Palahniuk & Bond

The only connection there being that I’m writing about both of them now: hit RANT the other day, and, like SNUFF, I really dug it. I’m liking the direction he’s going lately. Anyway, I guess that’s the complete text of my review there, ‘I dug it,’ but, specifically, and all spoilerly, so watch out, he does a move in RANT which is just so, so slick. But again, don’t read this if you haven’t read RANT. Anyway, there’s this one part where Echo’s telling Rant’s story a bit, saying how Rant’s dad told him to specifically look for her, when it’s impossible either of them could, at the point, even know her, which already gets our narrative suspicions tingling, but then the immediate follow-up to that is somebody else, I forget who, but somebody close to her, he says not to believe a word she says. And that’s so, so wonderful, as it introduces an element of uncertainty into the story. The illusion so far’s been that all these voices speaking at once, there’s authority there, as they’re not conradicting each other. But now there’s this kind of internal conflict just in the storytelling. Which just amps everything up fastlike. But he’s not done yet, either: later in the story, the text ‘gains back’ its seemingly lost authority by using the very questionable science of (possibly real, possibly not) time travel to ‘allow’ what Echo had said to be true. It’s a very, very slick move. Only thing I’ve seen even somewhat close is in DAVE THE BARBARIAN, when Chuckles the Silly Piggy, tired of being foiled again and again, just kidnaps the show’s narrator, makes him narrate it such that Chuckles is finally on top.

Anyway, dug it, RANT. What I mostly meant to say. Same with QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Granted, the stunts aren’t quite what they were in CASINO ROYALE, but the grittiness, the no-gadgetry-ness, it’s still there. And all the camp, it’s gone, yesterday’s crutch. And, very importantly, instead of being just another humorous episode, with high adventure, this is more like the continuing chronicle of a developing character. Wholly uncharted territory, for Bond anyway. Wholly necessary territory too, if the franchise actually wants to keep the audience. As for the story, it’s simple, and I won’t go into it, other than to say it’s more than worth hitting. Of interest, though, at least to me, is that X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE seem to have been shelved beside each other in their infancy or something. Just because, I mean, Scully and Mulder, they got the conventional Bond-ending, and Bond, he got the ‘walking into more darkness’-ending usually reserved for Mulder. It’s a neat shuffle, I mean.

And, for me, reading now, Evenson’s NO EXIT, and wondering pretty hard why I haven’t done something like this yet.

Too, anybody in the Portland area, that’s where I am Wednesday.