Line #54 Creator/ChuckPalahniuk


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chuckpalahniuk_autor2small.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:300:[[Literature/FightClub I am Jack's awkward smirk.]]]]
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4	Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (born February 21, 1962) is an American freelance journalist and novelist of French and UsefulNotes/{{Ukrain\|e}}ian descent. He is known most for writing the novel ''Literature/FightClub'', which the movie was based on, and has since then garnered a respectable following.
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6	He has a minimalist writing style that utilizes a limited vocabulary, short sentences, and is meant to mimic the way an average person would talk when relaying a story to someone else. His stories typically start [[HowWeGotHere close to the end, with the protagonist recounting how he got there]], the events of which might also be told [[AnachronicOrder out of chronological order]] as well.
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8	His earlier works fall under the label of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgressive_fiction transgressive fiction]], while his later works contain more horror elements. Many people feel that his works are overly nihilistic and [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism cynical]], and have labeled him a shock writer. Palahniuk does not believe that his work is in any way cynical or nihilistic, and has gone on record referring to himself as a Romantic—presumably the old ChivalricRomance.
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10	He is a distant nephew of actor Creator/JackPalance (born Volodymyr Palahniuk).
11	----
12	[[folder:His body of work includes:]]
13	* Fiction:
14	** ''Fight Club'' (1996)
15	** ''Survivor'' (1999)
16	** ''Invisible Monsters'' (1999)
17	** ''Choke'' (2001)
18	** ''Lullaby'' (2002)
19	** ''Diary'' (2003)
20	** ''Haunted'' (a book of short stories, 2005)
21	** ''Rant'' (2007)
22	** ''Snuff'' (2008)
23	** ''Pygmy'' (2009)
24	** ''Tell-All'' (2010)
25	** ''Damned'' (2011)
26	** ''Doomed'' (sequel to ''Damned'', 2013)
27	** ''Beautiful You'' (2014)
28	** ''Make Something Up'' (2015)
29	** ''Fight Club 2'' (graphic novel sequel to ''Fight Club'', 2015)
30	** ''Bait'' (half short story collection, half coloring book, 2016)
31	** ''Legacy'' (half novella, half coloring book, 2017)
32	** ''Adjustment Day'' (2018)
33	** ''The Invention of Sound'' (2020)
34	* Non-fiction:
35	** ''Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon'' (2003)
36	** ''Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories'' (2004)
37	** ''You Do Not Talk About Fight Club: I am Jack's Completely Unauthorized Essay Collection'' (2008) (introduction)
38	* Film:
39	** ''Fight Club'' (1999)
40	** ''Choke'' (2008)
41	[[/folder]]
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43	!!Works by Chuck Palahuniuk with their own pages include:
44	[[index]]
45	* ''Literature/{{Choke}}''
46	* ''Literature/{{Damned}}''
47	* ''Literature/FightClub''
48	* ''ComicBook/FightClub2''
49	* ''Literature/Haunted2005''
50	* ''Literature/InvisibleMonsters''
51	* ''Literature/{{Lullaby}}''
52	* ''Literature/{{Pygmy}}''
53	* ''Literature/{{Rant}}''
54	* ''Literature/Survivor1999''
55	[[/index]]
56	!!Other works by Chuck Palahniuk contain examples of:
57	* AntiHero: Practically all of the protagonists.
58	* ArcWords: When he uses them, he refers to them as "choruses".
59	** And what might be considered an arc ''color''. All of his books have a passing reference to cornflower blue.
60	** As well as "antifreeze green," at least when it comes to eye colors. (Fight Club and Rant are just two examples where this crops up.)
61	* AuthorAppeal: Quite possibly the colors Cornflower Blue and Antifreeze Green.
62	** And snarky protagonists. And graphic and/or {{Squick}}y sex scenes.
63	* AuthorFilibuster
64	* BeigeProse - Readers may find Palahniuk's terse style honest or lazy or anywhere in between.
65	* BestialityIsDepraved: "Red Sultan's Big Boy", a story from the collection "Make Something Up" about the horse of the infamous Mr. Hands. [[SchmuckBait And don't you google.]]
66	** Same collection also contains an angry "Intercourse a pony!" directed to [[TheImmodestOrgasm noisy neighbors]].
67	* BittersweetEnding: ''Snuff'' might count. It just might.
68	* BlackComedy
69	* BuffySpeak: Occurs frequently both in speech and narrated thoughts.
70	* CloudcuckoolandersMinder: Hazie Coogan to Katherine Kenton in ''Tell-All''. At least this is how she sees herself.
71	* ContraceptionDeception: In ''Diary'', Peter intentionally sabotages all of Misty's contraceptive efforts. Getting her pregnant so she'll marry him and go to Waytansea Island with him is part of the island-wide plan to fulfill the legend of the artist who will save their way of life.
72	* CreatorThumbprint: Palahniuk's protagonists are almost all extremely snarky in a very similar way. Case in point, ''Haunted'', in which every character has the same tone of voice.
73	* DownerEnding: Virtually any book that doesn't have a bittersweet end.
74	** ''{{Literature/Pygmy}}'' has a happy ending. Well, sort of.
75	** Palahniuk's own interpretation of ''Survivor'''s ending is fairly positive: [[spoiler:The end of Survivor isn't nearly so complicated. It's noted on page 7(8?) that a pile of valuable offerings has been left in the front of the passenger cabin. This pile includes a cassette recorder. Even before our hero starts to dictate his story -- during the few minutes he's supposed to be taking a piss -- he's actually in the bathroom dictating the last chapter into the cassette recorder. It's just ranting, nothing important plot-wise, and it can be interrupted at any point by the destruction of the plane. The minute the fourth engine flames out, he starts the cassette talking, then bails out, into Fertility's waiting arms (she's omniscient, you know). The rest of the book is just one machine whining and bitching to another machine. The crash will destroy the smaller recorder, but the surviving black box will make it appear that Tender is dead.]]
76	* EvilFeelsGood: A recurring theme in his work.
77	* EvilutionaryBiologist
78	* FirstPersonSmartass: Every Palahniuk narrator is this except ''{{Literature/Pygmy}}''.
79	* InventionPretension: In ''Tell-All'', Lilly Hellman loves to take credit for lots of historical achievements like saving Apollo 13, especially once anyone who was actually there has died and cannot contradict her. She made a musical out of her false life story.
80	* MadArtist: ''Diary'' protagonist/narrator Misty, a painter, has symptoms of instability that even predate the strain of being the wife of a coma patient trying to care for her mother-in-law and teen daughter with the family money running out.
81	* {{Minimalism}}: His whole style is based around this.
82	* NoNameGiven: Many of his protagonists go unnamed until later in the book, often with a last named being dropped sometime before the full name.
83	** The three protagonists in ''Snuff'' are named at different points theoughout the book, with one of them having been named as by his television persona before his real name is given.
84	* OneWordTitle: Most of his novels.
85	* OutWithABang: Setup for ''Snuff'': An aging porn star is shooting a world-record gangbang and may or may not die at the end of it. A lot of the book is other characters arguing about whether this result is intentional and/or inevitable. The actual ending manages to be much more embarrassing.
86	* ParallelPornTitles: ''Snuff'' includes a '''hurricane''' of them.
87	* PerkyGoth: He coined the term "Suicide Girl" to describe this type of woman hanging around Portland, OR. Then [[RuleThirtyFour a website was formed to visually depict such ladies]] and the term stuck for good.
88	* RomanticismVersusEnlightenment: His works are on the Romanticist end of the scale. The author himself even admits that he himself is a Romantic—presumably the old ChivalricRomance.
89	* RoomFullOfCrazy: In ''Diary'', the protagonist's husband [[spoiler:used to hide rooms in houses he worked in and write insanities on the walls before he attempted suicide. Subverted: it wasn't a suicide attempt, and he wasn't really insane but trying to warn future inhabitants of the danger they were in]].
90	* RunningGag: Makes a number of cracks about ''Fight Club'''s AdaptionDisplacement, ranging from his afterword in later editions, ''Fight Club 2'' and even other works like ''Adjustment Day'' featuring a character (or Chuck himself) mentioning ''Fight Club'' was a book before it was a movie, to the confusion of anyone overhearing him.
91	* ShownTheirWork: The research he carries out for his novels is thorough, to say the least. A friend of his recounted an incidence in which Palahniuk read an entire book on serial killers, the information from which ended up being used on ''one page'' of a novel he was working on (''Lullaby'').
92	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: Far end of the cynical end of the scale, frequently to the point of being nihilistic, which is why many people label him as a shock writer.
93	* SonOfAWhore: In ''Snuff'', [[spoiler:No. 72 thinks he's the son of porn queen Cassie Wright. Turns out it was her assistant.]]
94	* StraightGay: A few of his characters qualify as this.
95	* StrawNihilist: Many themes of his work has drawn criticism for being overly nihilistic and cynical. Like Nietzsche, while his dark prose does come across as such, he really isn't (or so he claims).
96	* {{Ubermensch}}
97	* UnreliableNarrator: Many of the protagonists who looking at the world filtered through their own problems, neuroses, and delusions.

Context Creator / ChuckPalahniuk