Saturday, June 03, 2023
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Chuck Palahniuk’s bruising novel Fight Club (on which David Fincher’s blood-and-guts film was based) did a couple of important things... it made a generation of men explore the concept of masculinity and our primal nature; and after seeing Brad Pitt’s abs, it inspired some guys to hit the gym.
The fame that resulted from the book and movie was made Palahniuk quite a controversial star. He's one of those authors who just gets people talking, and adjectives stick to his work like burrs on a dog. "Gory, "pornographic," "shocking" and "brutally funny" are just some of them.
The author’s own backstory reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. His grandfather murdered his grandmother before turning the gun on himself. Years later, Chuck’s father was also murdered, so it’s no surprise that his novels tend to explore the dark, often-scuzzy underbelly of our culture -- with a dose of pitch-black humour.
And when he was in the throes of losing his mother to cancer Chuck unleashed that pain and channeled it into the pages of his new novel Doomed. It’s about a 13-year-old girl who writes from the dead.
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