Guts

[Art Sandusky 0]

HAH!

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

No, really. Vonnegut should be a gateway writer.

[Henry Spencer 0]

Gateway writer leading to what? Out of curiosity.

 

By the way, my favorite authors are Kurt Vonnegut, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[Guest Hero to all Children]

I severely enjoyed this.

Fight Club does start off a bit slow, it's kind of like a rock that rolls off a hill. It starts kinda slow, speeds up and demolishes a whole town in the end.

 

And yeah, that was Choke. It's a crying fucking shame that you didn't read it as it's my personal favorite.

 

 

Chuck's reputation isn't perfectly accurate. I was amazed to find out that he's fourty something, the reasons he has for writing these novels. All the little details that you amass in the course of a long life, the stuff you don't find in history books.

 

He's not so much a "the world sucks and we're all going to hell if there was any hell in first place" type of guy, reading Choke would have/could have thaught you that.

 

 

While this may be the most gross-out thing he's ever written (that I've also read) it's not his usual style. Meaning that there's far less guts and gore in his other novels.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Gateway writer leading to what?  Out of curiosity.

Other writers of literary fiction. I cannot suggest any specific examples—everyone should go their own way—but I've encountered enough people who think Vonnegut is the end-all/be-all of writing; usually, they haven't read much else.

 

But I'm a lit snob, so I'm my views are slightly skewed. And Chuck Palahniuk is far too glib and self-satisified for me to stomach; William T. Vollman explores a lot of similar issues, but with a level of humanity that Palahniuk's ultra-hip ironic detachment would never allow.

 

So hey, you dudes should check out Vollmann. I'll warn you that his prose can be denser than Palahniuk's, but the rewards are plenty. I suggest the aforementioned The Rainbow Stories, as well as The Atlas, as a starting point.

 

EDIT: Actually, start with The Atlas. It's comprised of numerous essays of varying length (they're all usually short, though). It's a bit more digestible than The Rainbow Stories.

[Art Sandusky 0]

I'll cop some Vollmann next time I'm at the library.

 

For the record, I've read a LOT of stuff, and I still enjoy Kurt more than all of the other stuff I've read. There's yet to be a work of his that I didn't enjoy from start to finish.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

That's cool. I was also speaking to Vonnegut's usually being a quick read; I like books that I have to mull over for a long time. Never really do that with Vonnegut.

[godthedog 0]

vonnegut generally is a gateway writer. he's by far the easiest to read & most accessible out of all the "high brow" 20th-century novelists, and if i recommend "literary" books to people, it's almost always him. vonnegut was my gateway into joyce, and i still like him more than i like joyce (even though joyce is, strictly speaking, the better writer) because he's such a joy to read. most of the literary dorks in college who read joyce/faulkner/camus/wallace got started reading vonnegut in high school (at least, most of the ones i know). i'll seriously have a conversation with people in college from totally different locations, no connection with whatsoever, and when i mention vonnegut they'll all go "vonnegut, i love him!" he's like the dork's unofficial rite of passage into manhood.

 

another good one for this, whose work performs essentially the same function as vonnegut's: voltaire. intelligent, witty as fuck, and a breeze to read. i read 'candide' in something like 3/4 of a day.

For the record, I've read a LOT of stuff, and I still enjoy Kurt more than all of the other stuff I've read. There's yet to be a work of his that I didn't enjoy from start to finish.

have you read 'slapstick'? it's not very good.

[Art Sandusky 0]

For the record, I've read a LOT of stuff, and I still enjoy Kurt more than all of the other stuff I've read. There's yet to be a work of his that I didn't enjoy from start to finish.

have you read 'slapstick'? it's not very good.

That was the one that I enjoyed least of his work, but to me that's like saying that one blowjob I got wasn't as good as the others.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

I like Bret Easton Ellis, but maybe that's just me. What are your thoughts on him?

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Ellis is a little better than Palahniuk, I think, though he can be completely overbearing and heavy-handed with the symbolism. There were some brilliant passages in American Psycho—better than anything Palahniuk would later write—but it's mostly as shallow as the culture it attempts satirizing.

[Guest Choken One]

the longest literture convo ever and it's not in the right fourm.

 

figures.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Can Choken One even read.

[Guest Reservoir_Kitty]

Palahniuk is great. Invisible Monsters was his first book I read, and it's still my favorite. "Guts" was a smidgen disturbing, but certainly nothing to faint/vomit over at live readings.

 

Unless there are some spiffy visuals to go along with the description.. hmm..

[Guest Choken One]

Can Choken One even read.

This whole thread has been about Writers and whose style is preferred around here...which means this thread is more suited for the comic book and Literature department.

[Nighthawk 0]

No, he said you can't read.

[Art Sandusky 0]

Can Choken One even read.

This whole thread has been about Writers and whose style is preferred around here...which means this thread is more suited for the comic book and Literature department.

Can Choken One even read.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

That's awesome.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

i only read neon signs.

[Henry Spencer 0]

but it's mostly as shallow as the culture it attempts satirizing.

 

I find this describes Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters very well. It's the only one of his books I've read that I didn't enjoy at all.