[Fight Club] is like going through an album of snapshots. You might be doing stupid things in them but the older you get, the happier you are that you took those pictures. - Chuck Palahniuk talking exclusively to Transmission, May 2007.
Transmission #08 contains an exclusive interview with the incendiary cult novelist Chuck Palahniuk. He talks about his career, including latest novel, Rant, and the modern classic, Fight Club, and the importance of breaking down the audience’s defences. ‘So much fiction seems to be emotionally-based or intellectually-based,’ he tells Transmission. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much viscerally based fiction. What there is tends to be labelled pornography. The mind and the body should both be present in good fiction.’
Joining Palahniuk in Transmission’s eighth issue is another outspoken novelist, the Booker-winner John Banville. In our exclusive interview, he lives up to his fearsome reputation. ‘[My books] are all deeply, deeply embarrassing,’ he laments. ‘I think they’re better than anyone else’s, but that’s not difficult.’
Elsewhere, novelist and short story writer Nicholas Royle offers advice on how to get an editor excited, Edge Hill University’s Prize for the Short Story is explored and there is the usual rich blend of original short fiction, reviews and articles.