#269 Eleanor- Chuck Palahniuk
You know…I don't really know what’s going on in this
story. It’s written in a dialect, but I’m not sure exactly what dialect it’s
supposed to be. He wrote his novel Pygmy is a dialect as well, and I didn’t
like that book at all either. So, maybe this technique, while inventive and
probably difficult to accomplish, just isn’t my favorite thing to read.
What I gathered upon my first read is that Randy used to
live in Oregon, got a settlement when his father dies in a logging accident, lives somewhere in California in a neighborhood with pink stucco and no
trees, he’s shacked up with reality agent, hates his non English speaking
neighbors, and has a dog named Eleanor.
There wasn’t a second reading.
Note: anyone thinking that I haven’t given this a fair
shake—there is no such thing as a fair shake when reading. I read it, it didn’t hold my attention, I moved on. I like Palahniuk…I hated this.
I totally get it. By that I mean I totally understand not giving it a second chance. But hear me out. As a reader, you are confused and jumbled up when reading this short story. This is supposed to emulate how Randy is on a day to day basis. He struggles to understand how life has gotten away from him. Like the tree he has grown and changed and had life fall on top of him (in classic Palahniuk literal irony). He buys the house specifically to avoid trees, and he waits for his pornstar to arrive and find him there and his fantasy will be complete. In the meantime he woo's the realtor just enough to marry him. He treats her poorly, his fantasy is not filled. Eleanor morbidly fetches a baby doll for Randy's laugh. The realtor eventually puts a tree in his house. His worst nightmare slowly came true, building up slowly over time and then snapping in an instant. (Am I wrong for presuming that his wife pushed the tree on him) Eleanor is chased down and hunted for doing what Randy trained her to do all along, Naive to the whole situation, just like Randy was naive to his life changing slowly before him waiting on a pornstar to come making his fantasy complete. The last few sentences are Randy thinking longingly thinking about Eleanor running away from it all, back to Oregon with all those trees.
ReplyDeleteI think you nailed it. And only the second Google link after searching “Palahniuk Eleanor”. The first link is a Reddit thread that could use your help.
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