Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories (Paperback)

by Chuck Palahniuk (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Full of wonderful moments...Palahniuk's voice is so distinctive and intimate--he writes as though he is recounting a great story to a close friend." --Los Angeles Times


"Step into Palahniuk's dark worldview and watch for what crawls out. These stories are true to him and no one else." --The Oregonian

“One of the oddest and most oddly compelling collections to come along for some time.” —The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“In Chuck Palahniuk’s world, the ride is fast, often disturbing, and there is never any holding back.” —The New Orleans Times-Picayune

“Eccentric, idiosyncratic, and often entertaining.” —The Onion

"Priceless grace notes from an exceptionally droll and sharp-eyed observer." --The New York Times

“Rarely does a collection of essays continually resonate with a main theme and accumulate a weight that would lead you to call it a great book. . . . This is a pretty great book.” —The Seattle Times

"The book's lurid appeal rests largely on being let in on Palahniuk's secrets, the raw material for much of his fiction. . . . Acts that give spice to his novels are made more menacing when encountered in the real world." --Black Book


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Review
"Full of wonderful moments...Palahniuk's voice is so distinctive and intimate--he writes as though he is recounting a great story to a close friend." --Los Angeles Times


"Step into Palahniuk's dark worldview and watch for what crawls out. These stories are true to him and no one else." --The Oregonian

“One of the oddest and most oddly compelling collections to come along for some time.” —The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“In Chuck Palahniuk’s world, the ride is fast, often disturbing, and there is never any holding back.” —The New Orleans Times-Picayune

“Eccentric, idiosyncratic, and often entertaining.” —The Onion

"Priceless grace notes from an exceptionally droll and sharp-eyed observer." --The New York Times

“Rarely does a collection of essays continually resonate with a main theme and accumulate a weight that would lead you to call it a great book. . . . This is a pretty great book.” —The Seattle Times

"The book's lurid appeal rests largely on being let in on Palahniuk's secrets, the raw material for much of his fiction. . . . Acts that give spice to his novels are made more menacing when encountered in the real world." --Black Book

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385722222
• ISBN-13: 978-0385722223
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #21,127 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting takes from an uncanny observer, August 14, 2005

By	Charles S. Houser (Binghamton, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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."

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Diversion, But Not Really Stranger Than Fiction, August 20, 2006

By	Sir Charles Panther "Life is hard. It's hard... (Alexandria, Virginny, USandA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Truly stranger than fiction, December 1, 2005

By	D. Rahmel "Dan Rahmel" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I think this is Palahniuk's best work since Fight Club. Each story in the collection takes the reader into a fascinating fringe land. From the shocking tour of the world of amateur wrestling ("Where Meat Comes From") to the poignant experiences of a rescue dog trainer ("Bodhisattvas"), the author uses the words of his subjects as well as his own to make darkly honest literary jewels.

Most interesting to me was the story of three Americans building castles in the modern world. They press on despite money-shortages, questioning neighbors, zoning problems, and hostile bankers. What really got me was the contrasting natures, goals, and backgrounds of the three builders. Each so different, yet they share a common but unusual achievement. It's striking that while they live within driving distance of one another, they don't even know of each other's existence.

The only true negative of the book is a puff piece on shock-artist Marilyn Manson. Mostly an interview, the author merely reiterates Manson's shopworn yarn about his life, tragedies, art, yada, yada. This article alone doesn't reach for some deeper truth and comes across as inauthentic.

I recommend you read this book today or, at the very latest, tomorrow.