i stopped torturing myself at the half way point and burned the book over my stovetop and ate the ashes in hopes of regaining the 3 hours i put in. didn't work. this was one of the worst things i've read since i tutored freshmen in their first writing course.

to anyone who happens upon it and can't resist, here are the only nuggets worth digesting: {you are here} and {the lady}. and i'd say the latter was more so, if only for the quick spill on palahniuk's personal history. also it's worth taking into account that i didn't read much past the second section of portraits where the mental yawns became unbearable.

The high rating is purely because:
This is still one of the good ones from Palahniuk. This is still one of the ones he writes actual sentences and thinks. You can read all the thinking! I truly enjoyed reading about things that I knew to be actual facts, never mind how much I've heard urban legends about fem fight clubs or people choking on food at restaurants for money, I know the stuff Manson said is true coz I've read his book years back.
There is a certain kind of honesty in Stranger than Fiction that I feel Palahniuk lost at some point. His need to make up things and spiderweb worlds overlaps his ability to tell it how it is. In Stranger than Fiction he still tells it.

A collection of pieces covering a variety of subjects: autobiographical, ruminative essays; a portrait of Marilyn Manson; a look into amateur wrestling; an expose of a middle-America monster, uh, combine derby; and so on. All written in Palahniuk’s Ernest Hemingway gone jaded, bare-bones, non-judgmental “minimalist” style. Which style he also writes about, by the way.

A lot of the stories are extremely interesting, especially the ones that creep into seldom charted territory (like the combine derby story, or a piece on life in a Navy submarine) — but no matter how much magic Palahniuk’s got in his writing, he just can’t make Juliette Lewis interesting. He’s also very compelling when he writes personal stuff — not so much about his poor murdered father (some things are too troubled to make really engrossing material), but like his times popping steroids or volunteering with AIDS patients or staying at a “haunted” house. Now, if he hadn’t written Fight Club, would this collection of stories in “manly,” terse prose, some startling and some rather boring, be published as a hardback? Probably not. But what’s very good here outshadows the mediocre.

Exceptionally fine writing. Palahniuk can be very intense, but I found these essays quite charming. This is mostly Palahniuk in paid-writer mode. I found The People Can about life on modern submarines fascinating. The Lady was a real high point. I had never heard the sad story of Palahniuk's father. And the ghost story in that essay is one I'll never forget! Also, Dear Mr. Levin was a brilliant dissection of writer Ira Levin's subversive and prescient work. I learned something from that one. Finally, as a fan of Fight Club - both movie and book - the essays about how that work changed his life and his experiences making the movie were more than I could have hoped for.

I do enjoy Chuck Palahniuk's fiction and was interested to see what he could bring non-fiction wise... and my verdict is that he should very much stick to what he is great at - fiction! My main take, out of this part documentary part essay, is the horrific story that his father was killed by a white supremacist! This is the only book in my sizeable Chuck Palahniuk collection that I'm thinking of giving to a charity shop! 4 out of 12.

2007 read

This might be a bit of a cheat but I'm going to consider this one done and finished even though I didn't read the entire book. The problem was that I lost the book before I could finish it. Actually I know exactly where it was last left: in the pocket of my airline seat on a flight to Washington D.C. I just plain forgot it there. I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've ever done so. Anyway, if I was truly enjoying the book, I would hunt down a new copy or buy the ebook. However, I wasn't really enjoying it. The book is a collection of life experiences from Palahniuk; each chapter is a different experience. For example, in one chapter he describes what occurs at the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival while in another chapter he portrays unpublished authors and the steps they take for fame. In these experiences, he illustrates people's lives and their pretty crazy actions. Some of the experiences are simply crazy experiences to be taken as indicative of people's lives; others experiences are infused with insights that provide depth and pathos to those lives. An analysis that makes you analyze your own life and hopefully, at least to me, want to live a more fuller life. So why then, if I was gaining some insight into my life, would I not want to continue? Because it was not the fun, entertaining type of book that I normally want to read. I think that I can count the number of self-help books that I read on one hand; something that I'm sure an ex or two would really prefer I had read more. Self-help books just aren't my usual cup-of-tea. Before I lost this book, I already knew that it was going to be some time before I finished the book. Time enough to start and finish several other books between chapters. Now I can move on and get back to Adam Cesare or Stephen King or start that Brian James Freeman book.

(4.5 stars, but rounding up)
This book took me nearly a month to read, which is a long time considering I usually read books in a week or two. What factors into that is while the book is an overall narrative, with one central character, this is still just a collection of nonfiction essays. So, it was easy for me to pick it up, read one or two stories, then put it down and go read something else. Which is why I am rating it so high.

I think had I tried to read it straight through, I wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I did. Palahniuk is a polarizing writer, thinker, and overall personality and I don’t think this book is gonna win over any detractors. He can be a lot to handle, and if you’re insecure of yourself, he can come across as a know it all. At first glance, he seemingly provokes just to provoke. His subject matter is vulgar, and he has no restraints in painting himself as an intellectual. The first story is about a sex festival, so he puts it right on front street what you’re in for.

It took me until the end of the book to realize Palahniuk had structured his unrelated essays in such a way that made himself into one of his characters: aloof, disaffected, pretentious, but full of wisdom. There’s a story that is made up solely of quotes from an interview, but even that is filtered through his lens, and you can’t help but hear it in his voice.

Not all of the stories hit bullseyes, but the only one I had to pull myself through was the one about the guys who built castles. There was WAY too much technical talk about how to build a castle. Some of the stories that go on too long drag a little, but they’re all building to a point. At the end of the day, this book made me laugh, gag, and think, and I’d be lying to deny that. In that, this book is one of my favorites I’ve read for a while. It’s in its imperfections that it creates a perfect study of one man’s experience.

I missed the pattern to this book the first time around. Part of it is Palahnik's collection of anything he's encountered that he thought could be used. "Fight Club" used a lot of his experiences at a charity hospital, "Survivor" had as many interesting cleaning methods that he could find, and calls to telephone sex numbers ended up, well, everywhere. "Stranger Than Fiction" is a collection of the tidbits that he liked best, or hasn't been able to fit into a novel yet.

But you also need to pay attention to the introduction, because the book has an even larger meaning. "Every story in this book is about being with other people. Me being with people. Or people being together." All the live-sex in a Montana festival (and the parallel story of the amateur wrestlers), or the corpse-hunting dogs, or the smug-but-scared story of the psychics he's VERY sure (oh yes, he is indeed) were pulling a scam, they're all stories about people trying so hard to reach out to someone, ANYONE, who will confirm that, "Yes, it's perfectly okay to do what you do, be who you are, and feel the way you do, because I feel exactly the same way."

I loved the story about the castle builders, the Rocket Guy chapter made me sad, and looking at the book as a collection of people trying to make a link to other people makes the final story VERY hard-hitting. Because all his father was trying to do was to start dating again.

Note: this review is from 2014. Not sure why Goodreads decided to bump it now and make it look like I called Palahniuk one of my favorite authors in 2024, which is just shameful.


OG review: Another one down while I pull all nighters and cram for exams. Go me.

I have a lot of good books on my shelf right now, so it's been hard to decide which one to read next. I picked this one because I thought that it would be a quick read and I wouldn't lose focus because it's just a bunch of short essays. And, of course, it's Palahniuk, who I was very interested to read as a nonfiction author. I'm so glad I decided to read this book, as lately I've been less than impressed with his stuff, and this one reassured me that he might not be a hack after all.

As with any essay/short story book, not every single article is interesting. It took me hours just to finish the chapter on castle building, and I got almost nothing out of it. The very first article, about the Testicle Festival (?), just seemed like a bunch of gross-out paragraphs thrown together for no good reason. But when they were good, wow they were good. I loved reading about Juliette Lewis' work on Cape Fear and Chuck's day in the life of a dog, but the best of the bunch is easily the "the Lady", about Palahniuk's stay in his friend's supposedly haunted house. At first I was curious, but I expected a dumb little essay on the paranormal. What you get, however, is amazing. It's funny, it's sad, it's creepy, and unsettling personal, and it's all in less than 10 pages. If you're not sure about this book, at least read that section and try to tell me that you don't want more!

Overall, this was a fun, interesting read that gave me a look inside the mind of one of my favorite authors. While it wasn't perfect, it was better than I expected. Check it out.

I've long been a fan of Chuck Palahniuk's writing style. His terse descriptions, his liberal peppering of random facts and hard data, his repetition of key lines for poetic resonance, and his infusion of intelligent thought into lurid and pulpy material all combine to make one of my favorite storytelling voices. He may not have been the first to do any of them, or maybe even the first to do them all together, but what I find so appealing is that he's a skilled raconteur who knows how to spin a good yarn, or at least an entertaining one. Yeah, I've long been a fan of his style ... but I've only ever seen it applied to his fiction and never even considered that it could also be applied to writings based in real life. Then again, truth is ... you can fill in the rest.

The book is called Stranger Than Fiction, but a look at the selections may be a bit underwhelming for those who are used to his actual fiction. Chuck's stories explore the nasty and seedy underbelly of society, the parts that "decent people" don't like to talk about. His main characters have survived doomsday cults, provoked spiders to bite them as a fetish, and infiltrated normal American families so they could secretly engage in acts of terrorism. The book has a promising start with "Testy Festy," a real attention-grabber that describes, in graphic detail and clinical prose, a festival of public sex acts. However, it's a Trojan horse: in these articles, Chuck profiles amateur wrestlers, submarine crewmen, and Americans who build castles as a hobby. A profile of Marilyn Manson seems promising, but his frightening reputation is, like many images in the music business, intentionally cultivated. Chuck is so edgy in his stories, but he's pretty tame in the real-life subjects he chooses to write about.

Sadly, some of these stories aren't even all that interesting. For example, much of the "Portraits" section - nestled between the first section, "People Together," and the last section, "Personal" - is weak compared to the rest. I didn't find much of interest in his interviews with actress Juliette Lewis and political commentator Andrew Sullivan, though maybe that's because I didn't know them. But then, I'm more familiar with Marilyn Manson, whose own article is also forgettable. Another example is "Demolition," a story about destruction derbies featuring farm combines. Sounds exciting, until Chuck insists on providing precise play-by-plays that readers can't even picture in their minds.

But by far, my least favorite piece is definitely "Confessions in Stone" - it describes three dudes' obsessions with making castles and extensively details their processes for insulation and sewage and other homemaking stuff. It's extremely tedious, and the worst part is that it goes on for a full *thirty pages,* longer than any other story in the book. I've started and stopped Stranger Than Fiction a couple of times since I first got it, and when I finally committed to reading it all the way through, I knew I had to skip this one for my own sake. Thanks to that choice, I made it from Page 1 to 100 in a single evening.

That should actually indicate why I still gave this book four stars: other than the snoozes and the goddamn castle-building, Stranger Than Fiction is, for the most part, an entertaining and intriguing read. His subjects don't seem as promising as the plots of Survivor or Fight Club, but Chuck proves that he doesn't have to be lurid to be interesting. For example, reading about an Olympic Trial for wrestling may not sound all that exciting, but "Where Meat Comes From" is one of the better pieces in the book for how strongly it humanizes the competitors of a sport that is generally dismissed for negative stereotypes. This story stands out because it showcases the personalities and motivations of the participants, but the way he details the rituals and philosophies specific to the wrestling lifestyle is common to plenty of other stories in the book.

If there's one reason to read this book, it's the articles that let him discuss reading and writing. Like I said before, I greatly admire Chuck's writing style, and I was absolutely ecstatic that this collection provided greater insight from the man himself about how he constructs his writing. "Consolation Prizes" shows how he combined many disparate elements of his life, from his disappointment with his father to the speaking habits of a foreign friend, to write Fight Club. "Not Chasing Amy," an essay/tribute to author Amy Hempel, retells the lessons he learned from his writing mentor Tom Spanbauer. "You Are Here," perhaps my favorite article in the entire book, uses the occasion of a writer's conference at a hotel to expound, in all conceivable directions, on the state of writing in the modern world. For the purest example of Chuck describing his writing process and philosophy, look no further than his introduction, which no reader should skip.

I acknowledge that I'm naturally drawn to those articles and others like them because I'm an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. Talking in depth about reading and writing is my whole shtick, it's what I'm racking up tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to do. But I really can't help seeing this book as an excellent opportunity to think deeper about what makes Chuck's writing style hit - and occasionally, miss. For example, when he starts mentioning that he graduated with a degree in journalism and wrote most of these articles as magazine or newspaper features before hitting the big-time with Fight Club, many aspects of his writing style fall into place. It's not just that his mentor was big on minimalism: terse descriptions and the integration of hard data into a narrative are key skills for any journalist. His narrative voice for his novels is as detached as a journalist is required to be when writing news articles. When I realized that, I gained a much greater appreciation for Chuck and for this book.

Stranger Than Fiction isn't always interesting, but when it hits, it's fascinating. Anyone interested in reading it and avoiding the lamer pieces can find single-sentence summaries of each on the Wikipedia article for the book. However, those premises don't all do their stories justice - "Now I Remember..." is way funnier than its description suggests. I would strongly recommend trying the whole book from start to finish and finding what you specifically like, because I'm sure that for some people, castle-building is the coolest thing in the world.

Quotes 'n Notes:

- "Thank you for the best fucking part of my whole fucking career!" Chuck quotes Brad Pitt as saying this upon meeting him on the set of Fight Club. I'm inclined to agree.
- "In the new and politically corrected Navy, the dark-blue coveralls crewmen wear while on patrol are no longer called 'poopie suits.'" That's a pity.
- Chuck talks about Fight Club in at least five of the seven stories in the "Personal" section. On the one hand, sudden success can provide plenty of material for up-and-coming writers. On the other hand, you can only mention that you've met Brad Pitt so many times before it sounds like you're name-dropping ...
- I hate to accuse Chuck of fabricating his stories, but as a tarot reader myself, I'm a little skeptical that Marilyn Manson just happened to get a whopping ten Major Arcana cards in his self-reading. For reference, there are only 21 Major Arcana cards total in a standard deck of 78.
- Thanks to this book, I finally have a word for my terrible habit of waiting until the eleventh hour to finish any work I have: brinksmanship. That word's typically used to refer to the arms race in the Cold War, but this new definition is way more convenient.
- Amy Hempel is now on my to-read list. I love Chuck's sense of minimalism, and for him to say she does it best means her work must be worth checking out.

Son una serie de relatos e historias que abordan la vida de Chuck. De cómo la vida puede cambiar con un hit como lo fue “El club de la pelea”, de convertirte en un escritor que revisa motores diésel para ser un escritor reconocido sin trabajo estable. Una primera parte que cuenta historias alrededor de la vida norteamericana, desde las peleas de máquinas que recogen el maíz, pasando por la vida de un camarero hasta quienes construyen castillos sólo por la loca idea de hacerlo. Para luego adentrarnos en una veta más íntima, de racionamientos en torno a escribir, saber contar las historias de tus amigos y hacerlas parecer ficción. Es una lectura entretenida para quienes queremos adentrarnos en la vida de un escritor que a estas alturas ya es de culto.

Lonely Person

All my books are about a lonely person looking for some way to connect with other people

The dream is a big house, off alone somewhere

Writing Novel

You plan and research. You spend time alone, building this lovely world where you control, control, control everything

You stay in your story world until you destroy it. Then you come back to be with other people

Reading a books is not a group activity

In my own cycle, it goes: Fact. Fiction. Fact. Fiction

Journalist and Novelist

The journalist is always rushing, hunting, meeting people, digging up facts, researching. Cooking a story

The novelist imagines it

Writing. Or theater, or music. Some shared vision. A mutual quest that would keep you together with other people who valued this vague, intangible skill you valued

Fight Club

I started telling myself a story about a guy who haunted terminal illness support group to feel better about his own pointless life

Support Groups

Support groups serve the role that organized religion used to. We used to go to church to reveal the worst aspects of ourselves, our sins. To tell our stories. To be recognized. To be forgiven. And to be redeemed, accepted back into out community

Staying connected to people resolve our anxiety

Anywhere people had nothing left to lose, that's where they told the most truth

Storytelling

The world is made of people telling stories

We live our lives according to stories

You want to give the reader a break from their own life. From their own life story

This is how I create a character. I tend to give each character an education and a skill set that limits how they see the world

A big segment of storytelling is about personal suffering. There's the stink of catharsis

This is your life, but processed

Selling your story. To turn that misery into big money

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger pointed out how human beings tend to look at the world as a standing stock of material, ready for us to use. As inventory to be processed into something more valuable. Trees into wood. Animals into meat. He called this world of raw natural resources

Is it possible to exploit your own life for the sake of a marketable story

Legacy

As more people grow old, with the experience of a lifetime to remember, the more they worry about losing it. All those memories. Their best formulas, stories, routines for making a dinner table burst into laughter. Their legacy. Their life

Boredom and Fiction

How can we create exciting, edgy books and movies if we only live boring, sedate lives?

Fiction is a safe laboratory for exploring ourselves and our world

Instead of life letting just happen, we could outline our own personal plot

The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only ever lived on paper

Slang is the writer's color of palette

Invisible, Eternal World

All our problems and all our blessings could be readily dismissed because they'd be no more real than plot events in a book or movie. An invisible, eternal world would render this world an illusion

Software of Fiction

Fiction is a software code that operates in the hardware of your mind

So why I write. Because most of times, your life isn't funny the first time though. Most times, you can hardly stand it

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect

And writing makes you look back

Because since you can't control life, at least, you can control your version

Kierkegaard

Adam in the Garden of Eden, happy and content until God shows him the Tree of Knowledge and says, "Don't eat this". Now Adam is no longer free. There is one rule he can break, he must break, to prove his freedom, even if it destroys him. Kierkegaard says the moment we are forbidden to do something, we will do it. It is inevitable

Hollywood

Hollywood creative people to brainstorm terrorist scenarios

We want to know every way we might be attack . So we can be prepared

Million New Reasons

What's coming is a million new reasons not to live your life. You can deny your possibility to succeed and blame it on something else

Stop living as a reaction to circumstances and start living as a force for what you say should be. What's coming is a million new reasons to go ahead