I heart Chuck Palahniuk. Not as much as my sister, true, but still more than the average author.
This last Wednesday, my sister and I trekked out to San Francisco to see Chuck at a book signing. His new novel Snuff was released the week before, and we were waiting impatiently all week for the signing so that we could read the book.
To prepare myself, the first book I read after finals was Invisible Monsters, his third fiction novel and the only one I hadn’t read yet. This book was my reward; it had been sitting patiently on my bookshelf unread for over a month. When I wanted to pull down a book and read, I’d look at it and contemplate studying instead. Not that I studied—no, instead I just pulled down a romance novel from the crap collection1, and felt bad about reading such a bad book when there was other stuff to be done.
Back to Wednesday: K and I spent about two hours at the Warf—turns out we’re tired of being touristy in San Francisco—and then headed up to the Haights to pick up our copy of the books before the signing.
I then proceeded to read Snuff for the next two hours straight, and finished it about ten minutes before Chuck signed it for Josh. My sister had her copy of Snuff signed as a birthday present to a friend, and three of her other Chuck books signed for her.
I didn’t know what to expect for the reading. I usually only go to poetry readings; the only book reading I have been to was with multiple authors, and boring as hell.
First Chuck was interviewed by Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column—they recorded the talk and it is supposedly supposed to be up on the site. I can’t find it to save my life. However, there are a few videos taken by the bookstore editor up on his Youtube page (pretty much if it’s got Chuck’s name in it, it happened at the signing).
After the interview, instead of reading a section of the novel, Chuck went with a short story that he had written especially for the tour, called “Loser,” about a guy rushing Zeta Delt, and the pledge trip to be in the studio audience for The Price is Right.
Afterwards was audience Q+A, where I really wanted to ask him how he felt about becoming his own genre—query letters go out to agents and editors all the time with the phrase “in the style of Chuck Palahniuk”—when he had found it so hard to be published in the beginning, when the editors loved his stuff but didn’t know who the audience would be. But I didn’t get picked. Oh well.
There were also a few contests, mainly whoever blew up a blow-up doll the fastest received a copy of a recently published chapbook of Chuck’s short stories. At least, I think its Chuck’s… If not, I never caught the name of who’s it is. They did this a couple of times, so four people won books.
K got a blow-up doll and an autograph hound, both signed by Chuck, both important objects in Snuff. She was very excited.
Chuck is awesome to see in person, really funny, and really nice when signing a huge pile of books, even when the line snakes out the door.
And now I can’t wait for the movie of Choke to come out in the Fall. Based on K’s favorite book, it won an award at the Sundance Film Festival in January. I’m also waiting for my favorite book, Survivor, to finally be made into a movie. It was optioned before 9/11, but was shelved because the frame story involves the hijacking of an airplane.
- This is the collection of romances that ME was tossing because they are crap. I have them because I like to read crap so as to better recognize it. We do not believe that the romance genre is crap. Far from it. [back]
i really wanted to see chuck when he came to st. louis. i regret not going now, as it sounds like it was a great time for you.
you really should have gone, it was absolutely the best reading i’ve ever been to. maybe we should just start our own book club, all Palahniuk and Vonnegut. my sister said she found another book purportedly by him on Amazon, called “Fiction” or maybe “Non-Fiction.” She ordered it of course, so we’ll see when it arrives. I really wish I knew what chapbook he was handing out as prizes.
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