Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories

Surprised so many seem to loathe this. As Palahniuk repeatedly makes clear his process largely consists of stealing material from real world stories, which is also what's happening here. It's more than 20 years old and contains material from the 90s so it's well dated, which is sometimes fun in its own right.

We get reporting from a collection of wrestling wannabes with references to how something weird called “ultimate fighting” is poaching good wrestlers with more money. We get a POV of something as whacky as “dressing up like a dog and a bear” and just walking the streets to great consternation. The teenagers “yakking on the payphones” are maybe walking their kids or grandkids around a furry convention today. In “You Are show more Here” he delivers a great gutpunch to everyone crowding a convention hall, paying to get seven minutes to pitch their life stories, and getting shut down.

In part 2 there are interviews. We get Juliette Lewis lying about Scientology and asking a gay man about his experiences with women, in a game that looks designed to unveil dirty secrets much like Scientologists do to their members. Marilyn Manson lays out tarot cards and reflects on his career with Rose McGowan just heading out long before any abuse allegations. Other profiles have certainly lost some interest due to time erosion.

The final part is short & personal and contains reflections on working with AIDS patients and the strange death of Palahniuk's father (though this loses some of the effect having been told in part previously in the same collection).

Not groundbreaking stuff, but working writer stuff, that often shares the wry tone of his fiction. The reflections on Fight Club coming from around the time of the adaptation and shortly after are perhaps the most interesting, as are the laments about literary fiction having no audience, and writers being cursed to be defined by their one big hit. It'd be interesting reading later reflections on the same. show less

Stranger than fiction moves outside of Palahniuk's normal literary fiction genre as a publication of collected personal stories and articles written by Palahniuk for magazine articles. While it did not prove to be as outlandishly strange as I expected, it proved to be something even warmer and more endearing than I would have imagined possible based on Palhniuk's novels, all the while he manages to keep the dark humor that at times made me laugh out loud.

Prior to reading Stranger than Fiction I had always regarded Plahniuk's work in some sort of literature limbo. Something more than pulp, yet somehow something less than literary. This is not to say I do not love his works. I have two other unread Palahniuk novels that I refuse to pick show more up. There are only so many of his works available, and new Palaniuk experiences are not to be squandered frivolously. It is just that I did not know where or how to classify them within the spectrum if written material. With my reading of Stranger than Fiction I now have no doubt that his works are those of a literary writer.

Imagine a small farming town, where the residents have an annual combine tractor crash derby. What types of images come to mind? Palahniuk includes a story on just such an event held each year in Washington, and the intimate portrait he paints of the event is simply amazing. It takes on a gritty and truthful level of realism, where people are not poor caricatures of small town rednecks. It is a portrait of competent hard working people who come together to escape the vicissitudes of a hard farming life.

Another article contains the stories of some of the personalities involved in a set of wrestling matches held to win spots for an Olympic trial. In my mind I always had some dim and disdainful view of what Greco-Roman wrestling was, and I am sure that most other people have some similarly stereo-typed views of it. After reading Palahniuk's story however, I know I will never view wrestling the same way again. There is something there far deeper than I imagined. Something that is both tragic and in some ways inpspiring, and it took him giving it a face for me to recognize it.

The stories cover oddities such as the combine derby, interviews and profiles of both famous and unknown people, and personal stories from Palahniuk's past. Each one has that same intimate personal feel. The interviews especially impressed me as they are not just a set of cheap question and answers. Palahniuk spends time with the interviewee, then tells a story that makes you feel as though you were sitting in the room with them experiencing their lives, not some outsider peering into someone's life picking over a pile of facts or pre-canned facades. They are masterful displays of his writing talent.

If you are not familiar with Palahniuk's works, or only know of him from the movie adaptation of Fight Club, pick up his novels and start reading them today. If you follow his works but have not yet read Stranger than Fiction pick it up today. My only suggestion is that you should not sit down and read it all at once. Each story is like a rich dessert, and they should be savored one at a time and spread out through other readings rather than gobbling them up all at once. show less

A collection of essays and interviews about isolation, personal mission, adventure, and mortality. These essays focus on great creatives and personal experiences but they have a lot of layers that would benefit any reader. Some of the topics seemed designed to shock or beggar belief, but they are all well executed and thoughtful.

Fans of Palahniuk will find this collection significantly more subdued than his fiction, but equally as gripping.

A comment in the critical quotes, which mentions that this is one of the few nonfiction collections to be united by a single, coherent theme, is spot-on, and makes the collection as compulsively readable as his novels. Palahniuk proves here that he is an enormously gifted storyteller, with a friendly, nonjudgmental voice that begs to be read.

Recommended, even for those too wary to read his fictional works.

I like Palahniuks writing and have read several of his novels. This I also enjoyed (on audio) but for the fact that many of the stories, including ones in the personal section, came across to me as backhandedly mocking. The people and events were laid out soundly enough and were entertaining but I couldn't get past the feeling he was secretly (or not so secretly) rolling his eyes at most of his subjects. Could've been the narration, though the author himself read some. Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't understand why I haven't heard more about this book! If you're a fan of Palahniuk's novels, then you'll love his nonfiction collection. The final third, filled with a few personal essays, was amazing. Palahniuk talks about why he writes, and I think that every writer will appreciate his insight.

"So this is why I write. Because most times, your life isn't funny the first time through. Most times, you can hardly stand it."

"That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. And writing makes you look back. Because since you can't control life, at least you can control your version."

Un libro assolutamente nontriviale, che aggiunge spessore ai racconti di Palahniuk. Da leggere, però, come appendice. Mi ha fatto riflettere molto 'Egregio signor Levin,', altri racconti sono invece da catalogare come curiosità, ma comunque nel complesso un libro piacevole e scrorrevole.