Chuck Palahnuik, “Lullaby”
I don’t like “What if” scenarios. What I mean by that, is people when presented with something fictional, wish it could happen to them. Flights of fancy are all well and good, but all to often, it’s just somebody co-opting somebody else’s idea. Examples:
You go to a movie that features time travel and the fat fucks sitting in front of you won’t shut up. “Ooh what if you and I could do that? That would be so cooooooool!” or people who play live-action role playing games: “Vampires are sooooo cool! What if we were vampires? Let’s run around in black at night and wear fangs and quote morose poetry!”
That being said, Lullaby has a story line where a reporter accidentally comes across an ancient verse that kills the people it’s read to. The reporter soon learns he only needs to do is think the eight lines of the poem, and the person he’s thinking of drops dead before the next morning.
Unconsciously, he kills a half-dozen people, simply because they’re annoying. The guy who bumps him on the sidewalk. The kid with the stereo that is turned way too loud. The asshole boss.
And I’m thinking if I could do this, it would be so cool.
The first 120 pages or so of this book are great, a throwback to the earlier supernatural thrillers that Stephen King wrote when he was a fairly decent writer. But Palahniuk likes his gimmicks and wacky characters and subplots, and they all start to collide toward the end, so much so that I was wishing I knew the words to the damn poem so I could kill Palahniuk.
Along with the guy who kept honking his bicycle horn this morning to alert everyone in the neighborhood that he has tamales to sell.
