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Letter from the Editor, Issue 31
For the whole staff of the magazine, for the last nine months, the Chuck Palahniuk interview has become something of a Holy Grail: ever-shining in the mind, but something they would likely never see in their lifetimes. Despite having conducted the interview a little less than a year ago, and mostly transcribed it within a month, it had languished in my To Do list for that time, being slowly worked on, but mostly gathering dust. The reasons for that are multiple, and not the least among them was that at that point I was literally doing almost EVERYTHING there was to put out the paper: all the management, business, a good portion of the ad sales, 90% of layout, most show promotion, all editing, etcetera, etcetera. There was also a point that was reached, despite it being a great interview, where there was concern that maybe it was too late to be relevant—the book had come out, the tour was over, the Chuck Palahniuk promotions machine was winding down. So we decided to sit on it until he had another book come out (like, um, now!). But probably the biggest reason for it taking so long is that I have been absolutely, tooth-grindingly, buttock-clenchingly terrified, knowing that there was a really, really good chance that Chuck Palahniuk was going to personally wind up reading my writing. I mean, preparing for the interview was horrifying enough—it’s one thing to interview bands, because though they’re usually all talented and stuff, they’re not exactly known to be threateningly smart, articulate, well read, whatever. Chuck Palahniuk is. I was petrified that I would say something stupid, that I would somehow fall below him, that I wouldn’t be able to keep him interested enough to talk for long or get a good interview. Turned out he was one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. I hate people who get all star struck, and I generally think that celebrities either fall into the categories of idiots who got lucky and received good bone structure, or tortured geniuses who will wind up killing themselves. But I was absolutely star-struck and stupid about Chuck Palahniuk afterwards. I swear, I worked out really hard for almost a solid month. I kept quoting him in conversations. I was a huge dork about it, and wanted to become some sort of disciple in Chuck Palahniuk’s cult. Or something equally embarrassing. Which then created a whole new problem: how do I write something I would be okay with this man reading? And how do I not come off like the brand of idiotic ass-suck that I abhor? I’m not entirely sure I succeeded on the latter, but you be the judge.
Your Loving Ogre, Michael Houghton
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