Every dysfunctional character in the novels of Chuck Palahniuk,

Angostura Bitters

Angostura Bitters

Why can’t I get enough Chuck Palahniuk? I am in touch with my masculinity as much as any other ex-New Yorker (don’t mess with me suburbia and rurality!). And while corporations piss me off with their lack-of-culpability shenanigans, these last years have shown that a corporation’s own worst enemy isn’t the free market or anarchists, but itself. I have never felt the need to make huge, intentional strides towards my own mortality (via gangbang or otherwise), nor have I considered myself a pawn in some quasi-Wicker Man (Not The Bees!) conspiracy. And I most certainly haven’t found a way to go back in time to kill myself to make me stronger (wha-?). But that doesn’t keep me from curling up with each new book he writes, and bathing in the lurid details of lives I’ll never lead. And so I see all of Chuck’s characters lining up at a bar and not ordering something that tastes good, a drink that would placate and satisfy not only with its alcohol content, but with its masterful preparation and perfect balance of flavors. No, I see them ordering only that which tastes awful, and will be sure to induce a hangover. Even as Americans shun bitter flavors, and embrace sickening sweetness, so do Chuck’s people shun comfort and embrace pain.