You will like this book if you are easily amazed by the things your fellow humans do for fun or to make a living, or to survive or to fend off loneliness and despair' if you are not surprised but what we do to light the flickering light of "I am special". You will like this book if you prefer understatement and no-sentimentality in presentation of the harsh and the painful and the noble, and if you prefer examples of the profane in the presentation of the mysterious and even the mystical. If you like to sense the writer's hard lived experience in what you read, you will like this book.

105 - 2017

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in one chapter he describes what occurs at the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival while in another chapter he portrays unpublished authors and the steps they take for fame.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.

Some of it was interesting, but most of it was boring. Descriptions of the castles and the demolition derbies were too long. I did not expect to be bored with a Palahniuk book, but unfortunately, I was

⭐️⭐️⭐️
Personal Score: C+
Critical Score: B-

Well written, because duh, it’s Chuck. But so many pieces here are just not remarkable or worth making it out of the magazines/wherever they were originally published and into a hardcover book. Feels a bit like a cash grab, or Chuck’s reluctance to let his clips go forgotten in recycling bins. The back cover copy and blurbs paint this collection as wild and shocking, but it’s so not, compared to Chuck’s other books.

I thought these would detail the entertaining results of Chuck jumping into strangers’ lives and getting into mischief with them as he interviews them. Instead, many of the pieces are stagnant, frozen in their obsessive description, like we accidentally got Chuck’s notes and not the final piece with the heart, the *story* folded in.

It’s a huge range in quality on display. The last section was by far my favorite but by far the shortest. Meanwhile my least favorite pieces were the longest. Chuck’s best when he’s doing fiction or personal essays. His more journalistic ventures are too detailed and spiritless.

Here’s what I thought of each piece, not ranked by my scores but listed in the same order as the collection.

“Fact and Fiction: An Introduction” A-. Chuck always nails an intro.

~People Together~

“Testy Festy” A-. Amazing, but I wanted it to be way longer.

“Where Meat Comes From” C. Skimmed it, but it wasn’t bad, just not of interest to me.

“You Are Here” A-. A little dense but very smart.

“Demolition” C. Boring, but I’m sure some readers love this one.

“My Life as a Dog” B+. Decent. He’s such a pest irl.

“Confessions in Stone” F. Ugh, so long and boring.

“Frontiers” B+. His personal life is so chaotic, lol.

“The People Can” D+. Another snore fest, but thoroughly researched and def of interest to many people…just not me.

“The Lady” B+. Kind of a fun one.

~Portraits~

“In Her Words” C+. I don’t care about Juliette Lewis enough to love this, but still kinda interesting. Also, she’s so unlikeable.

“Why Isn’t He Budging?” B. Another unlikeable interviewee, but one far more interesting.

“Not Chasing Amy” B-. Huge stylistic and tonal departure for Chuck…I was convinced this was narrated by another interviewee, but nope, that’s really Chuck absolutely gushing over Amy Hempel.

“Reading Yourself” A-. Marilyn Manson is actually a kinda cool dude. And the tarot card reading was very well done.

“Bodhisattvas” D-. White savior journalism, objectifying and cringe.

“Human Error” D-. This guy is so repulsive, and I don’t want to read about his life.

“Dear Mr. Levin,” C. Sorta ironic that Chuck’s praising a guy for his feminist writing while bashing a woman on her’s and generally not bringing woman into the conversation. The whole piece just feels tone deaf and kiss ass-y.

~Personal~

“Escort” B. Read this years ago in an anthology. More offensive toward its subject than I remembered.

“Almost California” A-. Stellar behind the scenes ish anecdotes.

“The Lip Enhancer” A-. More stellar personal narrative.

“Monkey Think, Monkey Do” A-. These are starting to all blend together, but I’m still loving it. A trouble-making piece, though. Literally.

“Brinkmanship” A-. A bit sad. Awesome.

“Now I Remember…” A-. Continuing the winning streak.

“Consolation Prizes” A-. A little all over the place but I don’t mind.

3 stars

8 días y 3700 scrolleadas. El primer libro de historias/ensayos de Palahniuk que leo, el que más se ha asemejado es Fantasmas porque son un compilado de historias.

Las historias son bastante variadas, pero tienen 3 grandes apartados. Gente Reunida. Retratos. Personal. De las cuales habla de personas y actividades que los relacionan. Personas "famosas" e historias personales de Palahniuk.

Todas las historias nos ayudan a comprenden un poco más la mente, motivación y libros de Palahniuk.

Aunque no me gustaron todas, y la parte de retratos fue la más difícil, hay unas muy rescatables. Cómo la de Marilyn Manson y el apartado de Personal. La de gente reunida me recordó a sus historias de fantasmas.

Tristes, desgarradoras, brutalmente honestas. Es menos ficción pero más realidad. Más narcotizacion menos transgresión.

Un libro que probablemente debí haber leído antes de él. A ver qué más nos depara el año de Palahniuk.

this book was definitely interesting

This is the second time I’ve tried to read this book, and the second time I’m putting it down without finishing. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

Palahniuk is right. These essays of his are most certainly stranger than fiction. Just from the every first essay alone, you’re hoping that he’s making all this up. But no. The annual Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival just outside of Missoula, MT, detailed in the aptly-titled “Testy Festy”, is the kind of bizarre and mind-boggling public orgy that you think can – or should, rather – exist only in the most perverted of minds. (The shocking writing and fantasy worlds of Marquis de Sade comes readily to mind.) Yet it is all very real. (Too much Viagra and Spanish fly, perhaps? One can only wonder.)
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Luckily for us, the rest of this volume of odds and ends Palahniuk composed in-between his novels are much less pornographic, but just as equally bizarre. In the first section “People Together”, we meet semi-professional wrestlers hoping to make the U.S. Olympic team (with or without cauliflowered ears), desperate amateur screenwriters making their three-minute pit to studio hacks, die-hard combine demolition derby contestants in rural Washington State, Northwest castle-builders (a favorite chapter of mine, as I too fantasize about living behind medieval walls…with modern amenities, of course), and psychic shyster who are surprisingly capable of actual divination (but only after one too many glasses of red wine).

In the section “Portraits”, Palahniuk spends a lot of time shedding light on the oddity known as Hollywood. Whether it be his odd interview with Juliette Lewis (mainly for her naïve belief in Scientology – that racket of all rackets), or even Marilyn Manson’s depressing tarot-card self-reading in his attic, I am reassured once again that a lot of money – no, make that too much money – can make a self-deluding nut out of you. (The spirit of Howard Hughes is alive and well in the Hollywood Hills and the ephemeral and fickle world of celebrity-dom.)

In “Personal”, his third and final section, Palahniuk exorcises many a demon by confessing to a brief addiction to anabolic steroids – which he kicked after his balls shriveled up (which may classify as TMI for some people) – as well as the odd encounters that he still gets to this day from fans of Fight Club, his novel-turned-cinematic-hit.

Palahniuk’s prose is best described as a form of personal confession, but told with the eye of a cultural anthropologist, voyeur, and journalist all wrapped in one. I may not know his fiction one bit – except for seeing David Fincher’s cinematic adaptation of his novel Fight Club – but my curiosity is now piqued. Let’s hope it’s just as riveting and astonishing as his non-fiction.

turns out palahniuk’s nonfiction is just as pretentious as his fiction

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.