/lit/ - Literature

This hairdo looks good on him.

Talentless hack. He's trying way too hard to be dark and edgy and it comes off as forced. Fight Club is complete garbage and the movie is better. Do you know how hard it is to make the book worse than the movie?

>>4389578
My only hope is that he hasn't poisoned the minds of too many young readers and his influence on literature is minimal.

>>4389586
How can reader's minds be poisoned?
Let's give young readers dreary modernist doorstoppers and tell them they're morons if they prefer Palahniuk that they're working-class proles that should never bother trying to write a book.

>>4390390

>how can culture lead people astray

ahem

>>4390396
This is what literally every generation of stodgy gatekeepers says, and it still isn't correct.

>>4389574
I don't like longer hairstyles on any man.

>>4390402

This is what literally every generation of pleb says, and it still isn't correct.

i like some of his books
haunted wasnt that great and im sick of hearing about guts

>>4390402
It is nearly always correct; the moral state of society has gotten progressively worse over time.

Eh, some of his books are a guilty pleasure. Choke and Lullaby, namely. Haunted had some good parts but the format of "let's try to string these short stories and poems together into a novel" doesn't seem to quite work. Perhaps a better writer could've pulled it off.

I haven't read anything since Rant, though. I guess I gave up on him.

>>4390396
Culture can't really lead people astray because it is culture that provides the our understanding of what it means to be led astray.

I played a game of pool with him once when I lived in Portland. He was a genuinely nice person.

>>4390440

see No Country for Old Men.

Also, I remember somewhere in The Demon-Haunted World there's this bit where Carl Sagan mentions that one of the oldest texts known to mankind, a sumerian tablet or something, is basically a lament that the then current society was pretty messed up, the kids more ignorant, etc etc.

So either we had some pretty perfect living conditions at some point in prehistory... or, well, it's what everyone says about the present.

>>4390446
I'm sure societies goes through cycles of moral strength and degeneracy; look at 1950s America in comparison to our day; shifting rates of divorce, crime, etc. Although history does not repeat itself, it certainly goes through cycles that mimic each other in certain respects, human nature being what it is.

I don't like gimmicky authors who write pointlessly obscene fiction.

>>4390446
All of that being said however, I'm really not worried about a "popular" author corrupting the already poisoned state of society, and I think our age is not one in which many individuals will be screwed up by a writer, and if they do, it is more likely to be by Nietzsche, or some other perverse genius.

Chuck is cool. Not 2deep5u, but better than most and alright.

I enjoyed his books. Although, sometimes I do get annoyed by repetitive words he use. But his books entertain me.

I really liked fight club and enjoyed survivor but after that it was so downhill. He just keeps repeating himself and hasn't had an original character since choke (what was decent at best and nowhere near as funny as people made it out to be) Read better authors.

>>4390440
Because we've become a more just society. Teen pregnancy, rape, unhappy marriages, STDs; all lower and still decreasing.

Morality was always just a thin skin of politeness over society's ugly innards. It was never a real solution. Now that we have better solutions, we can discard it.

he's just this guy y'know

I liked Rant.

I only liked Rant.

My main problem with him is that he always has to force the same fucking theme of there being a "dark and bizarre urban underworld that you sheeple will never know about" into every single goddamn one of his stories. And all his characters are always apart of this underworld, so by default they are always written to be incredibly weird and have stupid gimmicks to them so he doesn't have to give them any sort of significant development.

Oh, look at this guy, he stomps around on little Barbie dream-houses for fun because he's a wacko! Check out this chick, she's as prostitute who has a fucked up gimp arm so she just sort of shows up to her clients and has them pay her to feel sorry for her for an hour! There doesn't have to be anything more to them because the more nonsensical and retarded habits and qualities they have about them, the deeper they are! They're apart of this psychotic, grimey, gritty night-world of the streets, where everyone has their own little gimmick that makes them unique. It never ends with him. Sing a different fucking tune once in a while, Chuck.

>>4390446
http://xkcd.com/1227/

>>4389578
>He's trying way too hard to be dark and edgy and it comes off as forced

This. I feel like he could be a genuinely great writer, but its like he'll write a novel, look it over, and think "How can I make this shit? Oh, I know!", and then proceeds to add inane shit to everything.

>>4390441
Rant was probably his best book.

>>4389578

>He's trying way too hard to be dark and edgy and it comes off as forced

agreed

>Fight Club is complete garbage

Fight Club is overrated, but it's not complete garbage. Much like Fear and Loathing, it was blatant satire, but for some reason everybody took it way too seriously. They are comedic books, approach them like that and you'll have plenty of laughs. I mean c'mon, a man who never had his own father creates an imaginary one and uses it to lead a group of society's children on a quest to reach maturity by destroying society's fathers (media/corporations/state), only to commit the classic coming-of-age mistake of taking on more than he can handle, resulting in him losing control of his new children and helplessly watching as they misinterpret his guidance and grow into something he never intended. I'm not saying it's Shakespeare, but deriding it as complete garbage is just the naive perspective your average e/lit/ist who spends far too much time worrying about which consumer groups they're being lumped in with and not enough time reading everything they can get their hands on.

>and the movie is better

Maybe if you like explosions, bad acting, and blatant Hollywood hypocrisy...

>>4391908
>Maybe if you like explosions, bad acting, and blatant Hollywood hypocrisy...
Three points listed yet all three points are wrong. Confirmed for never having seen the movie (which Palahniuk even claims had the superior ending).

>>4390440
>>4391832

The 'morals' of a society typically grow out of it's own roots and traditions. As a society progresses, it always glorifies it's past and creates symbols of itself that are inherently false and unattainable. Eventually the people go against their own morals in order to attain power and create an aesthetic that closely matches the symbols they created. Moral decline as a society progresses is inevitable.

>>4391947

I've (unfortunately) seen the movie twice. If you call that good acting, I really feel bad for you. Cinema isn't that dead, I assure you. Good actors do exist.

As far as the ending goes, that was one of the cheesiest and sloppily-done endings I've seen in a long time. I also love how he sets up explosives in the garage of the same building him and his men were going to have their little victory party in.

>>4391961
>Critically acclaimed film
>Commonly listed as an iconic film of the 90s
Yeah, I'll go ahead and list your condescending, elitist opinion as being contrary for its own sake. As expected of 4chan.

He's readable and that's more than I can say for a lot of writers, living or dead.