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"FacebookPinterest\n\n\n\nGQ: Doomed is written through the eyes of Madison Spencer, a wily pre-pubescent girl\u2014why her?\n\n Chuck Palahniuk: I started writing the first book\u2014this is the second book in the series\u2014while I was taking care of my mother, who had lung cancer, and I realized that as soon as she died both of my parents would be dead and I knew that it would take years to process my grief. I cognitively reframed it and made it about a little girl who was dead herself and was mourning her parents because they were still alive. And she could process all of her conflicted feelings about her parents the way that I was processing my own, and denying the trauma of being dead. That\u2019s how I made this whole thing funny.\n\nHow\u2019d you tap into her mind?\n\n For most people, when they have children it gives them a chance to revisit the developmental changes they went through as children themselves. And it gives them a chance to kind of recognize the false lessons they learned, and ultimately the ways they didn\u2019t develop right. In a way, having and raising a child allows you to correct aspects of your own character. And I don\u2019t have any children, I never will, but by creating Madison, in a way, I\u2019m able to raise a child and take this child through all these kind of free sexual awarenesses and experiences and in a way I\u2019m able to have that corrective process in a fictional child that most of my friends have in their actual children.\n\nWhy do a series? \n\n A couple reasons. First: I knew that it would take at least three books to kind of exhaust the grief I felt about losing both my parents. Second: I wanted to do something really enormously around theology, kind of reinventing the great big spiritual narrative we live by. I\u2019m trying to create something new, some new kind of story about heaven and hell. And third is this kind of re-parenting of myself through this fictional child.\n\nThis novel has one of the strangest, and least erotic, descriptions of a penis I\u2019ve ever encountered\u2014where does this imagery come from? \n\n Well, that\u2019s what I love about having either a child narrator, or a narrator who is sometimes on drugs. There are different ways of having a narrator who misinterprets the situation, and that\u2019s always so entertaining when characters get things wrong because it allows the reader to recognize the truth and feel vastly superior to the narrator. And it makes the character so endearing and sympathetic. It makes you feel so sorry for them, that they are misinterpreting the situation so wildly. \n\nYou\u2019re halfway through your &amp;quot;Chuck\u2019s DOOMED Pajama Party Tour&amp;quot; book tour\u2014what kind of PJs are you rocking?\n\n I wear Brooks Brothers blue striped pajamas with a beautiful vintage 1950s Sears, Roebuck craftsman red satin bathrobe.\n\nDo you wear the same set to every reading? \n\n I do, and it\u2019s starting to get a little torn apart.\n\nYour next novel, Beautiful You, is already slated for release next fall. What can we expect?\n\n That is the filthy novel. (Doomed is the mild one.) Next year\u2019s is sort of my shot at writing something I\u2019m calling Gonzo-Erotica. It is erotica, but just written very clumsily, like a computer or machine would write erotica. And so, the way I\u2019m writing makes sex really funny. That\u2019s part of the clumsiness of it. That clumsy writing around something like sex, or trauma, destroys the drama of it, and makes it funny.\n\nAny other projects in the works? \n\n I have a collection of short stories and novellas coming out the year after next. And right now I\u2019m working on the graphic novel sequel to Fight Club\u2014we haven\u2019t chosen an artist yet because I want to get the script absolutely perfect before we ask anyone to take a look at it.\n\nDo you have any quirky writing rituals?\n\n I usually wait until five o\u2019clock in the evening and have a cup of coffee. Then, I\u2019ve taken longhand notes throughout the day, and I sit down and I start to keyboard those into the computer and try to organize and juxtapose them with my other stuff and they become stories for the day. But I really write all the time, I just don\u2019t keyboard it in until five o\u2019clock.\n\nWhy\u2019s that? \n\n Because I want to live in the world, I don\u2019t want to sit at my computer any longer than I absolutely have to."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/the-gqa-author-chuck-palahniuk-on-new-book-doomed-and-his-pajamas>