(Seattle Times She’s a fashion model who has everything: a...)
Seattle Times She’s a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster.
(Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero ...)
Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants.
(Written with a style and imagination that could only come...)
Written with a style and imagination that could only come from Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby is the latest outrage from one of our most exciting writers at work today.
(Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial...)
Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing.
(Burnt Tongues is a collection of transgressive stories se...)
Burnt Tongues is a collection of transgressive stories selected by a rigorous nomination and vetting process and hand-selected by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, as the best of The Cult workshop.
Chuck Palahniuk, literature's favourite transgressive author, gives us twenty-one stories and one novella in Make Something Up, a compilation that disturbs and delights in equal measure.
(Adjustment Day, the author’s first novel in four years, i...)
Adjustment Day, the author’s first novel in four years, is an ingeniously comic work in which Chuck Palahniuk does what he does best: skewer the absurdities in our society.
Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
(In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestsel...)
In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, bestselling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a"kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American novelist and freelance journalist, who writes in the genre of transgressional fiction and who is renowned for his novels ‘Fight Club,’ 'Choke' and 'Lullaby.'
Background
Chuck Palahniuk was born Charles Michael Palahniuk on the 21st of February 1962, in Pasco, Washington, United States, to Carol Adele (née Tallent) and Fred Palahniuk. His heritage is said to be French and Russian, and his surname is Ukrainian, as his paternal grandfather was Ukrainian and migrated to New York from Canada in 1907.
Palahniuk was mostly raised in a mobile home in Burbank; however, his parents separated when he was 14 and subsequently divorced, often leaving him and his three siblings to live with their maternal grandparents at their cattle ranch in eastern Washington.
Education
Palahniuk attended journalism school at the University of Oregon, receiving his degree in 1986.
Before he became a novelist, Chuck Palahniuk reported for a radio station in Eugene, Oregon, and then started to write for Portland's Oregonian newspaper. He soon grew tired of the job and switched gears entirely, going to work as a diesel mechanic, a job he would hold until his career as a fiction writer took off. Working at Freightliner for 13 years, Palahniuk fitted front axles to big trucks and wrote manuals telling people how to do the same. For a while, too, he tried his hand at journalism. Both 'closed him down'.
A casual visit to a 'group awareness' seminar conducted by the Landmark Forum, an organisation that uses ideas based on controversial 'est' therapy, was, he says, his 'big epiphany moment. I was 26 when I did the seminar, convinced the world was out to burn me at every turn. If it wasn't for that seminar, I wouldn't be a writer. They taught me to see how closed down I was, to face my fears.'
In 1988, Palahniuk quit his job in journalism and set about confronting his fears big time. He was so worried about becoming poor and homeless, that he went to work as a volunteer in a homeless shelter. Then he confronted his fear of dying by working in a hospice for the terminally ill. However, he then ceased volunteering upon the death of a patient to whom he had grown attached.
In his mid-thirties, Chuck decided to try his hand at writing fiction. A friend suggested he attend a workshop hosted by Tom Spanbauer, minimalist guru behind the art of “Dangerous Writing.” The resulting short story, Negative Reinforcement, appeared in the now defunct literary journal Modern Short Stories in August 1990 and is Chuck’s first known published work. The Love Theme of Sybil and William followed in October.
Chuck’s first attempt at a novel, If You Lived Here, You’d be Home Already, was also written while attending the workshop. After it was rejected, Chuck dabbled with even darker material, writing a manuscript called Manifesto, which would go on to become Invisible Monsters. As with If You Lived Here, agents just couldn't embrace the dark tone in Chuck's work, and while his voice as a writer got some recognition, nobody was willing to take a chance on him.
That all changed when Chuck "gave up" on the mainstream and decided to make his next manuscript even darker. Written in stolen moments under truck chassis and on park benches to a soundtrack of The Downward Spiral and Pablo Honey, Fight Club came into existence. Within months, Gerry Howard convinced the higher-ups to take a chance on the fledgeling writer, and Chuck soon had a book deal with a major publisher. But it wasn't until 20th Century Fox took notice that Chuck nabbed an agent in Edward Hibbert, who would go on to broker the deal for Fight Club the movie.
Due to this success, Chuck was given free reign, creatively. He put out two novels in 1999—religious satire Survivor, and the rewritten Invisible Monsters—and has written almost a book a year since. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. All of his novels thereafter have had similar success.
Palahniuk's next novel became 2002 Lullaby. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father, who was murdered in 1999 by the jealous ex of a woman met through a personal ad.
2003 would go down as a banner year, but not many people realize it began with a small literary conference in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. The three-day event gave fans unprecedented access to the author and his work and was presided over by Chuck himself. The schedule consisted of exclusive readings, Q&As, book signings, dissertations—all devoted to Chuck. Not one to revel in the spotlight, Chuck selflessly used this forum to promote the art of storytelling and to encourage a generation of young readers to evolve into writers.
Both Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released later that year. While on the road in support of Diary, Chuck began reading a short story entitled 'Guts,' which would eventually become part of the novel Haunted.
In the years that followed, things seemed to settle down for Chuck. He continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a 'remix' of Invisible Monsters, Damned, Doomed, Beautiful You, Make Something Up, Bait: Off-Color Stories for You to Color, Legacy: An Off-Color Novella for You to Color and most recently, Adjustment Day. To this day, he still attends a weekly workshop with close friends and writers such as Lidia Yuknavitch, Monica Drake, Chelsea Cain and Suzy Vitello, and they are the first people to read anything he writes.
Chuck also enjoys giving back to his fans, and teaching the art of storytelling has been an important part of that. In 2004, Chuck began submitting essays to ChuckPalahniuk.net on the craft of writing. Then, in 2009, Chuck increased his involvement by committing to read and review a selection of fan-written stories each month. He would then provide detailed feedback and criticism to aid in the revision process.
Chuck Palahniuk currently divides his time between two—one in Oregon and one in Washington State—both of which he shares with his partner of twenty years and their dogs. When he is not on tour, Chuck is constantly writing.
A very humorous, imaginative, thought-provoking and gifted writer, Chuck Palahniuk gained popularity with his 1996 novel Fight Club which was later made into a film in 1999 by 20th Century Fox. The film starring Edward Norton and Brad Pitt shot him to fame. In addition to the film, Fight Club was adapted into a fighting video game loosely based on the film, which was released in October 2004, receiving poor reviews universally. Palahniuk's other novel Choke was also adapted into a feature film. On January 14, 2008, the film version of Choke premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, starring Sam Rockwell, Kelly Macdonald and Anjelica Huston with Clark Gregg directing.
Chuck Palahniuk's other works include fictions like Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Lullaby, Diary and Haunted; short fictions like Negative Reinforcement, Loser, Phoenix, Cannibal and Zombie; and non-fiction like Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon and some others.
Chuck Palahniuk was nominated for the 1999 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel for Survivor and for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Lullaby in 2002 and for Haunted in 2005.
Chuck Palahniuk prefers not to elaborate on his "religious" beliefs. However, when asked if he believes in God, he simply answers "Yes." and leaves it at that.
Views
Chuck is known for doing extensive research. He says that research is his favourite part of the writing process and is the fuel that drives his novels. He has been known to consume entire books and distil that information into a single descriptive line. He writes in public, spending hours people-watching as he does. If you have a passing conversation with Chuck on the street, there’s a good chance it ends up in one of his books. The narratives of Palahniuk's books often are structured in medias res, starting at the temporal end, with the protagonist recounting the events that led up to the point at which the book begins.
The content of Palahniuk's works has always been described as nihilistic. Palahniuk has rejected this label, stating that he is a romantic and that his works are mistakenly seen as nihilistic because they express ideas that others do not believe in.
Palahniuk's work, Fight Club, has also been criticized for perceived empowerment to "men's rights activists" Palahniuk has stated that his inspiration to write Fight Club came from what he perceived as a "dearth of novels that explore male issues", and further questioned whether young males are considered a profitable demographic by publishers.
Quotations:
"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."
"The things you own end up owning you."
"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."
"I just don't want to die without a few scars."
"You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."
"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known."
"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
"The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person."
"You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else."
"Find joy in everything you choose to do. Every job, relationship, home... it's your responsibility to love it, or change it."
Membership
Palahniuk is a member of the rebellious Cacophony Society and is a regular participant in their events, including the annual Santa Rampage (a public Christmas party involving pranks and drunkenness) in Portland, Oregon. His participation in the Society inspired some of the events in his writings, both fictional and non-fictional.
Personality
Chuck Palahniuk has a dark sense of humour, and he doesn't follow a strict schedule and only writes when inspired. His favourite film is Session 9 (2001).
Quotes from others about the person
“I guess my most prized pop culture possession is a signed first edition of the book Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk.” - Jen Lancaster
Interests
Writers
Amy Hempel, Monica Drake, Justin Jorgenson, Thom Jones, Craig Clevenger, Junot Diaz, Bret Easton Ellis, Larry Brown and Denis Johnson
Music & Bands
Radiohead, NIN, and Prodigy
Connections
According to a profile and interview in The Advocate in May 2008, Chuck Palahniuk and his unnamed male partner, live in "a former church compound outside Vancouver, Washington." The couple has been together since the 1990s, having met while Palahniuk was working at Freightliner.
