"OK," says Palahniuk from the stage, microphone in hand. "I think someone over here fell asleep," says someone at the edge of the stage. "It was an epileptic fit," say friends of the empty seat. Some people point accusingly at a young man. The evening ends with him asking the audience how many of them passed out. Two-thirds of the 500 or so people gathered hold up their hands. The event begins that evening with the chief librarian, Moira, dressed in character in sensible shoes and skirt, asking, on behalf of the author, how many of the audience have never been to a public reading before. He looks nothing like his author photograph. Palahniuk, a shaven-headed figure in short-sleeved, salmon-pink shirt, white trousers and brown tasselled loafers, moves with the slightly rolling gait of the muscle-bound. Of course, this being Vegas, that's not New Orleans, the well-known city in the south of the US, but the lesser known Orleans hotel on the fringes of the Vegas strip. I think that will be the book that erases Fight Club."īefore his reading, I meet Palahniuk for lunch on the corner of Canal Street and Bourbon Street in Orleans.
HAUNTED CHUCK PALAHNIUK GUTS SERIES
a whole series of very extreme short stories, all linked together with a unifying narrative. "I want to have the story that makes people weep uncontrollably. And it's not even the most extreme one but it's the one that makes people pass out," Palahniuk says. "Guts is a short story from a book of linked short stories. It is in some sense more shocking than Fight Club, his 1996 novel (later a film) about a secret fraternity of young men who pummel each other half to death in illicit contests, and who gradually evolve into a terrorist unit. Guts, a cautionary masturbation tale writ large, has all the expected Palahniuk ingredients - anatomical detail, suburban melodrama, violence and humour. (Actually, this is a fiction: he's really here to visit his family, many of whom work in the Vegas casinos "in middle management", and the reading means he can write the trip off against tax - or that's what he tells me.) The girl next to me skipped off work early to make it the boy next to her drove five hours to be here.Ĭhuck Palahniuk is in town to give a reading of Guts, the latest instalment in his gorefest celebration of all things unAmerican. Boys sporting tattoos and girls with kohl-dark eyes lounge around waiting for the action. We learn so little from peace.T he Las Vegas library is way out on the edge of town, and there's a very un-Vegas crowd gathered in the auditorium tonight. It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. This is your life and its ending one moment at a time. Chuck Palahniuk, DiaryĪll God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. The only way to find true happiness is to risk being completely cut open. The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.
HAUNTED CHUCK PALAHNIUK GUTS FREE
It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known. In the years that followed, he continued to write, publishing the bestselling Rant, Snuff, Pygmy, Tell-All, a ‘remix’ of Invisible Monsters, Damned, and most recently, Doomed. 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. Diary and the non-fiction guide to Portland, Fugitives and Refugees, were released in 2003. Chuck credits writing Lullaby with helping him cope with the tragic death of his father. Chuck’s work has always been infused with personal experience, and his next novel, Lullaby, was no exception. Choke, published in 2001, became Chuck’s first New York Times bestseller. Chuck put out two novels in 1999, Survivor and Invisible Monsters. The film’s popularity drove sales of the novel. The adaptation of Fight Club was a flop at the box office, but achieved cult status on DVD. 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.
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