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
comedians learn loud oral telling time
I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.
appear book choke comedy coming diagnosed dying lung meant plot privately promote public save trying version
In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.
advice best choose great poorly writers
My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories.
anecdotes bring illustrate interact
I tell everyone I interact with what I'm working on and let them bring me anecdotes that illustrate my themes.
compared dread larger means
I dread the promotion part of my job. It's agony, especially compared to the private, at-home joy of writing. But being a grown-up means doing every part of the larger task.
audiences books disdain dumber readers theory younger
My personal theory is that younger audiences disdain books - not because those readers are dumber than past readers, but because today's reader is smarter.
alone books elevated filthy isolation somebody taken
My books are always about somebody who is taken from aloneness and isolation - often elevated loneliness - to community. It may be a denigrated community that is filthy and poor, but they are not alone; they are with people.
We're making the same mistakes we made 1,000 years ago. So they must be the right ones. So relax.
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.
people since time
Since September 11, 2001, the real world has become too scary for a lot of people to be with - all the time.
rant
So much of 'Fight Club' was a rant against fathers.
bit church falling life trying
Your life isn't about doing one perfect 'thing' and then falling down dead. It's more like going to church or writing a book. You do it over and over, always trying to be a little bit better. Then you die.
continue exhausted george left lives novel perhaps sort violent
Think about George Orwell's three-minute hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable.