I don't know what to make of his work..I heard about him awhile back but only recently started to read by him. So far I've read Haunted, Choke, and Rant...I LIKE them all but I still don't know how to describe his style or really what the books are About.

Despite my unwillingness to put down one of his books while reading it I can't shake the feeling that they're little more than literary junk food...: /

What do you guys think?

Doubt they'll be taught in school anytime soon, still enjoyable reads.

Choke and Survivor are pretty good reads. But I kind of got tired of his routine and the fact that he's kind of a bad writer. I think the oral biography style of Rant is out of laziness, because he has such choppy, annoying prose anyways.

A cursory glance shows that Palahniuk appears on over 260 college syllabi, but on less than ten K-12 syllabi. If one were to say that the level of difficulty of a particular text is proportional to the academic level at which it is taught, then this might mean something...

Interesting, I don't really understand how they can be taught at a college level. They aren't the most in-depth reads...

Agreed. I've viewed Palahniuk as a sort of "gateway author." :P

A college curriculum is the only place to put it though, can't really imagine his subject matter would sit well in K-12. We studied him briefly in my Fiction Creative Writing course last year... but other than that I don't know how much one can gain from his work.

Has anyone in this forum published anything? Cause i would love to be as bad of a writer as chuck.

He's a shock jock with Gen-X depth and a very clean writing style - he knows what he wants to convey and, simply, puts the ideas forward in a concise manner. If you need a category, you can lump quite a few books of his into apostolic fiction.

I couldn't have said it better. His books are good, and they're a quick and easy read - but I just don't get a whole lot out of them. I dunno, I've always pictured highschool wanna-be-shocking-think-they're-artistic-emo-teens being the main demographic that reads his books IMO. But, then again, who cares what I think?

Well ya gotta read Fight Club, then you gotta read Survivor.

Choke was my favorite of them all, it was just pretty fucked up.

But Rant sucks to me I have read half of it stoned and still don't know what it's about.

But yea, i don't like his choppy ass style much, but I like all of the fucking in Choke.

After reading all of his fiction books except Invisible Monsters and Diary, I've grown weary of his writing style. Its fucking annoying, and he tries too hard to not make direct statements.

Snuff sucked ass.
But Pygmy looks interesting.

Yes. This.
I know it's supposed to be somewhat "deep lit" but it's also good to take on the road, some beach read for when you're bored. He COULD be a better writer if he changed his writing style up a little, maybe owned up to his goddamn homosexuality instead of alluding to it all the time. The the main problem is that all his characters are the same, it's the same characters with different scenery.

Well, no wonder you don't know what it's about.

i personally think the writing style is kinda funny. good ideas, bad proes but proes doesnt make a bad book. they are good books, honestly.

easy reads too