Chuck Palahniuk

(Since major aspects of it are essentially unfilmable, for starters.)

I liked Survivor a great deal, though. But Choke put me off trying anything else.

I don't remember much of Choke, which probably means I had the eh reaction.

I'm reading Survivor and a colleague just asked me what it was about:

"A guy survives a weird Christian child slavery suicide cult and goes on to become a huge steroid addicted televangelist before being wanted for mass murder and hijacking a plane to crash into the s..."
"Not my kind of thing then."

I think she thinks I'm a bit weird.

Anybody read Rant?

oh i'm rereading survivor right now! i read invisible monsters on my plane trip on friday. i like it a lot but never really found the ending of it very satisfying. it kind of just bludgeons you with "twists" doesn't it?

Haha, so weird! I just started reading Survivor again, too!

I think I should get Survivor so that people start thinking I'm cool.

(Actually if I loved Lullaby, which one would be best to read next?)

I've been trying to read Rant for the last few months and I just cannot get through it. It's just a miserable fucking book through and through. I don't know how else to describe it. It's just really dreary.

I've been a fan of his other work, and this is the first one that I may not be able to finish. I liked Survivor, Choke, and Lullaby. I never read Fight Club.

Which one is partially set in a re-enactment village?

Choke

i checked the new one out of the library with really low expectations and somehow so far its easily FAR WORSE than i could have imagined

That's the sex one, right? I read the description and basically went "ya do not want"/

dnw is the correct reaction it is horrendous & all copies shd be purged from the earth

I think of Fight Club as "the sex one"

MEMO TO CHUCK PALAHNIUK:

This plot idea is good:
A man discovers a poem that can kill people and has to chase down a psychopath into whose hands it has fallen while resisting constant temptation to use it himself on everyday irritants.

This plot idea is NOT GOOD AT ALL:
200 guys gangbang to death a woman attempting to break a world record and talk about their experiences.

This shit is some pretty brutal self-parody.

This plot idea is NOT GOOD AT ALL:
200 guys gangbang to death a woman attempting to break a world record and talk about their experiences.

kinda want to read this now, because HOLY SHIT WTF

This plot idea is good:
A man discovers a poem that can kill people and has to chase down a psychopath into whose hands it has fallen while resisting constant temptation to use it himself on everyday irritants.

dan did you just invent this cause i kinda wanna read it now

this guy was always terrible

Like Donnie Darko, Fight Club found me at the right time (17 and angry and living in the suburbs). I liked it. My copy is signed.

I'll probably never read anything else he's written though.

Couldn't find any other thread, has nobody mentioned anything about the Choke movie released next month.

Initial screening reviews seem pretty positive

Like Donnie Darko, Fight Club found me at the right time (17 and angry and living in the suburbs). I liked it. My copy is signed.

I'll probably never read anything else he's written though.

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, July 3, 2008 6:35 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

yeah, me too. i read it a few months before the movie came out, in my senior year of HS. just skimming his other stuff drove home how samey he is. still, might give survivor and lullaby a crack, just as easy diversions from school.

The Choke movie is even worse than the book deserves, and I didn't even get any promo anal beads:

http://gothamist.com/2008/08/29/post_124.php

dan did you just invent this cause i kinda wanna read it now

That's the plot to Lullaby, aka "the only Palahniuk I've read".

I dislike this person's work / influence on the world fairly intensely.

The only way I can even slightly temper that opinion is to point out that part of my sense of Palahniuk actually comes from dudes in writing workshops who very much want to write like Palahniuk. But no -- that fact might actually make me dislike Palahniuk less than I otherwise would, because at least he has something to his writing that those dudes do not.

dick lit. I can't stand this stuff. College Palahniuk wannabes are sooooo unbearable, too.

yes, his influence is worse than his work. Like Led Zeppelin.

Unreadable.

That his acolytes are apparently worse matters not one bit to me (I don't hang around creative writing workshops for good reasons.)

My point was that even after a great deal of time around the awful influence, I still can't muster up anything but dislike for the real thing.

Not a complicated point: if you spent a year listening to shitty Zeppelin cover bands and then went and listened to Zeppelin, you'd think part of you would go "okay, well, at least there's something to it when they do it"

But don't let following a point get in the way of a good cynic's zing, or anything

So, what did you guys read that made you hate him so much? I didn't get that vibe off of Lullaby at all.

http://celebedge.sympatico.msn.ca/Bang/ContentPostingBang3column?newsitemid=BSBS42134&feedname=BANG&show=False&number=0&showbyline=False&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc&date=False

uh

When thinking about Mr. Palahniuk it must be borne in mind that Mickey Spillane was a highly successful and widely-read author.

Need further proof that this guy is in fact The Worst?

http://www.out.com/popnography/2015/2/25/fight-club-author-chuck-palahniuk-picks-ten-greatest-movies-ever-made