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Chuck Palahniuk

CDA said:
I just finished Survivor yesterday. Or was it the day before? Whatever - I quite enjoyed it. No, not what I'd call a 'literary' work, but entertaining. Kind of half 'literary' and half 'blockbuster', I suppose you could say. I do hate the term 'literary' though - sounds incredibly stuffy.
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'Literary' can't be fun?

Idril Silmaure said:
He doesn't write in a particularly pedantic or so-called 'literary' style, but that doesn't mean it's not good literature. If everything was written in such a style I think books would get incredibly boring, I like his style I think it's refreshing and powerful.
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Pynchon writes about some of the rough patches in his early short stories, 'Slow Learner' that he was writing with the credo of 'make it literary,' which he admits is bad advice he made up himself and followed.

Idril Silmaure said:
He doesn't write in a particularly pedantic or so-called 'literary' style, but that doesn't mean it's not good literature. If everything was written in such a style I think books would get incredibly boring, I like his style I think it's refreshing and powerful.
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There seems to be a mentality about what constitutes 'literary' fiction that whatever else it does or doesn't do, it better be 'serous.' By this mentality, 'The Deer Hunter' is by default a better film than, say, 'Shakespeare in Love,' or 'Being John Malkovich.' Bullshit.

Even worse, is the tendency of academics to impose strict definitions of 'literary' fiction. This is the Wynton Marsalis approach to jazz: don't innovate, curate.

I tend to agree with Jay to an extent, I was disappointed in 'Haunted' despite some good short stories in it, and I struggled with 'Invisible Monsters.' 'Diary' has its moments, but wouldn't put an author on the map by itself.

I would assert that Chuck Palahniuk is writing 'literary fiction,' and like any stylist he's bound to frustrate or irritate some readers. Also, taking chances means just that: sometimes it doesn't work. The disappointment I feel with 'Haunted' is based on the expectations set by an overall strong body of work.

I had the same experience with Terry Southern: 'The Magic Christian' is an absolute favorite, but 'Flash and Filligree' was mediocre. If I'd read the latter first, I doubt I'd have taken a chance on 'Magic Christian.'

But I'd also go further, and challenge the term 'literary' as an adjective: Elmore Leonard is as much a writer of literary fiction as Jim Crace or Barry Hannah. Genre does NOT negate quality writing. All fiction is written for entertainment, or to make a point (preferably both). Thomas Hardy and William Shakespeare were trying to entertain their readers, as were Sir Walter Besant and hundreds of others. Besant was commercially successful in the late 19th Century, but as far as I can tell has been out of print entirely for 110 years. I laid eyes on an 1895 edition of 'Beyond the Dreams of Avarice,' and what can I say? The dude was no Thomas Hardy.

The virtues and vices of an author like Palahniuk are almost impossible to fairly evaluate in a contemporary setting. I think if he's written anything that will one day be 'taught' the way Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc., are taught today, it's probably 'Survivor.' More likely, it's his 'Magic Christian,' a book that maintains enough interest to stay alive in the backlists, that will enjoy a small but enthusiastic readership.

This of course assumes that anyone will stil be reading in fifty years. Likely, writers will be the only people that really read much, just as jazz has become a 'musician's music,' fiction more ambitious than a Harlequin romance title or Clive Cussler yarn will only be read by other 'literary' authors.

If you find my jazz analogy lacking, show me four people who know the rules to bridge who are not drawing Social Security. And bridge was, a few decades ago, a game any educated person could at least get through.
 
hm well i finally bought fight club a week or so ago. during the summer once i started reading Diary in the book store. im pretty sure that that was the title. i liked it a lot even though i didn't have the money to buy it
 
Hi, new here. I've read Lullaby, Fight Club, Diary, Invisible Monsters, Survivors and Haunted. Survivors was a clear favourite for me, with Fight Club and Lullaby close seconds. Both Diary and Invisible Monsters seemed a little 'writing by numbers' for me - althought both were highly readable, which is such a hallmark of Palahnuik's writing.

I was very disappointed with 'Haunted" however - apart from a couple of short stories, I found the whole plot contrived and rather repetitive. The trademark darkness of his earlier works simply descends into pointless gore with this one I thought. Using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut.....
 
The thing for me with Palahniuk is that while I think he is a terrible writer in any sense of style or even at times terrible structure he always had the ideas to keep his work afloat. I could overlook his numerous other flaws as long as he kept the interesting ideas but by choke i found the ideas dull so i stopped reading. My fav would have to be Invisible monsters and if there is anyway they could bring this to the screen without tearing the book to shreds i'd support it.

*goes to find old copy*
 
ConstantReader said:
I was very disappointed with 'Haunted" however - apart from a couple of short stories, I found the whole plot contrived and rather repetitive. The trademark darkness of his earlier works simply descends into pointless gore with this one I thought. Using a sledge hammer to crack a walnut.....
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Just finished Haunted and I'd have to agree. It seems like Chuck is determined to ride his nihilism into the ground. I liked Survivor and Fight Club and I've also read Diary and Lullaby which I wasn't as crazy about. It seems like Palahniuk is at his best when he has both a story he wants to tell and a point he wants to make. I'm not sure there was much of either in Haunted. It seemed like he just had a lot of unconnected violent or gory ideas and wanted to avoid the short story anthology route.
I have a friend who loved it and told me that I just didn't "get it". I did, I'm just no into what there was to be "got".
 
curiouswonder said:
I liked Survivor and Fight Club and I've also read Diary and Lullaby which I wasn't as crazy about.
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Ditto, but I also like Invisible Monster. I didn't like Diary or Lullaby at all; in fact, I don't even think I finished them. :rolleyes: I haven't bothered to pick up Haunted, simply because I just don't like his writing style anymore.
 
angerball said:
Ditto, but I also like Invisible Monster. I didn't like Diary or Lullaby at all; in fact, I don't even think I finished them. :rolleyes: I haven't bothered to pick up Haunted, simply because I just don't like his writing style anymore.
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Chuck's been all over the map to a sufficient extent that it would be a rare reader who gets thrilled by all of it. 'Survivor' is on my all-time favorites list of almost any length, but 'Invisible Monsters' was one I struggled with and 'Haunted' should have been released as a collection of short stories and forget the 'poems' and connective 'novel' material.

But think of other writers: Philip Roth has written some of the best and some of the worst stuff in his milieu. Do I condemn 'Portnoy's Complaint,' 'The Ghost Writer' and 'The Prague Orgy' just because 'Operation Shylock' sucked hard?
 
The problem with Chuck's books are that you can't read them back to back. You have to pace yourself. Read one then read another six months after that. I haven't read anything since Survivor a few months ago and I just found Haunted at the library. I'm excited to read it, even though it got horrible reviews.
 
Pearl said:
The problem with Chuck's books are that you can't read them back to back. You have to pace yourself. Read one then read another six months after that. I haven't read anything since Survivor a few months ago and I just found Haunted at the library. I'm excited to read it, even though it got horrible reviews.
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I'd say pace yourself with ANY author. There's exceptions, of course. I read Faulkner's 'Snopes' trilogy back to back plus 'Flags in the Dust' without burnout. It actually got better as I learned to speak Yoknapatawphan.

The flip side is Will Christopher Baer, who I started out so high on I was a 'street team' member handing and mailing 28 ARCs of 'Kiss Me, Judas' while halfway through 'Penny Dreadful' it's sequel (and my favorite of the three) on the way to struggling to find an angle to stay interested in 'Hell's Half Acre.' WCB is a skillful wordsmith, but I think I OD'd on him and I definitely didn't enjoy the third book in the trilogy. The second was my favorite and I developed a sort of personal theory/deconstruction of it that made it better than if I'd taken it on face value (at least for me).

So I read A.M. Homes' 'The End of Alice' and forced myself not to rush right into another book of hers. I bought three, and recently finished 'Jack,' but I'm giving myself a breather before I go into 'Safety of Objects' or 'Things You Should Know.' Why? Because I am in love with her books. 'End of Alice' is a masterpiece. 'Jack' has a couple of clunks but is masterful in total. I don't want to burn out on Homes.

I'd say this applies to most authors. I've read all of the 'Stories of John Cheever,' but I didn't read all 61 stories back-to-back. See also Thom Jones, Amy Hempel, Mark Richard, Kafka, Raymond Carver, etc. It's a rare (and probably flightless) bird that can hang with any of those over their whole career without a break to read someone else.
 
I finally got a chance to start "Haunted" and I don't think it's nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It's a very intresting plot line, but I'm only in the first fourty pages. I hope it doesn't go downhill from there.
 
Pearl said:
I finally got a chance to start "Haunted" and I don't think it's nearly as bad as people make it out to be. It's a very intresting plot line, but I'm only in the first fourty pages. I hope it doesn't go downhill from there.
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You're not particularly far in. The short stories, for the most part, are good. If you like the connective material, great. The setup was good, I thought the payoff was lousy.
 
I've gotten about 250 pages into the book and while at first I thought it was a great concept for a story, now it's just turning into a tedious read. He seems to be repeating the plot of the story over and over again until it feels like it's bashed into your brain with a sledgehammer. The stories, while gory, are getting boring and at points, seem to make no sense at all. Like Chuck just pulling whatever out of thin air and tossing it onto paper. I'm not sure I can bring myself to finish this book, but I'll do it anyway in hopes of it getting slightly better.
 
Pearl said:
I've gotten about 250 pages into the book and while at first I thought it was a great concept for a story, now it's just turning into a tedious read. He seems to be repeating the plot of the story over and over again until it feels like it's bashed into your brain with a sledgehammer. The stories, while gory, are getting boring and at points, seem to make no sense at all. Like Chuck just pulling whatever out of thin air and tossing it onto paper. I'm not sure I can bring myself to finish this book, but I'll do it anyway in hopes of it getting slightly better.
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Many fans of Chuck, and I'm one (complete with autographed first-edition hardback 'Survivor') will tell you to skip the 'connective' material in 'Haunted.' The poetry is beyond terrible and the 'plot' of the novel is as tedious and pointless as it seems. The stories are good, for the most part, so I'd just read those if you're tiring of the theater. And the writer's retreat thing did seem promising when I started the book. The notes left behind, all that, was good stuff, but in my opinion it wrote a check that the book did not cash in the end.
 
WoundedThorns said:
i bought a copy of Survivor yesterday as a little present to myself. i look foward to reading it. i love his style of writing.
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If you like Chuck stylistically, that will definitely scratch the itch. Hands down his best in my opinion. 'Choke' is a favorite for a lot of people, and it's very good, his 'break out' book in many respects. And I don't have the aversion to the supernatural some do, so his horror novels aren't automatically disqualified for me, I like 'Lullaby' quite a bit and enjoyed 'Diary,' if it was a few steps back from what he's capable of.

He's taken a lot of flack (rightly) for 'Haunted' and I could life without 'Invisible Monsters.' I think he's got a distinctive yet accessible voice, a hard balance to strike, and usually he has good ideas behind his stories. If I don't gush about every page he has published, I'll offer that Philip Roth has written some great novels and some crapola, Terry Southern ranges from virtuoso to virtually unreadable, etc. File with 'Stevie Ray Vaughn missed a note here and there.'
 
I almost by accident last friday picked up Lullaby. Fight Club is one of my favorite movies so I decided I would read it, it sounded strange and interesting. In the last week I have read Lullaby and Survivor. I don't know if I have ever been as blown away by a writer as I am with Palahniuk. I am starting Choke this evening, and I can't wait.
 
While I love Chuck Palahniuk, it was interesting to hear my friend tell me that she's read too much of him to be surprised by anything. She claimed that she could most of the time predict what would happen in his stories, and nothing was as exciting. I thought this was odd. Maybe she's better at inferring things, but while I read Palahniuk I am almost always shocked by what he writes. If there isn't a shock factor, I am always amazed by how he ends his stories. Palahniuk knows how to end a book I think, adding in some amazing words that make you think about it for days. I particularly loved the ending of Fight Club, and even the abrupt ending of Survivor made me think.

Although, with Haunted, I have to agree that it became a bit tedious. The short stories were amazing, but the actual story became boring. The ending, however, pulled everything together.
 
His latest book, Rant, will be released May 1st of 2007. Here's the official synopsis:

“Like most people I didn’t meet Rant Casey until after he was dead. That’s how it works for most celebrities: After they croak, their circle of friends just explodes.…”


Rant is the mind-bending new novel from Chuck Palahniuk, the literary provocateur responsible for such books as the generation-defining classic Fight Club and the pedal-to-the-metal horrorfest Haunted. It takes the form of an oral history of one Buster “Rant” Casey, who may or may not be the most efficient serial killer of our time.


“What ‘Typhoid Mary’ Mallon was to typhoid, what Gaetan Dugas was to AIDS, and Liu Jian-lun was to SARS, Buster Casey would become for rabies.”


A high school rebel who always wins (and a childhood murderer?), Rant Casey escapes from his small hometown of Middleton for the big city. He becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. On appointed nights participants recognize one another by such designated car markings as “Just Married” toothpaste graffiti and then stalk and crash into each other. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life. Their collected anecdotes explore the possibility that his saliva caused a silent urban plague of rabies and that he found a way to escape the prison house of linear time.…


“The future you have, tomorrow, won’t be the same future you had, yesterday.”
—Rant Casey


Expect hilarity, horror, and blazing insight into the desperate and surreal contemporary human condition as only Chuck Palahniuk can deliver it. He's the postmillennial Jonathan Swift, the visionary to watch to learn what's —uh-oh—coming next.
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Haunted is a pedal-to-the-medal horrorfest? I'm not so sure about that...
 
i just finished Diary a couple of days ago. i loved it when i started reading it a couple of summers ago. it's an interesting literary style - very rare that you find a book in the second person. granted, it was most third person narrative. anyhow, it would've been better if a woman wrote it. a man cannot fully capture the point of a view of a woman. Misty sounded far too bitter/nonchalant about everything throughout the entire book. it drove me crazy that she didn't express any real distress - just annoyance/frustration/anger.
 
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