I Am on a Chuck Palahniuk Kick

I mostly read nonfiction, but this may be swinging the other way for while. Palanhnuik's prose simply smokes. His books are completely unpredictable, multi-layered, and filled with arcane trivia on everything from the composition of oil paints to medical pathology to deviant sexual practices. The most diverse or nonsensical things eventually come together as threads in unexpected themes. And he is a bit of a sick puppy.

His novels often open with an arresting proposition, such as: A woman begins receiving calls from her dead husbands' contracting customers claiming that closets or entire rooms are missing. A realtor lives a life of ease by dealing only in haunted houses that she can turn over every three months. A poor young man pretends to choke in a different restaurant every night to attract saviors which he can then milk for personal donations. And so on.

Even as a fan of Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace, I've never read anything like this stuff.

Having enjoyed Fight Club a couple of years ago, I picked up Diary as travel reading before Christmas. Then bought Lullabye at the airport on the way back. Yesterday I simply HAD to find another and drove around until I located Choke and Survivor.

Just thought I'd share.

Just kidding, I actually like his work! :-)

Talented. And sick, like me.

is the short bits sprinkled through Lullabye which are set slightly ahead in time but which don't seem to make the slightest bit of sense in terms of the plot. Searching the country for talking cows and sightings of the Virgin? Runaway vines in Seattle? Sarge (who's that?) asking "do you still love me?"

And then (at least in terms of the book's warped logic), it makes makes perfect sense by the last page.

Collection of magazine articles and essays he wrote, and a guidebook to Portland, OR (title escapes me) that's a combination city guide/personal stories thing.

and will probably get to them before too long. Probably a week or two at this rate.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400047838/qid=1105383599/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-9118885-1343163?v=glance&s=books

It's a nonfiction book by him. He tells stories about what it was like to be a kid and young adult in Portland, Oregon.

Don't miss the one where he dropped acid, went to a laser show, and ended up EATING the fur stole of the woman sitting next to him.

HILARIOUS shit.

He seems like the kind of guy who has a wealth of strange personal experience.

Loved the former, not crazy about the latter. I've got a friend who's a big fan. She says Survivor and Choke are here favorites. I'll be sure to check them out sometime.

Regardless of reviews.

I really liked Lullabye, BTW, which was about the discovery of a magical African "culling song" in an anthology of children's poetry that led people to unwittingly kill their infant children. And what happens when people start to identify the source of these deaths and either try to destroy or use the culling song. Very surreal.

There's always an interesting premise, and I found both books were a pretty quick read.

I liked Choke and Survivor, and of course, Fight Club, but I just grew tired of nihilism. He is a very original and unique writer, though.

but I don't interpret his writing that way.

Even Tyler Durden was not a nihilist -- he was trying to reestablish the urgency and immediacy of life by destroying social constructs. Even if it's misguided and delusional, I see that as a kind of humanism.

I keep expecting his main characters to be destroyed in stupid meaningless ways, but it doesn't happen. They tend to survive and come through their suffering into a different phase of their life.

Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky) always killed his characters off in pointless nonredemptive ways, which to me is the highest type of nihilism in fiction. Palahnuik seems to care for his characters even as he puts them through the wringer.

Not trying to argue -- I do know what you mean. I was just thinking along these lines anyway.

maybe "downer" would have been more appropriate. :)
At the time, I was just burned out on negativity. I guess, in an odd sort of way, his characters (for the most part) see happier endings. Except for Tender Branson.

About half the references to Palahniuk I've seen use the term "nihilism" in some way. (For that matter, I almost used it myself in an earlier draft of the original post.)

I think labels get applied and repeated sometimes whether or not they're really appropriate. Kind of like what happens in politics.

Just trying to convey an observation. One of things I tend to notice in authors is how they treat their characters. It reveals a lot about the author's personality, and it this case goes against the conventional wisdom. For me, it says something positive about CP.

His hymn to this native Portland. It's brilliant.

But he lost me on Diary.
I just started to get bored with it early on.

although it was a little hard to get started. The stuff about the muscles of the face didn't really get me, but it's not hard to read past.

One thing that kept me going was trying to figure out what was going on. The plot just didn't seem to make the slightest bit of sense. All these conflicting, bizarre details and inexplicable behavior. But it all comes together.