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M R Crake
Eng 1118
Informed Reading Essay




Creating
Visceral Images
in the Minds Eye:

An Analysis of Chuck Palahniuks
Guts

In the fall of 2003, in a bookstore, in Oregon, author Chuck Palahniuk read his short
story Guts to an audience for the first time. He was on tour promoting his book
Diary. Two people fainted. They were the first of a tallied sixty-seven people to
collapse during his readings (Palahniuk, The Guts Effect). This happened for two
reasons; first the storys subject matter is uncomfortably sexual, humiliating and
gruesome and second, Palahniuk is so effective at using images in his narrative that
readers (and audience members) cant help but picture it in their minds eye. The
way he has written Guts makes it impossible for readers to keep the story at a
distance; sensually and emotionally.

Heather Sellers tells us in her book, The Practice of Writing, that the readers
experience is crafted through the use of images, which are [the] basic [units] for
creative writing (123). It is through images that Palahniuks readers are
transported into his storyon a sentence level through descriptions that are
specific, minimalist and that activate all five senses, as well as structurally; how the
camera moves within the storyclose up for action and character interactions, and
wide angles for sliding between scenes.

Guts starts off with single-sentence paragraphs:

Inhale.
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Take in as much air as you can (Palahniuk, Guts).

They are minimalist, powerful, and immediately set the pace and tone for the rest of
the story.

Palahniuk uses this technique throughout. And it marries well with his style. Guts
is not flowery; there are no explanations, thoughts or feelings. It is specific, direct
and notably objective. Minimalism lends itself to greater engagement on the
readers behalf because it presents them with bare facts, they are therefore
permitted to draw their own conclusions. Palahniuk explains it best in his essay,
She Breaks Your Heart:

This means writing without passing any judgments.
Nothing is fed to the reader as fat or happy. You can only
describe actions and appearances in a way that makes a
judgment occur in the reader's mind. Whatever it is, you
unpack it into the details that will re-assemble themselves
within the reader.

Its whats at the heart of the show dont tell philosophy. Executed correctly,
readers will be biting their fingernails late at night unable to put the book down.

Guts is based on three true anecdotes about masturbation gone wrong (Palahniuk,
The Guts Effect). Each act is more horrific than the last, and all three are made
nauseatingly vivid through images that inspire all five senses. One PG example is
Palahniuks description of a character who is underwater in the familys backyard
pool: I'm settling on the pool bottom, and the sky is wavy, light blue through eight
feet of water above my head. The world is silent except for the heartbeat in my ears
(Guts). Readers can easily orient themselves in this imagein the pool, looking up
at the sky through the waters surface, listening to a heartbeat. Sellers describes
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images as sustained moving pictures [like] a dream or a movie (117). Palahniuk
achieves this.

Another quality to Palahniuks writing is the clarity of action at the sentence level.
He answers all the questions a reader will have (Where is the character? What is the
character doing? What is happening?) by writing events sequentially and giving
each action its own sentence. As Sellers reminds us, [An] important aspect of
manipulating images is remembering the limitations of the sentence. Do only one
thing at a time (132). When the writer adheres to this technique, it is easier for the
reader to follow the action and it allows them to stay immersed in the images. A
reader can be pulled out of a story if they have to reread a sentence or paragraph to
understand it. Nothing breaks the magic of a story more than an awkward sentence
or sequence.

And nothing ruins a readers experience more than boring writing. Even though the
subject matter of his story is compelling and dramatized, and this works in his favor
for keeping his readers attention, Palahniuk has perfected what he calls writing on
the body, where [you] don't have to hold readers by both ears and ram every
moment down their throats. Instead, a story can be a succession of tasty, smelly,
touchable details (She Breaks Your Heart). This is in essence the technique of
building bridges between images (Sellers 134), but by a different name.

Sellers defines two types of bridges: summary images and sliding, where both allow
the writer to cover time and space between highlighted images while keeping the
storys context and energy (135). Palahniuk exemplifies this in Guts when one
character is in the middle of pegging himself with a carrot and his mom calls him
down for dinner. The teenager hides the carrot in a pile of dirty clothes, but while he
is eating the mom has taken them to do laundry. The summary images that follow
also serve as the conclusion to this particular anecdote: This friend of mine, he
waits months under a black cloud, waiting for his folks to confront him. And they
never do. Ever. Even now hes grown up, that invisible carrot hangs over every
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Christmas dinner, every birthday party (Guts). The rest of the characters life is
played out in the readers mind. Palahniuk doesnt explain how the character feels,
or how this event has affected his life or his relationship with his mom.

Palahniuk doesnt have to. This is because he has mastered balancing on the high
wire between manipulating the readers imagination and emotions, and trusting the
reader to draw their own conclusions and interpretations. Reading Palahniuks
Guts makes Sellers study on how to use images in creative writing more concrete.
Palahniuk and Seller together teach us to take a visual approach to writing. There is
a similarity between writing and filmmaking that Ive never noticed before. The
close up shot is at the sentence levelclear and precise. The middle shots are the
images that focus on action and character interaction. And the wide-angle shot
represents the bridges between images. When these building blocks are used
correctly, energy and tension occur organicallywhich leaves us with insight.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote Guts with the intention of writing a horror story grounded
in the ordinary world (The Guts Effect). No daemons. No vampires. Only raw and
horrific consequences of the human condition. This is why the story triggered such
visceral reactions from its audience. His writing isnt for everyone. It is sometimes
dismissed for being disturbing and excessively violent for shock values sake. I dont
share this opinionI think the polarized reactions to his works are proportional to
the meaning and insight within them. People just dont like recognizing themselves
in the deplorable characters of his stories.

In this way Palahniuk takes advantage of the freedom the creative writing medium
naturally lends. He says, [If] you want to talk about anything, then write books
These are the places that only books can go. This is the advantage that books still
have. This is why I write (The Guts Effect). This means writing about things that
are ugly and personal and painful. If I am to write anything meaningful or
worthwhile I too will have to be courageous with subject matter and insight. Going
after readers buried feelings and hidden secrets means first exposing my own.
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Works Cited


Palahniuk, Chuck. Guts. Chuck Palahniuk. N.p. 6 Jan. 2008. Web. 5 March. 2013.


---. The Guts Effect. Chuck Palahniuk. N.p. N.d. Web. 5 March. 2013.


---. She Breaks Your Heart. LA Weekly. N.p. 18 Sept. 2002. Web. 8 March. 2013.


Sellers, Heather. The Practice of Writing. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins,
2013. Print.







































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