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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Is Chuck Palahniuk getting old?

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15:29 / 29.10.02

Did anyone read Lullaby yet? A lot of people saying he's regurgitating the same themes to the point of utter banality. Can anyone tell me otherwise?

19:07 / 29.10.02

Sure, he's getting old. Sure, he repeats his themes. Sure, his main characters are all very similar.

But it doesn't mean they're not good books. I still quite enjoy every one of them.

It just means people who like that stuff are gonna like it, and people who don't are going to complain about how repetetive he is.

19:27 / 29.10.02

I just finished Choke [the local library hasn't got Lullaby yet] and the general premise did make me think 'oo, samey' but when I got into it, I found that it was a damn good book. I think any author is going to retread some of the same ground - whether with characters, themes or just generally in style - but I guess the essential point is 'did you enjoy it?'
Elmore Leonard seems to follow a by-the-numbers plotting system, but then, you don't read the books for surprises.
From what I've read so far, I'd say P is approaching stuff from a variety of angles but remaining with the generalised theme of modern alienation. If that's what he's trying to explore, then I'd argue it's worthwhile.
But then, if it was another author I didn't like - say DH Lawrence - I'd say it was boring and repetitive shite. So Gridley is right, I guess.

23:20 / 29.10.02

From my limited Palahniuk exposure - sans appropriate literary inoculations - I generally agree with Gridley that Palahniuk is a writer for whom mileage may vary. Read Invisibles Monsters and my initial reaction was "this is bland." Mind you, this is a story that contains horrific disfigurations, frankenstein-like transexuals, copious amounts of drugs, and adultry committed by a betrothed DURING HIS WEDDING. Most people won't find that bland but I guess I'm jaded from reading the Invisibles, which I had completed reading shortly before picking up Invisibles Monsters.

I think the dilemma surrounding Palahniuk is akin to that surrounding someone like Charles Bukowski. I've read Bukowski and have enjoyed him. Others I know have read one or two pieces and thought he was a one-note wonder since a lot of stories focues on drinking. I must admit that I'm not a big fan of Palahniuk though. The books I read - IM and Fight Club - read more like someone intentionally constructing a movie treatment with more way out literary characters and events to feed the American Hollywood perspective - more trans than a transexual, more fight than fight club - until the everything becomes flash without substance. Has anyone else felt the same way about Palahniuk?

BTW - I don't mean to trash Palahniuk or belittle people who have enjoyed his work. I am curious about people's feelings and my own reactions.

15:35 / 30.10.02

the only palahniuk book i did not enjoy was invisible monsters... it just seemed to go on forever for me, which is strange because i was always able to read his novels in a night or two. IM took me while to get into the turning point of the novel and by then i was completely turned off by it for some reason. Survivior i thought was intresting, and Choke was his funniest to date i believe. Fight Club i felt was the best out of all of them, although i saw the movie first and then read the book, i thought it was strange how the movie and the book seem to attack different ideologies. i haven't read lullaby yet but from its premise i can see a recurring theme going on about duality, in fact, fight club came into mind directly after reading its synopsis.
in response to dlotemp's comment, i'll agree that the novels do seem to be constructed with a type of movie treatment, which makes the whole plot seem to be moving in fast forward. i don't thnk there are actually any momments in his books (execpt IM) where there is any type of static, his method is usually just to keep on building up until the climax explodes in your face.

02:19 / 19.02.03

yeah, but thats his style, I like it. I really like the concepts that he comes up with. I kind of see his books sort of like plays but with the same actors.

02:23 / 19.02.03

and Lullaby was cool.

09:47 / 19.02.03

Fight Club is untoppable I reckon. I read IM and decided not to bother looking for any more, they'll come my way eventually. It was alright but lacked the punch of FC (excuse the pun) and I assumed Chuck was a one book guy, which he would rewrite lots of times with different faces. Am I wrong? is IM a blip rather than a trend toward blandness? Should I seek out Lullaby?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:00 / 19.02.03

I liked Lullaby, but it wasn't a patch on Survivor (my favourite- yes, I even prefer it to Fight Club, which rocks nonetheless). I thought the supernatural element detracted from the "realism" (a relative term with Palahniuk, but you get my drift. It was a neat idea, though.

Yeah, they do tend to be the same book with different faces, but it's a damn good one. When he stops managing to be simultaneously hilarious and disturbing, that'll be when I figure he's past it. No signs of that yet, though.

13:29 / 19.02.03

A lot of people saying he's regurgitating the same themes to the point of utter banality.

That's what I've said all along!

I've actually read two of the blighters books now, on the basis that, well, a guy who writes books about that kinda stuff can't be all that bad, right?

All his masochistic, subversive, supposedly taboo-breaking shtick provided just enough momentum to get me to the end of 'Fight Club' whilst still thinking "hmm.. this is fairly interesting stuff, I wonder where he's gonna go with it..". The answer being: absolutely nowhere.
He's just boiled down the surface paraphernalia of the 'subversive, thought-provoking modern novel' to a formula and is just churning 'em out, whilst - as far as I can ascertain - failing to actually make any coherent point about anything. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I can't shake the feeling that beyond all the black humour gags and misanthropic observations and fucked up situations, he's basically just blowing it out of his ass, so to speak..

sorry for ranting.

20:37 / 19.02.03

Choke is his best! and far from masochistic i think his work is liberating and possative. if you take more than just the narrative of the characters (which i admit are more than a little depressing) you'll find some of them saying, or thinking, very interesting things. the main theme i find in his books is the desire for personal and social change. this is probably most obvious in Fight Club and Choke.

Matthew Fluxington

02:38 / 20.02.03

Brother, we're ALL getting old.

I haven't read Lullaby, but I bought my mother a copy of the book-on-tape version, and she was telling me that she really liked it, but couldn't stand the weird tangents he kept going on, and the baffling use of pointless repetition - it drove her nuts. She's definitely not used to 'contemporary' writers, especially not folks like him.

I bet it would drive me crazy, too.

18:57 / 20.02.03

Lullaby's not that bad, though it's relatively very mainstream. It's really a fairly straight modern horror novel with a few of his stylistic touches. Will make a successful - though not necessarily good - film.

Interesting that when he abandons the "subversive" themes, the result seems strangely ordinary and workmanlike. I enjoyed it, there are some decent twists but it wasn't distinctive. The only real idea in there is how ordinary people cope with sudden immense power, and it's reasonably explored in context but not exactly deeply. Can't say much more without spoilering.

Choke is his best for me. I saw Fight Club before reading it and I thought the book was worse. Invisible Monsters is a Coupland/Ellis mix that doesn't really do it as well as either of them.

01:35 / 21.02.03

from best to worst: fightclub, survivor(actually I can't make up my mind which is better of the two), lullaby, choke and then invisible monsters. wait, why did some of you people like choke so much? I remember that invisible monsters was the first and only book that I had to just put down and take break from for awhile(its not so bad to me now-I was still in highschool). but hey, we didn't get to learn anything from lullaby! let's see fightclub was sort of a anarchist cookbook, in survivor you learned how to remove stains and get rid of bullet holes and how to steal things, you learned how to steal drugs in invisible monsters, you learned how to choke in choke(wait is that right?), but I don't really remember learning anything in lullaby.

21:15 / 21.02.03

you learn that it's a good idea to kill arrogant new-age wankers as soon as you have the chance

23:11 / 21.02.03

hahaha.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:55 / 22.02.03

I must admit that the only book of his I've read was Fight Club and I thought it was rubbish. It increased my appreciation of the film that they managed to make such a brilliant story from such an umpromising manuscript.

22:00 / 22.02.03

I like some stuff.

21:27 / 12.03.03

I think that many, many speeches (both Tyler and Jack's) in Fight Club were re-written much better in the movie.

I read that every last one of his books is in some stage of film production.

04:49 / 13.03.03

well, except survivor, on account of 9/11, and doing a petition for it.

07:27 / 13.03.03

They made Fight Club ino a book?

08:12 / 13.03.03

seeing as you're all Chuck Palahniuk fans perhaps you could help me out. Apparently in one of his books he says that sex is an act of rebellion, because it is the only thing that our parents didn't teach us (or at least I hope not!), this idea has been wandering around my mind for almost a year now and I keep meaning to read some of his stuff to find it, can anyone tell me which book it is in?

02:58 / 14.03.03

survivor

but you ought to read his other ones as well, they're fun.

09:13 / 14.03.03

yeah I will do, just time is of the essence at present so best to start with the one the quotes in.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

14:27 / 14.03.03

The thing I don't understand with Fight Club the book is that Tyler leaves a lot sooner than he does in the movie, so a lot of what Tyler in the movie says is said by one of his main disciples in the book, for example the car crashing sequence is the same, just with this character instead of Tyler. This has the unfortunate affect of suggesting to me that it's not so much Jack's fault that this is all happening.

18:18 / 24.09.03

Bumping this up as i recently finished 'Diary' and thought it was perhaps his best yet. Liked Fight Club and Survivor a great deal. Choke and IM less so and never even got to the end of Lullaby it was so dull. Anyone else read his new one?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

02:20 / 25.09.03

Dunno about his best yet but it's definitely restored my faith in the guy. Fucking excellent.

Lullaby had some great ideas and I still loved the writing but it didn't seem very well put together. Diary's definitely a step in the right direction.

05:05 / 25.09.03

I agree about choke and invisible monsters but I liked lullaby, loved the imagery at the part where oyster tried to steal the culling spell from Helen. that's me. got to check out diary now.

14:41 / 25.09.03

He was at a launch in London on Tuesday, but I couldn't be arsed to go, I was less than impressed by Invisible Monsters and haven't had the motivation for the others yet. But Fight Club still rules.

AceOfAllYourBase

04:51 / 26.09.03

I saw him read at Columbia University the other day. And other than the Frank Castlesque passing out of various people during his reading of a short story involving masturbating at the bottom of a pool its was generally enlightening.

His main characters do have similarities... he explained this saying ... "Well, they are all me... I only know how to write from my own perspective" He was unashamed and unabashed of his shortcomings as a writer...

I certainly felt Lullaby was an ok book but it had some serious literary shortcuts that dissappointed me... but Chuck lost me with Invisible monsters .. and gained me back with Choke ... kinda lost me with Lullaby and is gaining me back as I read Diary...

He is getting older but he's still a pillar of hope for modern fiction... and non-fiction ... if you have read Fugatives and Refugees.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:17 / 26.09.03

I hear people passing out at his recent readings isn't uncommon... unfortunately missed his london one last night.

AOAYB- Fugitives & Refugees... it's listed in the front of Diary as a book by him, but not in his author's profile list of books... is this short stories, or essays, or what, and whichever, is it available in the UK?

(I WILL go Google this later, so if you can't be arsed to respond then OK.)

12:37 / 26.09.03

I've never read any of his books because for some reason I feel like I don't want the potential of "spoiling" Fight Club:The Movie if Chuckles isn't a very good writer, but because of the web sites I read I end up with all sorts of news about him. For instance -

(1) the people-passing-out-at-readings thins, which smelled like a PR stunt, but heck, if mr. AceofAllBase (greetings from brooklyn!) bore witness to it, I really want to read this story.

(2) Palahniuk (which I still can't pronounce, even though I've read so many pronunciation guides and IIRC it's quite simple) was recently "outed" by a magazine writer, about whom in turn he exposed some private details, I think on his Web site. In his discussion of his "outing" (and this is froma secondhand source), Palahniuk said his publishers asked him to keep quiet about his homosexuality and his long-time partner. (one could imagine the original manuscript of Fight Club involving the narrator and Tyler falling in love instead, and a squeamish book publisher suggesting the "split personality" ending because "it would be really cool."

So, does he automaticaly become part of the queer outlaw canon, now? This is a curious development.

14:52 / 26.09.03

Fugitives and Refugees is non-fiction, and is a guide to Portland, Oregon. It contains details about places that are haunted and the stories behind them, recipes for food sold in restaurants in Portland, strange attractions such as the self-cleaning house, and also contains various anecdotes about Chuck's childhood and such. If you're interested in Portland, want to read an actually interesting city guide, or just want to find more out about Chuck, it's worth reading. It has been described as being the closest thing that Chuck has written to an autobiography.

I found it in the travel section in a Borders in the US, not sure if it's available in shops in the UK - I couldn't find it when I looked. It is available on Amazon though.

AceOfAllYourBase

17:13 / 29.09.03

Well the story that he read that caused the "passing out" (like i said it seemed very staged.. tho i think i meant William Castlesque not Frank Castle.... isn't Frank Castle .... the Punisher ??) wont be available for some time ... it's a short story due to come out in a collection of shorts I think Chuck said in 2005 ... In Manhattan Fugatives and Refugees is available at Kim's Underground too, if anyone in Manhattan is looking for it ...

--

17:47 / 29.09.03

I always wondered if Palahniuk was gay, but I think I read somewhere he was married? Wouldn't mind if he would be gay... my collection needs more gay writers as it is (currently all I have is WS Burroughs, james Robert baker, Dennis Cooper and, er... Poppy Z Brite).

Finished "Diary" recently... it was okay... well-written, but it kinda dragged for me until the end. Definetly a more mature work then usual though.

"Choke" is still my favorite book of his. Definetly his funniest. In fact it could very well be in my informal top 10 books of all times list. "Survivor" was the first book of his I read, and I finished it in one night. Really great. "Lullaby" was good, and had a great premise. "Fight Club" is actually my least favorite of his (not to say its bad) but I liked the movie much better. "Invisible Monsters" I have not read, but plan to.

For the record, Palahniuk is my favorite writer (not counting comic writers) working today (used to be Poppy Z Brite but she's been losing my interest lately with all that chefs in New Orleans stuff).

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