User blog comment:HumboldtLycanthrope/I am taking an online creative writing class taught by Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk/@comment-26030957-20150907044922

Want to read some incredible writing I pointed out in Chuck's writer's scavenger hunt?

This is from the closing pages of Bret Easton's novel Lunar Park, one of my favorite books, which is presented as a horror story (though it is obviously transgressive, post-modern). This is a montage which uses the ashes of the protagonist's father as a device to show generations of hope and loss. I edited it down from three pages to 256 words.

"The ashes ignited into a prism and began forming patterns and started reflecting the men and women who had created him and me and Robby. They drifted over a mother's smile and shaded a sister's out-stretched hand and shifted past all the things you wanted to share with everyone.  I want to show you something, the ashes whispered. . . a multitude of images from the past, dipping down and then flying back into the air. . . ashes fell across their first kiss and then over a young couple pushing a baby in a stroller at the Farmer's Market. . . the ashes flew across the balloons and gently extinguished the candles burning delicately on the store-bought cake on the kitchen table on your birthday, they twirled around a Christmas tree that stood in the center of the living room. . . the racing bike you pedaled along a sidewalk when you were five. . . and there was a song playing ("Someone Saved My Life Tonight," the writer says) and the ashes dotted the Polaroids of your mother and father as young parents. . . drifting over all the promises canceled and the connections missed, the desires left unfulfilled and the disappointments met and the fears confirmed and every slammed door. . . hiding our imperfections from ourselves even as the ashes flew through our blood. . .and dusted the face of my son who was dreaming about the moon. . . over the graves of his parents and finally entered the cold, lit world of the dead where they wept. . ."