Chuck Palahniuk

FONTS

Genre Inquiry Project

Chuck Palahniuk

By Jack Smalley

Best Selling Novels

Career

Invisible Monsters

Survivor

Fight Club

Invisible Monsters

Survivor

Fight Club

• Intern at NPR during college
• Wrote for a local newspaper in Portland for a short time
• Worked at Freightliner as a mechanic
• Briefly worked as a journalist
• Quit to volunteer at a homeless shelter
• Volunteered at a Hospice for the terminally ill
• Quit after his favorite patient died
• Started writing fiction in mid-thirties
• Attempted to write first novel, Invisible Monsters
• Rejected it for its disturbing content

• Published in 1999 (Third Novel)
• First rejected for being too disturbing
• Revised version was published
• Plot
• Character is unnamed
• disfigured woman
• goes by multiple identities

• Published in 1999 (Second novel)
• Chapters and pages are numbered backwards
• Creedish Cult
• death cult
• Must wait for a sign from God then commit suicide
• The main character becomes the last person to survive then leaves the cult

• Published in 1996 (First Novel)
• Attempt to disturb the publisher even more for rejecting him after Invisible Monsters
• Wrote book in spare time
• Initially published as a short story
• Then made it into a novel
• Plot
• Underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy

• Started writing Fight Club

• Twentieth Century Fox showed interest
• Edward Hibbert signed Chuck
• Book made into a movie

• Continued to write books and short stories
• (Will show later in presentation)

• Still presently writing today

Awards

Background Information

• the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (for Fight Club)

• the 1997 Oregon Book Award for Best Novel (for Fight Club)

• the 2003 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award (for Lullaby)

• Born Feb. 1962 in Washington
• Parents divorced at age 14
• Mother died of cancer
• Often lived with grandparents
• 1986 grad of University of Oregon school of Journalism

Other Books and Short stories

Style of Writing and Influences

• Short Fiction
• "Negative Reinforcement" (1990)
• "The Love Theme of Sybil and William" (1990)
• "Insiders" in Best Life (2007)
• "Cold Calling" unpublished (2007)
• "Love Nest" unpublished (2007)
• "Mister Elegant" in VICE Magazine (2007)
• "Fetch" in Dark Delicacies III (2009)
• "Loser" in Stories (2010)
• "Knock, Knock" in Playboy (2010)
• "Romance" in Playboy (2011)
• "Phoenix" (2013)[45]
• "Cannibal" in Playboy (2013)
• "Zombie" in Playboy (2013)

• Fiction
• Fight Club (1996)
• Survivor (1999)
• Invisible Monsters (1999)
• Choke (2001)
• Lullaby (2002)
• Diary (2003)
• Haunted (2005)
• Rant (2007)
• Snuff (2008)
• Pygmy (2009)
• Tell-All (2010)[40]
• Damned (2011)[41]
• Invisible Monsters Remix (2012)
• Doomed (2013)
• Beautiful You (2014)

• Complex issues
• Death, morality, childhood, parenthood, sexuality, ect.
• Prior to Lullaby
• Transgressional fiction
• Charters...
• don't fit into the norms of society
• self-destructive aggressiveness
• After writing Lullaby
• Satirical horror

Structure of writing

Structure of Writing

Books that are Movies

• Most stories
• In medias res
• Latin "in the midst of things"
• Start plot at the middle
• Retell the beginning or flashbacks of the story
• Few stories
• linear

• Often major plot twist at end of book

• Fight Club (1999)

• Choke (2008)

• Romance (2013)

Influences

Influences

• Minimalistic approach
• Limited vocabulary
• Short sentences
• Talking like an average person

• Tom Spanbauer
• Taught Chuck in Portland from 1991 to 1996
• Amy Hempel
• Mark Richard,
• Denis Johnson
• (and others)