Make Something Up; Stories You Can't Unread

New York: Doubleday, 2015. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Allan Amato (Author photograph). The format is approximately 5.75 inches by 8.5 inches. [2], x, [2], 318 Pages. Signed first edition sticker on front of DJ. Signed on the second fep. Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (/ p l n k/;[1][2] born February 21, 1962) is an American novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adult coloring books, as well as several short stories. His first published novel was Fight Club, which was adapted into a film of the same title. Palahniuk began writing fiction in his mid-30s. He started writing while attending workshops for writers that were hosted by Tom Spanbauer. Spanbauer largely inspired Palahniuk's minimalistic writing style. In what the author refers to as a minimalistic approach, his writings include a limited vocabulary and short sentences to mimic the way that an average person telling a story would speak. Repetitions of certain lines or phrases in the story narrative (what Palahniuk refers to as "choruses") are one of the characteristics of his writing style, being dispersed within most chapters of his novels. Palahniuk has said that there also are some choruses between novels, noting that the color cornflower blue and the city of Missoula, Montana appear in many of his novels. The characters in Palahniuk's stories break into philosophical asides (either by the narrator to the reader, or spoken to the narrator through dialogue), offering numerous theories and opinions, often misanthropic or absurdist in nature, on complex issues such as death, morality, childhood, parenthood, sexuality, and a deity. Stories you'll never forget, just try, from literature's favorite transgressive author. Representing work that spans several years, Make Something Up is a compilation of 21 stories and one novella (some previously published, some not) that will disturb and delight. In "Expedition," fans will be thrilled to find to see a side of Tyler Durden never seen before in a precusor story to Fight Club. And in other stories, the absurdity of both life and death are on full display; in "Zombies," the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze: electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. In "Knock, Knock," a son hopes to tell one last off-color joke to a father in his final moments, while in "Tunnel of Love," a massage therapist runs the curious practice of providing 'relief' to dying clients. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant; these stories represent everything readers have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk. Derived from a Kirkus review: Palahniuk comes roaring back from a stretch of experimentalism with 23 tales celebrating his ongoing affection for the macabre. Here, he makes it absolutely clear that he's still the man who wrote "Guts," the infamous story that made fans pass out at readings. "The Toad Prince" makes "Guts" look like a fairy tale by comparison. It's the story of an enterprising young pervert who has infected his member with a fistful of vile diseases in order to launch a new era in extreme body modification fetishism. "Romance" takes apart traditional relationships with the story of a chubby dude who falls in love with a superhot Britney Spears look-alike who may or may not be dimwitted on a level approaching disability. "Eleanor" is written in a strange, imitative patois. But the core stories are pure muscle. The book opens with "Knock-knock," about a son trying to save his father from death with dirty jokes. The best comedy comes from "Zombies," which finds America's gifted teens indulging in the hot new fad of taking a defibrillator to their skulls. The purest horror comes from "Inclinations," which begins with an adolescent girl using her unplanned pregnancies to collect Porsches from her parents before delving into a catalog of horrors at a sexual reorientation camp for teens. For fans, the book has "Expedition," which contains Palahniuk's first hints about Tyler Durden's true nature in advance of the upcoming Fight Club 2. Pathos and panic and penitence from one of the darkest and most singular minds in contemporary American literature.