Stranger than fiction by Chuck Palahniuk (2005). I read just a couple of chapters of this book, not because the rest of the book is not good, but because this book is not really a novel. This book is a collection of independent experiences. It seems like his book was written in-between majors works.
“Reading is a pastime that seems to split us away from others”. “I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back.”. These are some of the sentences that struck in my head because it sounds odd and true at the same time. Reading is an affordable, innocuous and legal drug for those like me that need an escape from reality, from time to time.
One of my favorites chapters is the one about wrestlers. Reading the stories in this chapter reminds me of “fight club” of the same author. Not because of the mental whirlwind of the narrator, but because of the camaraderie among fighters: a bunch of losers sticking together to feel like winners. Or maybe they are not losers after all. We don’t have to win at all times to be a winner. Like one of the wrestlers says: If you try hard and commit yourself to bang and smash your opponent’s head, if you bleed and sweat and get a thousand broken bones, then you already are a winner. Probably your opponent is on something or whatever, but doubtless you’ll be respected.
In another chapter, Andrew Sullivan is a PhD in Political Science, gay, who hang out and dates HIV positive lovers, just for the thrilling experience of relating with somebody who is going to die. This guy is scary: A +HIV is like a saint –he says–, he lives thinking is going to die tonight. It’s like being fascinated by suicide bombers.