A few nights ago, when reading the James M. Cain short story “Pastorale,” I was struck by a scene that seemed very Chuck Palahniuk-ian[1]. A dead man is pulled out of a frozen lake; the man fell through the thin ice atop the lake when trying to retrieve the severed head of a man he helped kill earlier in the story. But unlike a Chuck Palahniuk story, “Pastorale” kept going. The shock was not the climax. I’m not sure why I immediately forced a comparison to Chuck Palahniuk. The writers, and their work, are completely different. I suppose the use of shock, which I consider a very Palahniuk thing, was used in “Pastorale” in a way that I wasn’t ready for. It’s important to state up front that I love Chuck Palahniuk’s writing. I’ll read every novel he writes, even if they continue to be as bad as his last…
