art. Wallace suffered from depression most of his life. His brilliance came from this agony. Palahniuk’s Misty in Diary was a tortured, self destructive, self doubting artist. He knew too much about her to not feel that way himself.

Flash back: I sit in my bedroom in the dark at age 22 with my typewriter in front of me (look it up in the encyclopedia kids) writing, writing, writing. The more I wrote the deeper my mind went, into the abyss, into the darkness, into the horror, into the supernatural, into the evil. I swear things around me started moving, as if doors were opening to things I maybe did not want to know.

I made a choice. This strange life of self examination and troubling self expression? Or something simpler, safer? Maybe other writers could balance both, but I learned quickly I could not.

Closing the door, I opted for life, love, family, friends . . . relative normalcy. I’m on anti-depressants and have been analyzed again and again and found extremely sane and starkly realistic.

But that’s not to say all of that’s no longer there. It wells up in me and escapes any way it can: Wine, reading, writing . . . I’m oft to be found holding my arms to the sky on rainy nights, wild eyed, mad. It comes out in my dreams like seminal emissions in the night. Reading works by Palahnuik and Wallace will no doubt provide me an outlet to my own welling torment. I won’t have to express it myself if they do. Right?

But maybe I still want to.