There’s a short story about gruesome masturbation accidents called Guts that Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club) likes to read at his book signings.  To date it’s caused more than 100 attendees to faint due to its graphic nature.  When I met with Chuck this week he explained that, “a doctor friend of mine in England thinks it happens because people laugh at the beginning and get a little hyperventilated, and then when it gets to the gruesome point, they’re a little more physiologically set up to pass out.” 

Fair enough.

He went on to tell me about a reading in Kentucky earlier this month where a man heard the story and went into a diabetic coma.  He was promptly removed from the room to receive treatment in the lobby, where paramedics decided he was too sick to be moved further.  Which led to, in Chuck’s words, “the folks who organized the event were in the wings going ‘longer, longer,’ trying to keep me talking, to keep the people in the auditorium so they wouldn’t go into the lobby and see this guy dying.”

If all this seems a bit surreal, welcome to the world of Chuck Palahniuk.  His writing - and it would appear his life - has a sort of down-the-rabbit-hole quality where it’s really hard to tell where he’s done his homework and where he’s just having fun.  His books are full of outrageous characters involved in depraved and bizarre activities, yet infused with a factual grounding that makes them seem disturbingly real.  Real enough to pass out.

His latest novel, Rant, is possibly his most fantastic to date.  It tells the story of a husky young skid, Rant Casey, who likes getting bitten by snakes so much that he ends up starting a nationwide epidemic of super-rabies.  “You have to build what people don’t know out of what they do know.  You’ve got to start with the details.  If people can see the cultural precedent of their lives at the bottom, then they will accept the miracle at the top.”  Starting at the bottom of a rabies epidemic involves crazy amounts of research, which Chuck prefers to do with people, rather than books.  “When I talk to people, my goal is to figure out what they know best, because when people talk about what they know they suddenly become the most interesting person you’ve ever met.”

It’s this attention to detail that has movie execs tripping over each other to option his work.  After the ridiculous success of Fight Club, Chuck’s books are seen as a sure thing in Hollywood, though he insists he doesn’t let it affect his process.  “Books used to be the dominant form of storytelling of the 19th century.  Symphonies, paintings, all trying to be books.  Now the dominant narrative is movies, and that’s why I rarely present abstract thought-verbs in my stories.  Nobody really thinks, remembers, or believes anything.”  It’s the reason most people refer to Palahniuk as a minimalist, though Chuck describes it as, “writing books that are films.  The type of films that could never be made.”  And yet 2001’s Choke starts filming June 18th.

So much about Chuck Palahniuk seems like a strange contradiction, yet his audience, and his connection with them, is pretty hard to dispute.  His reading on Tuesday felt closer to a reader appreciation night than anything else, with hand-made Easter baskets handed out, fan letters read and personalized signings and photos with Chuck.  And there was a fainting, as advertised, though not in response to Guts.  When pushed on the fainting issue, Chuck admits that it can be pretty frightening - though the connection isn’t lost on him.  I point out that he’s actually knocking people unconscious by reading to them, and he smiles.  “The amazing thing is, it’s just stories.  I love that.”

You can buy Rant here, and read Guts here.