Page 153: Because Only Books Have That Power.

My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monsters or magic. This would be a book you wouldn't want to keep next to your bed. A book that would be a trapdoor down into some place dark. A place only you could go, alone, when you opened the cover.


Because only books have that power.


A motion picture, or music, or television, they have to maintain a certain decorum in order to be broadcast to a vast audience. Other forms of mass media cost too much to produce to risk reaching only a limited audience. Only one person.


But a book... A book is cheap to print and bind. A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away. Actually, so few people make the effort to read that it's difficult to call books a 'mass medium'. No one really gives a damn about books. No one has bothered to ban a book in decades.


But with that disregard comes the freedom that only books have. And if storyteller is going to write novels instead of screenplays, that's a freedom you need to exploit. Otherwise, write a movie. That's where the big money's at. Write for television.


But, if you want the freedom to go anywhere, talk about anything, then write books. That's why I wrote 'Guts'. Just a three-act short story based on true-life anecdotes.


People write to say this story is the funniest they've ever heard.
People write to say it's the saddest they've ever heard.


And 'Guts' is by no means the darkest or funniest or most upsetting story from the novel Haunted. Some, I didn't dare read in public.


These are the places that only books can go. This is the advantage that books still have. This is why I write. 

image courtesy: here

- Chuck Palahniuk -

I've just finished reading 'Haunted', and those words above printed on the last page, and all i can say was, "true. I agree with you, Chuck. You sick...genius" :))