Chuck Palahniuk: Non-Fiction

Reviewed by DAVID GILCHRIST

The problem with Chuck Palahniuk's Non-Fiction is that his collection of short stories swings violently from entertainment to trash and back again without giving a second thought for the reader.

The 41-year-old author, famous for his novel Fight Club, about young men who meet in dank, subterranean rooms and batter each other, is still pounding down a weary nihilistic formula: shock'em, confront'em, tease'em.

In the past, his critics have described his work as either modern, full of weird, fascinating ideas, or the work of a man who apparently likes necrophilia, overeating, mass murder, the media, cryogenics, rage and sexual perversion. Those who know his work say each Palahniuk story has been stranger than the last. Non-Fiction is no exception.

Palahniuk, who now lives in a small town in western Oregon, grew up in a trailer in rural Washington State. His history reads like a dreadful novel. His father's father shot his father's mother in an argument over money. His own father left when Chuck was 14 and married three more times. Later, after answering a lonely-hearts advertisement, he drove to meet a woman. Her ex-husband shot them both and incinerated the bodies. For a while, Palahniuk lived with his grandparents, who had a small cattle ranch.

It's hard to know what parts of his story are to blame for Palahniuk's deeply unsettling penchants but they persist in Non-Fiction. He hits the gutter running through a collection that includes blonds masturbating with chocolate pudding, demolition derby farm machinery, Marilyn Manson, the violent world of college wrestling, and a peep at the trial of his father's murderer.

Palahniuk will have you believe these stories are garnered from others or vignettes of his life. He writes that by sharing stories with others "the lonely act of writing becomes an excuse to be around people. In turn, the people fuel the storytelling." He adds later, "It works but only if you don't get stuck too long in one place."

Perhaps, just perhaps, there is truth in Non-Fiction. It works best if you are not stuck in it at all. Overall, Palahniuk floods the hallmarks of good writing with so much bile that the effect is the cold induction of ambivalence.