I, of course, read Fight Club after the movie hit big.
Since, I’ve read Choke and Survivor. Love them!
The weird shit he gets his characters into, for mostly shits and giggles, cracks me up. The Creedish Cult member who fields suicide calls encouraging people to off themselves, the Renaissance Fair emplyee who cruises Sexual Addiction meetings to get laid, the masturbation addict who collects rocks in order to curb his behavior . How can you not love that crazy shit?
And it just seems that with every book, he finds a new unique way to show someone hitting bottom. And usually surviving … which is cool.
Not to mention that his style is just easy reading. The little lilts he incorporates, the turns of phrases he turns into running jokes / dialogue, the intelligent, but not condescending narrative, the real sounding dialogue between the characters.
I’d read Chuck Palahniuk before any of the “classics” any day.
I like Chuck and everything, but have always found his writing to be gimicky. Like every book he writes, he studies up on one thing (Survivor, for example, had household tips) and then he exploits the hell out of it. Not that this is a bad thing, but I get kind of annoyed when I re-read his stuff.
And for some reason, I couldn’t get through “Diary”. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. I’ve read every other book by him (except that travel guide to Portland or whatever it is) and enjoyed them, but I just couldn’t plow through “Diary”.
I’m not a fan. There’s plenty better stuff to read than Palahniuk. (Even the low-rent sci-fi pulp I’ve been reading lately.)
I suspect that when he was a kid he was a big fan of the Garbage Pail Kids; and a master of the old riddle game “What’s grosser than gross?” It’s mystifying to me why some people consider the guy’s work like it was some kind of high art. Surely society is to blame.