Chuck Palahniuk

[MidgardDragon]

Discuss all things Chuck Palahniuk here. From Fight Club to Choke to Invisible Monsters. The man is a genius of a satirist and a brilliant writer. His book Choke will be out in movie form in 2008, and I believe Invisible Monsters is coming to the big screens as well.

For more information about Chuck Palahniuk and his work check out his site:

http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/

Fight Club was an amazing book (yes, it was a book before it was a movie) and Choke is very close to being as brilliant. Everyone should give this guy a chance.

As one reviewer put it (mimicking a sentence structure found in Choke):

"Brilliant isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind."

I'll start a little side-discussion for fun - what's your favorite line from Choke and/or Fight Club.

Choke: The martyrdom of Saint Me.

Fight Club: We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very p*ssed off.

[vouge09]

What would Jesus not do?
or

Paige Marshall is nuts!

I been meaning to read invisble monster. any good?

[MidgardDragon]

I haven't got around to reading it yet either vouge. I've got a pdf of it on my flash drive but reading on a computer is just so mind-numbing. If I ever manage to find a cheap used copy I'll pick it up and give it a go then.

My favorite Choke quote is actually not the one I posted, not sure why I posted that one. It is:


I mean, I'm just tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy.

I mean, how many times can everybody tell you that your the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy. I mean, a male chauvinist pig isn't born, he's made, and more and more of them are being made by women.

After long enough, you just role over and accept that you're a sexist, bigoted, insensitive, crude, cretinist cretin. Women are right. You're wrong. You get used to the idea. You live down to expectations.

Even if the shoe doesn't fit, you'll shrink into it.

[vouge09]

I'm going to get it soon.

[MidgardDragon]

Thanks to my wonderful friend/ex-wife (love freaking people out with that one) I now have a copy of both Invisible Monsters and Survivor. I'm almost done with Invisible Monsters (nearly finished in one night) and it's very very weird, but good. The same as most of his novels, where it challenges your beliefs and makes you feel vaguely disturbed for even reading it. Probably not his best novel, but still worth the read. Of course I can't truly rate it without the ending. Choke would've been rated much lower by me had it ended any differently, so IM might get a huge boost in my rating by having a great ending.

ETA: I finished it and as I suspected my opinion of the book shot up nicely due to the ending. I thought all of the twists and turns had already been revealed but there was one more cat or two to be let out of the bag that made me see the whole thing in a different light. Once again I'm gonna have to reread (as I've done with Fight Club and Choke) to get everything. A great book.

Now I'm moving on to Survivor.

ETA2: Finished Survivor. Not the best of his books, but even his worst is still good. I would've been okay with it had the ending not petered out the way it did. Reading Lullaby now, very interesting idea, let's hope it holds up.

[vouge09]

That ending in Choke and flipped my lid. I dont know how much I liked it , but at the same time it was an interesting spin.

[emily feist]

Favorite would be Invisible Monsters.
Then after that I'd say Choke.
Didn't like Survivor.
I just started Rant, has anyone else picked this up yet?

[MidgardDragon]

I just finished Rant. It was the strangest of his work, and I'll have to read it again before deciding how I feel about it. Right now I'm listening to the audiobook of Haunted.

[jim mayniam]

i haven't read rant or haunted yet, although haunted is in my queue, but in order of how well i liked them...

1. survivor
2. choke
3. fight club
4. lullaby
5. invisible monsters
6. diary

i think that's all of them. i'm a big fan of his work...the minimalist style that it's written in has always appealed to me. i've found out through his work that i'm apparently amoral, and am so jaded that nothing can disgust me, but its entertaining stuff, nonetheless :p

[Mello Penelo]

We are the middle children of history, man.

[Vindellavon]

Choke was well done, and Lullaby was brilliant. Fight Club however was beyond all limits. Very well done.

[Tabularasa]

I love Chuck, got hooked reading Fight Club (after seeing the film) I haven't been a fan of his recent stuff, but it's still good.

1.) Fight Club
2.) Survivor
3.) Lullaby
4.) Choke
5.) Invisible Monsters
6.) Rant
7.) Diary
8.) Haunted

He's got a new book coming out I think it's caled Pllgmy or somethng like that. Apparently it's about terrorists.