Originally Posted by ThePhanastasio

I really don't like Chuck Palahniuk. I'm not going to say that I don't like anything he's ever written; I did enjoy Invisible Monsters to a certain extent, and parts of his other works I've read (Snuff; Fight Club; Survivor; Choke; Haunted; Rant) have had moments where I could really have enjoyed them.

My beef with Mr. Palahniuk is how far his head appears to be up his own ass. He takes what could have been something extraordinary and completely pollutes it with his fragmented style of writing which, I feel, is fragmented for fragmented's sake. It serves no purpose for the work itself aside from making it stand out, and it seems to cheapen the whole package for me.

Basically, how it feels to me is that it's like, some person...let's say an acoustic musician...is talented, but he wants to stand apart from the other musicians. His lyrical content and abilities are very similar to the others. He then decides that just to stand out, he's going to do all of his shows completely naked, just to get attention. It has no relevance to the work, but it does serve to make him stand out. In other words, it's little more than a ploy for publicity.

I don't know why this should infuriate me so much, but inherent artifice in literary works that serve no purpose for the enrichment for the work as a whole aside from disgusting self-indulgent egotism...not behind that.