Phoenix Unpacked: Part One – Suddenly, Last Christmas
Note: This essay contains spoilers for the new Kindle Single, 'Phoenix' by Chuck Palahniuk. If you haven't yet read this wonderful story, remedy that right now.
by Chuck Palahniuk
If you’ve had a chance to read Phoenix, thank you. It consists of cat-related anecdotes I’ve heard over the past several years. Chances are you’ve already heard me tell a small part of it on tour. The best fiction rises – yes, like a phoenix – out of the ashes of people’s sad, true disasters. We write in order to repeat the past. As it says in the story, “…The people will always be humping next door. The cat will always be screaming around every house they own...”
If you’re reading this be warned. It will make very little sense unless you’re read Phoenix. In this essay I’ll explore the mechanics of the story. Everything I write is constructed like a truck on the Freightliner assembly line: Smaller components of the vehicle are assembled by teams in far-flung locations. Prior to the final draft, the whole project looks like a spread-out mess. Then – flash – the truck is whole. Then, amazingly, It Drives Away Under Its Own Power!
When I worked at Freightliner we built 26, sometimes 27 trucks in eight hours. That seems impossible until you consider that the “assembly line” is less like a line than like a branched river system. The parts of a story flow into it from every direction. It would be too exhausting to look at them all – the plot, the themes, the authority, the original sources, the metaphors – so this essay will focus on the basic shape of the story.
In the past I’ve called these – stories of this shape -- “Postage Stamp” or “Thumbnail” stories because we’re told the entire story in miniature as it begins. In the film Titanic we’re shown a rough computer model of how the ship will sink. In Citizen Kane we’re shown the crude newsreel about the life and death of Charles Foster Kane. In both cases, these little sneak-peeks hook us with the promise of big events to come. They whet our appetite like a Shakespearean prologue. This structure also dampens the melodrama of the plot points. For example, we know most of the people will die on the Titanic. We know Charles Foster Kane’s love affair will be exposed and ruin his political career. By sacrificing the surprise of those events, the authors allow the audience to focus on the deeper emotions that are motivating the characters. read more »
