The College Perspective by Lindsey

Chuck Palahniuk’s Stranger than Fiction is a wide variety of short stories that will leave you confused but definitely entertained.

Palahniuk has a particularly cynical and dark world view that comes out in these stories, especially the ones about his father’s and friends’ deaths.

He veers wildly from public sex acts to men building castles to an interview with Marilyn Manson, some of the stories are incredibly hard to believe. Often shocking and larger than life, these stories represent more of a stream of consciousness from Palahniuk than real life actions. He claims it’s what inspires his fiction writing, but it’s unclear if he actually slipped some fiction in with the true accounts.

Palahniuk is a novelist and journalist who is most well-known for his book turned popular film Fight Club which he brings up several times throughout the book.

The stories are gathered mostly from personal interviews with celebrities and people Palahniuk knows. Most of the stories rely on dialogue while many others are simply a recollection of childhood memories and Palahniuk dealing with his father’s death.

While I did enjoy most of the random collection of stories, some dragged on more than others. The stories where he interviews celebrities is different and hard to follow at times. It’s mostly dialogue that seems like it was taken right from the recording device and not organized at all.

In all, the collection of short stories seems mostly like a project in between bigger projects. It’s almost like Palahniuk had these random half stories bouncing around his head and his friends urged him to write them all down into a book.