"Haunted"... a novel.

[Breaker]

This thread is for the discussion of Chuck Palahniuk's novel "Haunted", as well as his writing style in general and his other works.

I'd have to say Palahniuk is probably my favourite author at the moment, due to how entertaining while simultaneously horrifying and informative his books are. I first read Choke, then Haunted, then Fight Club, and am currently working on Invisible Monsters. I chose to centre this thread around "Haunted" because it's his most recent work, and it's written in a very odd way.

So first of all... who has read Palahniuks work, and who likes it?

[Ashiakin]

I have read Choke, Invisible Monsters, Survivor, and Fight Club. I'm torn between whether I like Choke or Invisible Monsters more. Choke is probably his most solid work, in my opinion, but Invisible Monsters is pretty wonderful, despite that it has some flaws. Survivor was good, but I didn't care for Fight Club at all, to be honest. It was his first work and it really shows. It was about a million times better as a movie, if you ask me (although even the movie isn't quite worthy of all the worship it receives.)

After I read those four, I never read anything else by him. Chuck Palahniuk is entertaining, but he really feels like a one trick pony. I mean, here's the plot for all four of the books I read by him: Fucked up main character goes on roadtrip with eccentric mentor and learns something about life. Sure, in Fight Club it's a plane trip, but it's still the same thing. He just rehashes slightly different ideas around the same plot structure and character types. I've heard that he's been getting away from that lately, though. Maybe I'll check him out again.

[Breaker]

Yeah, Haunted doesn't even have a main character. There are like 8 main characters, and every few chapters theres a random short story from one of their pasts. Very very cool, and different. And some of the short stories are the most gruesome/horrifying/weird/awesome stuff I've ever read.

I liked Fight Club, but I haven't seen the movie. Also, he wrote Invisible Monsters BEFORE Fight Club, but it wasn't published till he was famous.

I think his biggest weakness lies in the endings of his stories. I was a little disapointed by the endings of Choke and Haunted. I'm not really sure why, perhaps the endings just have a lot to live up to after all the main action has unfolded.

[Ashiakin]

Yeah, I can see Invisible Monsters not being published initially. Just because it has that Pulp Fiction-esque chronology and the fact that the subject matter is kind of out there. I probably enjoyed it more than any of his other works, but I still think Choke was better, as far as the writing and editing go.

And I agree with you on the point about his endings. I won't say anything about Invisible Monsters until you've read it, but I do have something to say on the ending of that. Although, I should mention, I liked the book ending to Fight Club better than the movie ending. After you read the book and have seen the movie, you'll be like, wow, the movie ending discards the book's moral message almost entirely.

[Breaker]

Well, I finished Invisible Monsters. I liked it alot. And the ending was decent, I thought, but you can tell me whatever it was you were going to say now without ruining it ;)

Fight Club's ending was OK, but I found the quality of writing in the last chapter or two was lower than the rest of the book. I really don't know why that is, but it's unfortunate.

[Ashiakin]

Uh... Now I don't remember what I was going to say. Probably just that I thought the revelation at the end was a little too much to be plausible. Still, I thought it was a great book overall.

[Mathias]

[Friend Code]

[Cyrus the virus]

Though he's, like, the world's hugest author, I seriously think Stephen King is underrated.

[Breaker]

I've got to agree that Haunted's ending wasn't much of anything, but the rest of it, the poems, the short stories, and the action in between, was dynamite. Especially stories like Guts, Obsolete, Product Placement... basically all of them. That book is one of the best compilations of short stories I've ever seen.

EDIT: Stephen King is a very good author, his books are just kinda hard to get into, and you have to read the oens that you're actually INTERESTED in. But this thread isn't about him.