IronJustice
kiwifarms.net
Chuck is a rather interesting character, a self-taught writer who began developing his skill while working blue-collar jobs. He is well known to be a member of the Cacaphony Society. Most of his writing focuses on dark and grimy aspects of our culture that are often ignored or misrepresented. He seeks to challenge his readers by presenting incredibly bizarre, but meaningful characters and situations that aren't found anywhere else.
Little known fact about Chuck is that Invisible Monsters was actually his first published book to be written and not Fight Club, but it was initially denied by publishers for being "too offensive." Being the smartass he is, he made Fight Club to be even more offensive than Invisible Monsters, and the publishers liked it enough to publish it. Then Invisible Monsters was approved soon after Fight Club's success.
In my opinion Invisible Monsters is his greatest work, and one of my all time favorite books. It is astronomically crazy and grimy but compared to his later work, but it all builds up to making some very true points about our society. I love how the book is written with chapters completely out of order, pressing the reader to piece the story together, and to appreciate aspects of the story that might otherwise be overlooked if it was totally linear. Supposedly Chuck write the story that way inspired by the way magazines switch topics suddenly. This is definitely a book that can be reread multiple times and appreciated more every time.
Fight Club, his best known and most loved book, is in second place in my opinion. I absolutely love the book, and the movie, but it wasn't as original or groundbreaking as Invisible Monsters. I'm sure most of you know the story from the movie, which was very accurate, so I wont say much more. The ending was better in the book though and is the biggest difference from the movie.
Chuck's writing from there really went downhill. As open minded and wanting to like Chuck as I am, his books kept getting weirder and less intellectual to me. I can tolerate offensive and unusual things if it has a point, but it looks like he started to go for shock value more than anything of meaning.
Haunting was a good example of this, and I do somewhat like that book. Survivor was just dreadful, I almost gave up on Chuck after reading that. It seems absolutely laughable and I had a hard time taking most of it seriously. Lullaby doesn't even seem like a Chuck book and wasn't enjoyable to read. Pygmy was completely misguided and ridiculous. Chuck spent a lot of effort in Pygmy to slap around the stereotypical American family and never seemed to move much beyond that point, at least not in any meaningful way.
I haven't read anything else, most of his other books like Diary, Rant, Snuff, and Choke just seem completely uninteresting and I don't have much faith in him anymore to give it a chance.
Anyone else familiar with him have any opinions to share? Agree or disagree with me?
Little known fact about Chuck is that Invisible Monsters was actually his first published book to be written and not Fight Club, but it was initially denied by publishers for being "too offensive." Being the smartass he is, he made Fight Club to be even more offensive than Invisible Monsters, and the publishers liked it enough to publish it. Then Invisible Monsters was approved soon after Fight Club's success.
In my opinion Invisible Monsters is his greatest work, and one of my all time favorite books. It is astronomically crazy and grimy but compared to his later work, but it all builds up to making some very true points about our society. I love how the book is written with chapters completely out of order, pressing the reader to piece the story together, and to appreciate aspects of the story that might otherwise be overlooked if it was totally linear. Supposedly Chuck write the story that way inspired by the way magazines switch topics suddenly. This is definitely a book that can be reread multiple times and appreciated more every time.
Fight Club, his best known and most loved book, is in second place in my opinion. I absolutely love the book, and the movie, but it wasn't as original or groundbreaking as Invisible Monsters. I'm sure most of you know the story from the movie, which was very accurate, so I wont say much more. The ending was better in the book though and is the biggest difference from the movie.
Chuck's writing from there really went downhill. As open minded and wanting to like Chuck as I am, his books kept getting weirder and less intellectual to me. I can tolerate offensive and unusual things if it has a point, but it looks like he started to go for shock value more than anything of meaning.
Haunting was a good example of this, and I do somewhat like that book. Survivor was just dreadful, I almost gave up on Chuck after reading that. It seems absolutely laughable and I had a hard time taking most of it seriously. Lullaby doesn't even seem like a Chuck book and wasn't enjoyable to read. Pygmy was completely misguided and ridiculous. Chuck spent a lot of effort in Pygmy to slap around the stereotypical American family and never seemed to move much beyond that point, at least not in any meaningful way.
I haven't read anything else, most of his other books like Diary, Rant, Snuff, and Choke just seem completely uninteresting and I don't have much faith in him anymore to give it a chance.
Anyone else familiar with him have any opinions to share? Agree or disagree with me?
