Product Description

"Diary" takes the form of a 'coma diary' kept by one Misty Wilmot as her husband lies senseless in hospital after a suicide attempt. Once, she was an art student dreaming of creativity and freedom; now, after marrying Peter at art school and being brought back to once quaint, now tourist-overrun Waytansea Island, she's been reduced to the condition of a resort hotel maid. Peter, it turns out, has been hiding rooms in house he's refurbished and scrawling vile messages all over the walls - an old habit of builders but gone nuts on his part. Angry homeowners are sueing left and right, and Misty's dreams of artistic greatness are in ashes. But then, as if possessed by the spirit of Maura Kinkaid, a fabled Waytansea artist of the nineteenth century, Misty begins painting again, compulsively. The canvases are taken away by her mother-in-law and her doctor, who seem to have a plan for Misty - and for all those annoying tourists...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73188 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From the Publisher
The bestselling author of Lullaby and Choke continues his twenty-first century reinvention of the horror novel in this homage to Rosemary's Baby.

About the Author
Chuck Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club (made into a film by director David Fincher), Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke and Lullaby. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Excerpted from Diary by Chuck Palahniuk. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
June 21 -
The Three-Quarter Moon

Today a man called from Long Beach. He left a long message on the answering machine, mumbling and shouting, talking fast and slow, swearing and threatening to call the police, to have you arrested.

Today is the longest day of the year - but anymore, every day is.

The weather today is increasing concern followed by full-blown dread.

The man calling from Long Beach, he says his bathroom is missing.

June 22 -
By the time you read this, you 'll be older than you remember.

The official name for your liver spots is hyperpigmented lentigines .The official anatomy word for a wrinkle is rhytide . Those creases in the top half of your face, the rhytides plowed across your forehead and around your eyes, this is dynamic wrinkling, also called hyperfunctional facial lines ,caused by the movement of underlying muscles. Most wrinkles in the lower half of the face are static rhytides, caused by sun and gravity.

Let 's look in the mirror. Really look at your face.Look at your eyes, your mouth.

This is what you think you know best.

Your skin comes in three basic layers.What you can touch is the stratum corneum, a layer of flat, dead skin cells pushed up by the new cells under them. What you feel, that greasy feeling, is your acid mantle, the coating of oil and sweat that pro- tects you from germs and fungus. Under that is your dermis. Below the dermis is a layer of fat. Below the fat are the muscles of your face.

Maybe you remember all this from art school, from Figure Anatomy 201. But then, maybe not.

When you pull up your upper lip -when you show that one top tooth, the one the museum guard broke -this is your levator labii superioris muscle at work. Your sneer muscle. Let 's pretend you smell some old stale urine. Imagine your husband 's just killed himself in your family car. Imagine you have to go out and sponge his piss out of the driver's seat. Pretend you still have to drive this stinking rusted junk pile to work, with everyone watching, everyone knowing, because it 's the only car you have.

Does any of this ring a bell?

When a normal person, some normal innocent person who sure as hell deserved a lot better, when she comes home from waiting tables all day and finds her husband suffocated in the family car, his bladder leaking, and she screams, this is simply her orbicularis oris stretched to the very limit.

That deep crease from each corner of your mouth to your nose is your nasolabial fold .Sometimes called your "sneer pocket." As you age, the little round cushion of fat inside your cheek, the official anatomy word is malar fat pad, it slides lower and lower until it comes to rest against your nasolabial fold - making your face a permanent sneer.

This is just a little refresher course. A little step-by-step. Just a little brushing up. In case you don't recognize your-self.

Now frown. This is your triangularis muscle pulling down the corners of your orbicularis oris muscle.

Pretend you 're a twelve-year-old girl who loved her father like crazy. You 're a little preteen girl who needs her dad more than ever before. Who counted on her father always to be there. Imagine you go to bed crying every night, your eyes clamped shut so hard they swell.

The "orange peel " texture of your chin, , these "popply " bumps are caused by your mentalis muscle. Your "pouting" muscle. Those frown lines you see every morning, getting deeper, running from each corner of your mouth down to the edge of your chin, those are called marionette lines .The wrin- kles between your eyebrows, they 're glabellar furrows .The way your swollen eyelids sag down is called ptosis .Your lateral canthal rhytides, your "crow's-feet," are worse every day and you 're only twelve fucking years old for God 's sake.

Don 't pretend you don 't know what this is about.

This is your face.

Now, smile - if you still can.

This is your zygomatic major muscle.Each contraction pulls your flesh apart the way tiebacks hold open the drapes in your living room window. The way cables pull aside a theater curtain, your every smile is an opening night. A premiere. You unveiling yourself.

Now, smile the way an elderly mother would when her only son kills himself.Smile and pat the hand of his wife and his preteen daughter and tell them not to worry -everything really will work out for the best. Just keep smiling and pin up your long gray hair.Go play bridge with your old lady friends. Powder your nose.

That huge horrible wad of fat you see hanging under your chin, your jowls, getting bigger and jigglier every day, that 's submental fat. That crinkly ring of wrinkles around your neck is a platysmal band .The whole slow slide of your face, your chin and neck is caused by gravity dragging down on your superficial musculo-aponeurotic system .

Sound familiar?

If you're a little confused right now, relax. Don 't worry. All you need to know is this is your face. This is what you think you know best.

These are the three layers of your skin.

These are the three women in your life.

The epidermis, the dermis, and the fat.

Your wife, your daughter, and your mother.

If you're reading this, welcome back to reality.This is where all that glorious, unlimited potential of your youth has led.All that unfulfilled promise.Here 's what you 've done with your life.

Your name is Peter Wilmot.

All you need to understand is you turned out to be one sorry sack of shit.

Customer Reviews

He writes like a pro
Chuck Palahniuk is one of those writers who, after you've read one of his books, you have to read all the others. It's the same way with the works of David Sedaris and Jackson McCrae; Christopher Moore, too. And so I came by way of Diary through Fight Club and Survivor.

Palahniuk's works are dark and disturbing, but there's a wry, cynical humor there also. He obviously owes a debt of gratitude to Kurt Vonnegut and the likes of even Oscar Wilde, but he's made his style his own and it's one heck of a style.

As usual, the author wraps his books around some theme (infanticide, choking, etc) but the ideas go deeper and more complex than you can imagine. Much in the same was as McCrae's Katzenjammer does with its odd twists and turns. Or the way Martin Amis convolutes his plots in his Money and Success. If you want a book like no other--if you want a lot of them--then read Diary and all other C.P. books.

Chilling
This book is the most darkly compelling novel I have ever read. I would read, disgusted, almost unwilling to continue, but nevertheless unable to stop; something that I share with the main character of the book. If you enjoyed Fight Club, and Chuck's perfect little narrative soundbytes, you will love this book as much as I do. Here is a classic example:

"Just for the record, the weather today is bitter with occasional fits of jealous rage".

The book is graphic, gritty, and overwhelming. Chuck's repetition of phrases throughout the book such as the one above give it an almost hypnotic quality. You will see where the story is going long before the main character, you will scream for her to stop, to run, praying that she will evade the inevitable.

Books this involving may just save us all from illiterate damnation :)

"Everything is a self-portrait"
Chuck Palahniuk's sixth novel takes the form a 'coma diary' written by Misty Wilmot, a washed-up art student whose husband, Peter, has been left unconscious after a botched suicide. Long-time readers of Palahniuk will immediately recognise the author's distinct, so-called nihilistic style, and like Fight Club and Lullaby before it, Diary is both blackly comic and astoundingly original. Take for, example, the opening line from the book's second entry (June 22): "By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember." In the four pages that follow, Palahniuk succeeds in identifying Peter as a rather despicable character and eliciting sympathy for the long suffering Misty - all by way of a simple science lesson about the movement of the facial muscles.

In truth, there is nothing pretty about Palahniuk's writing, and his 'informative', minimalist style - not to mention a cast of rather bizarre characters - will turn off as many readers as it will attract. The author makes little attempt to hide the fact that he is trying to deliver his own message; indeed, sometimes he seems at pains to get his point across - to the slight detriment of the narrative's flow. And while the numerous artistic and historical references scattered throughout clearly serve a purpose, there is occasionally a sense that ol' Chuck is being a bit smug. For example, the name of the island on which Misty has wound up - the place that still, in spite of everything, holds the key to her dreams - is called Waytansea. Geddit?

And yet this is a beautiful book; an intricate, well executed piece of fiction-writing with a plot that unfolds in an intriguing and twisted manner, as Misty makes one unpleasant discovery after another about her senseless husband. Once again, Palahniuk manages to take the reader and show them a world beyond life's little tragedies, wherein his characters find inspiration from the most unlikely of sources and discover the true strength of the human spirit. Diary is an ambitious, transcendent and inspiring book, and as such, it's one that I highly recommend.

Matt Pucci