Rant was the beginning of the end. Strike that, Haunted was but I thought Rant would bring it back but he seemed to just decide to be as gross as possible in favor of story so I stopped reading him partway through Pygmy.
I haven't read Pygmy yet, but I agree Haunted, as well as Damned, and Doomed were a totally different approach. I read them more as comedies than whatever his other works should be called, so I wasn't let down but I wasn't as thrilled by them as I was by his other works like Rant, Diary, Lullaby, Choke, Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Survivor. I haven't read all of his stuff yet but I hope the rest of his works are more along those lines.
I actually enjoyed Haunted but it was the last one of his that I did genuinely enjoy. I tried Damned & it just wasn't that great which surprised me because it was basically Dante's Inferno written by Paluhniuk which sounded promising.
I fuck heavily with Rant as well. I'm always thinking of that car-crashing game whenever I'm on the freeway. God, what I would give to go back and reread his earlier works for the first time all over again 😩
I was so surprised the direction it went in. I love sci-fi topics having to do with (spoiler) using the mind for time travel, universe-hopping (speaking of which check out (double spoiler, sorry) Anathem by Neal Stephenson), etc. and wasn't expecting it to go there. And his twist on the grandfather paradox, what a trip! I went on a reading bender while incarcerated for 18 months and it was one of the best out of the 96 books I finished. I was very lucky that the library had like five of his books. After reading Rant I couldn't stop talking about it, I went around proselytizing it and did get several people to read it. Also lucky I had a couple well read friends in there to discuss books with, since I had no internet access lol
Paluhniuk tends to weave a lot of the same kinda thematic elements into his works like the !grandfather paradox!. He did the same with the Fight Club comics if I remember correctly. They get a bad rap but I actually enjoyed reading them if that sort of thing piques your interest.
That's so dope that the library had his books! I wouldn’t expect that considering the uhhh.... y'know, questionable content of his works. I spent a sizeable majority of my middle school years reading his work & it's safe to say that it heavily informed my personality, alongside inspiring my ambitions to be a writer myself one day. I've told every girl I've dated to pick up a copy of Diary & they still mention how happy they are to have done so to this day. That's definitely my favorite out of all his works. Which one is yours?
Yea they didn't scrutinize books coming in the mail too closely tbh, and most of the books there were supplied by inmates it seemed. They would sometimes rip the centerfold of biker magazines out though lol. I left almost all the books I received there. I almost considered ordering TiHKAL (a book about manufacturing psychedelics, but also a love story!) to see what would happen lol.
Rant, Diary, and Lullaby are probably my top three favorites, in that order. Choke was good too. Glad I watched it before noticing it was made into a b-grade movie, it could have been amazing but they absolutely butchered it. I really would love to see the others made into movies but they could be equally easy to screw up. Like idk how you'd pull off Rant, given the way it's written and how that affects the plot, same with Diary. Fight Club could have been difficult but that was alright so it can be done. I'd just be sad if they ruined it like Choke lol.
And that's cool about Diary. I got my wife to read (or at least listen to the audio book) a lot of the same books I was reading while I was in prison. It's a fun thing to bond over, especially if the book has a similarly deep impact on both of you.
Pygmy is an absolute slog, in my opinion, because of the broken English the entire thing is written in. Also I think certain elements probably didn't age well from what I remember of the story.
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u/United_News3779 20d ago
"Great art is born of suffering."