Adult Swim: Celeb-Nerdy with Chuck Palahniuk

You don't gotta be some sorta fancy city boy with book-learnin' skills to have heard of Chuck Palahniuk. Unquestionably his most famous string of inscribed marble slabs was Fight Club, which was turned into an incendiary flick starring Brad Pitt back in the day. The Portland, OR-based novelist has still been writing up a storm in the years since -- his latest novel is called Damned -- which got us wondering about what sort of nerdy hobbies the dude has. We called him up, and after some cajoling, he agreed to open up about what he thinks is the nerdiest hobby a grown man can have: tending to a garden. We think if he called it tending his "man garden" it would sound hella tougher.

Damned By Chuck Palahniuk

When did you get started with gardening?

It's always been a family thing. When other families go, I don't know, to Yellowstone Park, our family always goes to gardens. When we look at home movies of my parents growing up, their parents always took them to big public gardens. So it goes way back.

Was that something you embraced as a kid? When did you develop the green thumb yourself?

It was something we had to do as kids. We had to help take care of the yard and the garden, to make it look like a big showplace. It was synonymous with the happiest times growing up. I think it's something we each try to recreate mentally, to recreate the happiest times growing up.

How does that manifest itself as an adult?

It means that every year I put in more garden, because I have acres of garden. The gardens get more elaborate every year. People come over and they're stunned that I've got probably at this point about two and a half acres just elaborately planted every summer.

“We had to help take care of the yard and the garden, to make it look like a big showplace. It was synonymous with the happiest times growing up.”

You say they're elaborate -- can you explain?

[Laughs.] I'll have nothing in a practical or useful way. You know those big Victorian bedding schemes where it's a 600' clock or a giant "Welcome To Tulsa, Oklahoma" sign planted on a slight slope? I'll have 1,800 geraniums, all of these flowering plants, that will flower all summer long all over the house and around the house, and I'll have six tomatoes. That'll be the only practical thing. I just don't eat that much. And there's always that burden of waste when you've got 1,800 zucchini out there all producing zucchini at the same time and your friends have basically the same thing. You just hate to see strawberries and green beans rotting on the plant. But with geraniums and flowering annuals there isn't that sense that you've got to go out. But every year there's another big patch of property that I decide, "You know, that would be great to put that all under, to plant something there."

Growing Zucchini

Are there any advantages to being located in the Pacific Northwest as it relates to gardening? Is there stuff you can only grow there that doesn't work in other regions or even countries?

Roses do great. But pretty much everything does great. And it grows despite the deer and the rabbits eating it. Everything grows so profusely that it doesn't matter what nibbles away at it. It's always there and it's always growing.

When you're on book tours, like you are now, or just traveling around, do you try to seek out the local plant life or botanical gardens? Or this is something you strictly leave in your own backyard?

It's kind of worse because when I visit my siblings, my aunts, my uncles, or my cousins, we all have the same obsession. The first thing we say is, "How is your garden? What are you growing? What have you tried? Have you cut your roses back yet?" We all kind of hold each other to the line with this fantastic obsession.

Where in the obsession do you fall compared to the rest of your family?

I am one of the worst because I am right up there with the old people who are retired and spend every waking moment [gardening]. I can spend every sunny day devoted to it. If the sun is shining, I don't have to be writing, so I can go out and garden.

“Weeding is great for your writing.”

Does it relax you? Or how does it affect your mood?

It exhausts me. And that's its purpose: It's like the dog that walks you. It draws me outside, it exhausts me, and it engages my creativity and imagination in a non-linguistic way. So it tends to produce a lot of strong ideas because I'm not actively trying to solve a problem in my writing. I'm trying to weed. Weeding is great for your writing.

What was your last epiphany from weeding?

It's so consistent, but I can't really tie it to anything -- any specific idea. Most of my writing happens in a process like that. Growing up, I remember if you walked around our garden you would always find half-filled coffee cups or cigarettes sitting in ashtrays, like a party that always ended. That's where we spent all our leisure time, working there. Now if you walk around my garden you find these notebooks that are scribbled with ideas and half-finished stories that are just sitting around, waiting for someone to have an idea.

Weeding Tools

Is it more the physical act of gardening or the sensory aspects, like the smells, that help trigger you?

I think it's all of the above. It's the engagement of the physical senses and physical activity, the labor of it, that disengages the mind and allows my mind to wander. That's when ideas will occur. Connections that I can't actively make myself.

When I found out you were into gardening, I Googled around on it and all I could find was a thread on your official website's message board from 2005. Have you ever run into fans who have approached you about gardening, or told you you inspired them to get into it? Or do people not really know this about you?

No, I've been terribly in the closet about this. This is not the sexy part of my life I want to throw out there. [Laughs.] It's really a dweeby, old-person thing.

“I'll still go outside and say, 'I'm gonna be out there for 10 minutes.' Next thing I know I'm out there six or seven hours, just getting started and not being able to stop.”

What's the dweebiest thing about it that actually gets you excited?

I love to weed. That was one way to win my parents' approval: pulling weeds. So I'll still go outside and say, "I'm gonna be out there for 10 minutes." Next thing I know I'm out there six or seven hours, just getting started and not being able to stop.

Do you listen to music while you do this? Or do you just zone out?

Totally zone out, focused on nothing but the task.

Do you own any fancy, expensive gardening equipment that you geeked out on getting at the time?

No, but my father used to run a nursery for a few years when we were little. So nursery work has always been a comfort thing, something I always enjoy, and a lot of the money I've made writing has been invested in a nursery. Nursery work, all of that, any landscaping and landscaping maintenance, has always been appealing.

If you don't really talk about this in public, do you kinda understate your enthusiasm for it when asked about your love of gardening?

I always lie. People come by and see these swaths and swaths all flowering in different colors and say, "Wow, do you do this all yourself?" I'll always kind of dismiss it and go, "No, I think someone comes and does this once a week." I pretend to pay to have it done, but I planted every stupid plant.

Why do you cover it up? Are you embarrassed?

Of course I'm embarrassed! It's a hideous old-person, shameful, embarrassing, Midwest Ukrainian thing.

What do you think would be a more appropriate hobby for someone with your image? Restoring muscle cars?

Or heroin. [Laughs.]