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60 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting takes from an uncanny observer, August 14, 2005
I was fascinated by the level of thinking that went into the movie FIGHT CLUB. It motivated me to read Palahniuk's novel which was the film's basis. The thinking, the cleverness, was there too. And though the novel was extreme, on the verge of being sci-fi or a futurist fable, there was something quite plausible about it as well. The emotional jadedness, the fear of emasculation, the fakery by which the nameless main character lived out his life all seemed quite authentic. I was genuinely intrigued by what Palahniuk had created and made a mental note to read more by this author.
STRANGER THAN FICTION is a collection of articles written by Palahniuk for a variety of magazines. If you're fascinated by the "fight club" phenomenon, you'll find some satisfying glimpses into that story's little sojourn into Hollywoodland and the popular consciousness scattered among these articles. But even more so, STRANGER THAN FICTION offers glimpses into the absurdities, shallowness, and violence that constitute the end-of-the-millennium, life-in-America backdrop for that novel: the world of amateur wrestling ("Where Meat Comes From"), conferences where writers have seven minutes to pitch their stories to agents, publishers, or movie producers ("You Are Here"), a demolition derby in Washington State for combine drivers ("Demolition"), people obsessed with building medieval castles in the late 20th century U.S.A. ("Confessions in Stone"), users of steroids ("Frontiers"), the homoerotic nature of life on a submarine ("The People Can"), and an amateur rocket-maker seeking to win a ten million dollar prize being offered to the first private group to put a rocket into the atmosphere ("Human Error"). My favorite pieces, however, were the longer ones gathered in the "Portraits" section: actress Juliette Lewis ("In Her Own Words"), gay editor and political observer Andrew Sullivan ("Why Isn't He Budging?"), shock-artist Marilyn Manson ("Reading Yourself"), and Michelle Keating, a handler of rescue dogs ("Bodhisattvas"). What you get from Palahniuk consistently is a vision of people coping--one way or another, but coping nonetheless. And in an end-of-the millennium sort of way, this is the closest any of us is likely to get to hope. As Palahniuk says of himself in "Almost California", a self-mocking description of his visit to 20th Century Fox when FIGHT CLUB was in development, "That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because you can't control life, at least you can control your version."
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
B-Side Stories..., June 17, 2004
From the author whose novels have always focused on people out of the mainstream, "Stranger Than Fiction" is a collection of essays/stories/articles that focus on real-life weirdos and other non-conformists. - Demolition Derby drivers that crash around in farm combines.
- Amateur wrestlers trying out for the Olympics
- Men who build castles
- Disaster rescue people and their dogs
- etc... While most of the pieces are very good, there are a couple weak spots, most of which consist of the person just talking and very little writing by Chuck. I am a fan of his writing style and would have liked to see more of that instead of those couple interviews. My guess is that they were just thrown in to fill out the book. I gave it 5 stars because of those 6-8 pieces that I really liked (worth the book price alone). If you like this book, check out "Fugitives and Refugees", also by Chuck Palahniuk. It is a collection of pieces and lists about his hometown of Portland, Oregon.
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23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Diversion, But Not Really Stranger Than Fiction, August 20, 2006
I enjoy Palahniuk's other work, so picked this one up. It didn't disappoint, but it just wasn't that compelling. At its most interesting were the portions of the book where Palahniuk was directly experiencing the events, such as his experimentation with anabolic steroids and the horribly depressing essay on his simple day out in Seattle dressed as a big furry dog. His essays on his self-consciousness and naive attempts to be cool and smooth for his brushes with Hollywood power and stardom as Fight Club took off are fascinating.
Other bits were seemingly endless in their tediousness, like the overlong bits on the Pacific Northwest castle builders, and the numbing play-by-play of the combine demo derby.
From the portraits I learned that Juliette Lewis really is the shallow, ditzy vaccuum tube that I've always gotten the impression that she is. And Marilyn Manson is a vapid, trite little huckster who "reads" the tarot by making every single turn of the card relate to things that he's already done or have already happened.
The book is a quick read, and the chapters move quickly enough that the pain of the bad ones doesn't last that long. But overall it's just not that great, far from a Choke or Invisible Monsters. You can see where Palahniuk's characters and situations come from, and he just out and out admits this, that all he writes is an extrapolation of what he's seen and done, and who he knows. Well, duh.
Bottom line: If you're hard-core Palahniuk, this will work for you. If you liked Fight Club and the others, this won't quite get there for you, as his fiction really is more interesting than the reality offered here. If you're a starving writer looking for insight into how one guy managed to get over that wall and eat regularly, then this is definitely one for you.
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