Any Chuck Palahniuk readers out there?

buck65

Hi group,
Have read alot of Chuck recently and must say I have become a big fan.
Saw Fight Club years ago but got round to reading it last week. The film does the book justice and is very true to it. At the moment I am reading Lullaby and am enjoying it immensely. Have read Choke previously - not as good as his other stuff and his essay collection Non Fiction - which is great.
I find the pages just fly by, his style is a bit like a frantic Easton Ellis. Actually the Chuck website is very informative about his influences , with interviews and suggested authors. What do ye reckon?

brianthebard

I've read Fight Club and Diary. I found Fight Club to be all over the place and not as focussed as the film, but perhaps comparing the two mediums isn't fair.

My opinion thus far is that Palahniuk is very bad at ending his books. I felt that the ending in Fight Club was weak in comparision to the film (yeah I said it wasn't fair, but still) which was much darker and uncompromising. Fight Club just turned into pulp fiction in the last few chapters when it could have been a much more nihilistic piece.

Diary also had great potential wasted. Stylisically it was good, I liked the way the narrator would refer to the muscles in a person's face when they showed expressions and the way that gradually you began to try and imitate them without really even noticing. definately gave the book extra depth.

His description of the creative process was chilling, challenging and brilliant all at once. But again the ending didn't do the rest of the book justice. It went from being a piece about Art and the purpose or, the artist, and many other themes to become so lame ass horror piece. It was one of those books that left a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like it should have been better.

I plan to read at least one other book before I make up my mind completely but from what I hear from friends who have read his stuff I will probably not change my opinion.

Beruthiel

I have read 4 of his books,
Invisible Monsters - My favourite of the lot.
Followed closely by Lullaby
Choke, didn't particularly like that one.
Non-fiction - a bunch of short stories, some I didn't like, but there were a few stories towards the end I really enjoyed, especially the one where Chuck is getting ready to meet up with the producers to discuss the making of Fight Club, very funny

Oobie

I've read them all. My favourites were Fight Club and the one about the religious cult (can't remember the name right now). Haunted wasn't as good as I'd hoped but still enjoyable. Diary was probably my least favourite.

freedgull

The one about the Cult was 'Survivor' which was by far my favorite, after that I would say 'invisible monsters' was a close runner up.

Ho-Hum

I've read Survivor, Diary, Choke, Lullaby, Non-Fiction and Haunted. I would say that my favourite was definitely Survivor. There are some really great moments in that book and CP's encyclopediac knowledge of seemingly mundane things in all his books really adds to the way you think about the story.

2040

ive read all his books bar haunted and i'd consider myself a fan but i've no qualms in saying that the film of fight club was an improvement on the book in some ways. he has a new book coming out. Survivor is excellent. He owes alot to fight club being made into a film tho. Half his books wouldn't have been published if it werent for the adaptation. He has a new book coming out. Sounds good. See here: http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/community/showthread.php?threadid=26460

Fysh

I've read all his books and enjoyed them, and while I'll agree that some of his endings are a bit unsatisfying (Diary being a perfect example) I have to disagree about the ending of Fight Club - I felt the book's ending was far better, a much darker and more pessimistic view of how Jack's mental state would hold up and how much influence he would actually be able to wield over Project Mayhem in the long run.

Wasn't entirely sold on Haunted's overall story, but I very much liked the individual character's stories within it and, in a sense, it worked perfectly for what it was satirising. Looking forward to his next book.

DMG 1972

I've also read all of his books and I think Survivor and choke are two of his best.

I found haunted and Diary not as good but maybe I was expecting too much, haunted was gruesome enough in places espeically the sub story about the kid in the swimming pool.

I would disagree with the Brett Easton Ellis comparison as I think Chuck Palahniuk is much easier to read. I thought Danny Leigh's the Greatest Gift was similiar enough to a Palahniuk novel though.

Fysh

I think stories like Saint Gut-Free's background were what made me enjoy Haunted enough to forgive its failings.

His next book sounds interesting enough; I'd quite like to read more non-fiction writing by him though, I found Non-Fiction and Fugitives & Refugees really engaging reads because of the topics he's interested in.

Ho-Hum

I enjoyed the short stories in Haunted but it really felt as if the overall story was tacked on and not really thought out properly.

The_Minister

I have only read his short-story "Guts" but I would recommend it. Google it.

Piste

Guts is one of the short stories in Haunted, but afaik he wrote it before writing Haunted and just put it in there as one of the short stories.

Fight Club

: apparently Palahniuk didn't know how he was going to end Fight Club, so he just made Tyler Durden be in the narrator's head the whole time, it was never planned from the beginning

I agree with what other people say about the weak endings, but I like the plot and style of writing he has throughout his books. I've read Lullaby which I really enjoyed and was the second Palahniuk book I read, after Fight Club. I found some of the short stories in Non-Fiction to be a bit boring, but they were about topics I have no interest in. I really enjoyed some of the stories towards the end though, especially the ones about the people he's met (the Marilyn Manson one is quite funny) and the one's about the film Fight Club.

I really liked Haunted, I liked how the main plot linked in all the short stories together, and how we find out the origin of each person's name, though like the other books, the ending wasn't great.

Jello

I've read Fight Club and Lullaby, two of my all time favourite books. I have Invisible Monsters somewhere which I'll read eventually.

JamieDeath

Invisible Monsters is one of the best in my humble opinion.

I loved Choke but maybe that's because I could relate a lot to it. Lolz. You see the joke was that it's a book about sex addiction....... Ahem.

I've read most of his books, the most recent Haunted. I really liked the continuous story all the way through as well as having the shorter ones. He does well on the shorter ones.

I'm all for a good plot, Invisible monsters has one of the best, but with Mr Palahniuk you have to appreciate that his skill is very much revolved around writing and developing his characters. And boy does he do it well. I'd carry the torch for this guy but I'd be the first to admit that I have found myself completely lost in some of his plots. It's just not his strength, though I have still fallen off many a chair in surprise at his cheeky twists and turns, the little rascal.

If you're looking for what those tits on the afternoon show call "a good read" do us all a favour and go buy a Maeve Binchy book or something!
For serious

Hrududu

I used to read his books a lot. My favourites were Invisible Monsters and Survivor. But I felt once I got to Choke that it was becomming a bit 'by numbers'. The supporting characters and the twists were fairly standard by then. The last one I read was Diary. Unless he changes a bit I probably wouldnt read another.

cue

First one I read was lullaby and i loved it. Read them all since then apart from the non-fiction and fight club. Not a fan of diary and haunted although they had their moments and they kept me going to the end which is enough in my book.

Fnord

I don't rate him highly. He has some good ideas but he relies heavily on shock. Fight Club served him well. While better than average, and featuring a good line in black humour, it didn't offer very much in the way of substance, or indeed style. It's very overrated, and especially beloved by those who don't read much actual literature, which Palahniuk's work most assuredly isn't. I've read a few of his other books in the hope that he would improve as he went along; I'm still waiting.

Sad Professor

I've read Survivor and Invisible Monsters, loved them both. Currently making my way through Diary, liking it so far. Haven't actually gotten to Fight Club yet, love the film of course.