re:mote voices

Title: Fugitives And Refugees
Author: Chuck Palhaniuk
Publisher:Vintage

It is my understanding that Chuck Palahniuk’s most recent works were published in a different order in the UK from the US. I think Diary came out there after Fugitives And Refugees, while here it was the other way round. As such I’ve just finished reading Fugitives And Refugees, which is probably Palahniuk’s most curious work to date – described as probably being the closest he will get to writing a biography. In some ways it might be considered a bastard travel guide to Portland, Palahniuk’s home town. In the introductory piece Chuck talks to another Portland author, one who expresses the opinion that Portland is the kind of place where folk migrate to when they travel west – ending up in Portland because it is cheap, so that the kind of people that end up there could be described as “fugitives and refugees”. From that introduction Chuck takes an alternating form – a tour guide chunk followed by what he is calling “postcards”, anecdotes about his life in Portland covering the last 20 years or so.

The result is at times fascinating, amusing or just bemusing. The tour parts reflect Chuck’s sensibilities, covering the weird and wonderful – from haunted houses to the mechanical reclamation of transport; the gardens to visit, the animal characters of the local zoo, where to eat, where to get your photo taken – the works. In some ways the postcards flesh those guides out, with the likes of Chuck’s exploration of a dry docked boat, his part in the Santa riots, crashing festivals. At times the guide parts can be a little dry, reducing down to a sentence description, followed by directions/address, phone number, kind of details. Though there are other entries which make up for that, pages of detail, the ghostly experiences, the explorations of tunnels. Throughout we start to get a better idea of how Chuck works, a greater understanding of where some of his ideas are coming from, as well as the almost obsessive eye for details that is present in all of his novels.