Some Quotes to Chew On

     I just finished reading Chuck Palahniuk's non-fiction Consider This, and there were a couple of quotes on which my mind continued to ponder.

The first:

    This is another reason to bother collecting stories. Because our existence is a constant flow of the impossible, the implausible, the coincidental. And what we see on television and in films bust always be diluted to make it "believable." We're trained to live in constant denial of the miraculous. And it's only by telling our stories that we get any sense of how extraordinary human existence can actually be.

    To shut yourself off from these stories is to accept the banal version of reality that's always used to frame advertisements for miracle wrinkle creams and miracle diet pills. It's as if we've denied the real magic of life so that we can sell each other the sham magic of consumer products. Another example of the shop replacing the church. (186)

    It's becoming more clear each day that the Internet (note the capital "I") is changing how we interact with the real world. I think the biggest change is the way we are inundated with advertisements. To be clear: we were inundated before the Internet. But the Internet allows for personalized targeted ads and feeds which then become self-fulfilling prophecies of our perceived needs. Through this, our egos are gluttonously fed and we look only at ourselves, missing the world around us for the world inside our heads. The reality is, though, that the world around us is much more fascinating and interesting than anything we could invent with our minds.

The second:

Eventually every writer becomes another writer's story. (232)

    It amazes me the kind of stories I read now about writer's like Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. Likewise, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Octavia Butler. Stephen King. On and on. Their lives become the center of their stories just as much as the writing they did which earned them their renown. These anecdotes color in their work - fairly or unfairly - and run the risk of overtaking the value of the work itself.

    Just a few things that crossed my mind as I let these quotes simmer.