Chuck Palahniuk schreibt im Guardian über One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – leider mit einem nicht ganz gelungenen Bogen zu Demokratie und Außenseitern, wo ich doch viel lieber mehr über seine Familie gehört hätte. Egal. Ist Palahniuk. Lese ich trotzdem. Slaves and saviours:

In 1975, my parents’ marriage had been through several trial separations, little rehearsals for their eventual divorce. My siblings and I lived with our mother. Our father lived an hour’s drive away, and every Sunday he’d collect us for an afternoon and evening. That’s when anything was possible. He took us to see Klute with Jane Fonda and Bonnie and Clyde with Faye Dunaway, films full of sex and violence. He was so desperate to please us for those few hours, if we’d asked he would’ve taken us to see a snuff movie.

We had only one cinema, five towns away from our town, and one Sunday night the only choice was Cuckoo’s Nest.

On the surface, the story was new and different, but really – even as a child – I could see my parents in that mental hospital, battling each other for power. Here was my father, Randle Patrick McMurphy, who always looked for a quick miracle to fix his life. A trick or a new scam that would rescue him – even faking a back injury so he could retire early from the railroad – the way McMurphy faked being insane. And there was Bill Bibbit as our mother, trying to follow a path she’d been taught since childhood: being good, giving in, obeying orders, trusting that good behaviour and hard work would bring love. My mother, who got straight-As in school. (…)

And here I was, Big Chief, the witness to their battle.