Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniukis an American novelist and freelance journalist, who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He is the author of the award-winning novel Fight Club, which also was made into an acclaimed film of the same name...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 February 1962
CityPasco, WA
CountryUnited States of America
frontier left
The only frontier left is the world of intangibles. Everything else is sewn up too tight.
books carry favorite travel
My favorite books to give or get are short story collections. And always paperbacks because they are easy to carry as you travel.
rant
So much of 'Fight Club' was a rant against fathers.
alexander checked david foster goes heath horrible kurt lifetime men peak trend
I think my heart always goes out to men at the peak of their celebrity who checked out. There's such an odd, horrible trend in my lifetime for it - Kurt Cobain, David Foster Wallace, Alexander McQueen, Heath Ledger.
heads hear invited man nod people struck teacher tom
My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.
catch life modern
I live by fallacy. 'If I get enough nice Ikea furniture, I'll be a grown-up.' Then I catch myself. Or, 'If I get off by myself, away from the stress of modern life, I'll be OK.' Then I catch myself.
verbs
Verbs allow you to communicate a story in a much more converged or involuntary way for a reader. The verbs allow you to come in under the radar, below people's defenses.
catch fact fun stupid
I never think I'm making fun of my culture. In fact I'm making fun of myself, because I catch myself doing some very stupid things.
instead plot point
Sometimes, like in 'Invisible Monsters,' I get too out of control, and instead of a plot point every chapter, I want a plot point in every sentence.
mammals order seen south visit
When I visit my brother in South Africa, I order things I've only seen in zoos. Little deers and kudu, all the mammals you would never think of eating.
crises dealt found four themselves
My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issues. The crises the narrators found themselves in were generated by themselves.
fellow shock workshop writers
When I first read the story 'Guts' in workshop - my fellow writers that I've been meeting with for almost 20 years - they laughed; they didn't have any kind of shock reaction.
dismissed functions might primarily religion social throw useful worse
Once religion has been dismissed by primarily an intellectual class of people, we lose the really useful social functions of religion... What replaces it might be worse than what we throw away.
allowed boston
I've got two dogs; they're Boston terriers, and they're allowed everywhere.