DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Diary, while inventive and dark and satirical and Vonnegut-esque, is thus far my least favorite Palahniuk book.

I respect the author’s willingness to embrace the supernatural. The idea that a girl from a trailer park can paint domestic scenes of wealthy neighborhoods she’s never seen, but which turn out to exist, with such a level of detail that the subjects recognize themselves on the canvas, is as cool a concept as the nursery rhyme that kills entire families (see Lullabye). Yet the explanation, when it comes, is neither believable nor, more critically, interesting.

The characters are quirky, distinct, original, and wholly unsympathetic. Terrible things happen to most of them, and in every case my reaction was, “Okay, then.”

Palahniuk’s distinctive writing style is fully exercised, but not entirely successful. We’re to believe that the book is the diary of one of the characters, but the narrative voice changes awkwardly, and the text is too insightful and omniscient to possibly be the actual experience of the main character.

I save almost every book I read, but this one is going up on half.com.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (hardback)
• Amazon (paperback)

We visited the Charles Schultz Museum, on the theory that little kids enjoy comics. I think maybe our kid is too little, though; he slept through the whole thing. And he can’t see very well yet anyway.

I wandered through the space, reading the placards and the old strips. I’m not really a fan of Peanuts, so I felt disconnected from it all. The exhibit that most appealed to me demonstrates this, as it results from an exchange between the comic and the real world: Snoopy’s Doghouse gets “Wrapped” By Christo

The original Peanuts strips were drawn on sheets of paper measuring about 30'' wide. At that size, the drawings seem much more like art. Most of the detail is lost when the size is reduced to 15% and printed with an 85-line screen onto fuzzy newspaper stock. There’s something beautiful in the bold black lines on thick matte paper that’s entirely absent from the reproductions on newsprint with muffler-shop ads bleeding through from behind.

The biggest eye-opener in the entire museum was this innocuous book on a low table amid photo albums and scrapbooks. “For Adults,” the label declared. What could this be — long-suppressed Peanuts porn, revealed only after the artist’s death?

But it was just a guestbook. I guess the label is an attempt to keep youngsters from doodling on the pages.

On the morning of the delivery, the nurse hands a sheaf of forms to the mother-to-be. Buried within is a release form offering a free portrait of the new baby. Mom is wired to three different machines, having her pulse and blood pressure measured automatically while two others sensors detect uterine contractions and the baby’s heart rate and another chattering electromechanical behemoth plots a seismograph of both. She’s frightened and excited and anxious and slightly nauseous and terrified — oh, wait, sorry, that’s Dad. But she’s not paying close attention to the paperwork; who wants to read ten pages of contracts an hour before having a baby?

A day later, the baby’s out, Mom’s recovering, and Dad is slightly less insane although even more paranoid, if that’s possible. A nurse enters the room to confirm scheduling for the baby photo. Dad expresses confusion, having misunderstood that a member of the hospital staff would shoot a Polaroid for the gallery on the nursery wall. In fact, the photo enterprise is run by a third party, Growing Family. They’ll shoot a picture of your munchkin, in exchange for his or her name and birthdate and your full name and address.

Does this smell like last month’s tuna salad? How many marketers do you think would be interested in knowing you just had a baby? Hint: all of them.

Growing Family’s privacy policy has a long and impressively complicated name: “Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act”. But it gives them the right to share your private information with anyone they choose. This must be some new use of the word “protection” I wasn’t previously familiar with:

Growing Family will use your information from time to time to promote additional products, services, rewards and special offers from Growing Family Network and its select Network Partners.

My point is not that Growing Family was deceitful. My point is that, to my dismay, caveat emptor begins at birth.