Like most people I watched Fight Club before I knew who Chuch Palahniuk was. Nevertheless his novel that started a cult following back in the 90s, is equally as important as the Brad Pitt and Edward Norton movie.
Chuck Palahniuk is a writer, based in Portland Oregon, the author of Fight Club and one of my favourite writers of all times. My first experience directly of his work, was with a story called Guts. The story was around 2008 circulating around the less-savoury parts of the Internet as a sort of literal gore-fic. People copied it around to scare other people, and for a while, as I was unfamiliar with who or why wrote it I was wondering myself if it was a true story, or a figment of somebody's imagination. The story of Guts revolves around a particular practice of pleasuring ones self through the sucksion of a swimming pools filtration system. That is as much as I feel comfortable telling you about it without ruining any of my reader's dinner. You know how content gets labeled Not Safe For Work, things get bleeped out to spare you your supposed innocence, well this one is the embodiment of Not Safe For Life. With that warning it is available on the author's website here: Guts by Chuck Palahniuk: The Cult.
Chuck Palahniuk's style of transgressive fiction is unique in that he does his research thoroughly to uncover the most shaded places of the human experience. Palahniuk's experience is equally as unique. Early in life he worked as a diesel mechanic, then he got a journalism degree and sometime along the way he started some fiction writing classes. Meanwhile he held such peculiar jobs as driving victims of various illnesses to their help-groups, what inspired him to write the beginning episodes of Fight Club with the ascending bowel cancer, the testicular cancer, the blood parasites group. In these groups Palahniuk would sit throughout in a corner and listen to the stories people had to tell about their lives, stories of suffering, detachment and eventually absolution, and that's what made his writing style so genuine. His characters are in a sense derived through the best source available - that of the experience of real living people. In these meetings he acquired a sense of how people would tell their stories - what parts would they influence to interest the others listening in the group, how would they rationalize their suffering weather it was an AA meeting, or a Survivors of some terminal disease or another.
The Fight Club novel is not so different from the movie, except it's got a different ending. And it feels like it's told a bit differently along the way. Less of the Brad Pitt macho appeal, more of the actual characters, unassociated with the Holywood stars. You know - the parts that didn't fit in the movie, because the reel was already way too long for cinema, even though David Fincher meticulously filmed nearly every scene from the book. For any fan to claim to understand the movie, the novel is an important part of the message. You can find Fight Club, as well as the rest of Chuck Palahniuk's books here:
Chuck Palahniuk's Official Web-site: The Cult
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| Chuck Palahniuk: http://chuckpalahniuk.net |
Chuck Palahniuk's style of transgressive fiction is unique in that he does his research thoroughly to uncover the most shaded places of the human experience. Palahniuk's experience is equally as unique. Early in life he worked as a diesel mechanic, then he got a journalism degree and sometime along the way he started some fiction writing classes. Meanwhile he held such peculiar jobs as driving victims of various illnesses to their help-groups, what inspired him to write the beginning episodes of Fight Club with the ascending bowel cancer, the testicular cancer, the blood parasites group. In these groups Palahniuk would sit throughout in a corner and listen to the stories people had to tell about their lives, stories of suffering, detachment and eventually absolution, and that's what made his writing style so genuine. His characters are in a sense derived through the best source available - that of the experience of real living people. In these meetings he acquired a sense of how people would tell their stories - what parts would they influence to interest the others listening in the group, how would they rationalize their suffering weather it was an AA meeting, or a Survivors of some terminal disease or another.
Chuck Palahniuk's Official Web-site: The Cult
Sounds awesome!
ReplyDeleteThe book is on my to read list, and I hope I do get around to reading it soon. I don't read anywhere as much as I used to.
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